The 8 Best Stick Vacuums That’ll Put an End to Dust Bunnies

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The Dyson V8 Animal is the best balance of price and performance that you’ll find in a stick vacuum. It’s an incredibly versatile, portable, and powerful vacuum that does a phenomenal job at cleaning all floor types. It comes with a wide variety of tools and brushes to clean your floors, stairs, baseboards, and more. It also switches in seconds to a handheld vacuum for cleaning upholstery, your car, or the ceiling.

Compared to the Dyson V8 Absolute, this one has the same battery and motor, but it does not come with the soft roller cleaner head, which improves hard-floor cleaning performance.

Although the V8 isn’t the newest or most powerful Dyson stick vacuum, this one is still a beast at sucking up dust, debris, and pet hair. The V8 Animal delivers a generous 40-minute runtime — more than enough time to clean multi-story homes.

There’s a max power mode that comes in handy for cleaning high pile rugs. However, when using the high-power setting, the battery depletes in just 7 minutes. When you’re finished vacuuming with the V8 Animal, just empty its dustbin with a pull of a lever, then clip it to a wall mount, where it’ll charge and await your next mess.

Related: The Best Air Purifiers for Fighting Off Dust and Allergens Year-Round

If you have a pet that seems to never stop shedding, or you just need a vacuum strong enough to suck up kitty litter or stray kibble, we recommend Shark’s Vertex stick vacuum. Pet hair won't stand a chance against its brush rollers. The Shark comes with two of them, while the majority of other stick vacuums only have a single brush.

The soft front roller polishes hard floors and pulls in large particles, while the standard secondary roller uses rubber fins to dig deep into carpet fibers to pick up any debris in its path.

We tested the vacuum in a home with three corgis and a German shepherd, and the Shark Vertex vacuum resisted hair tangles better than any other vacuum we’ve tested. It didn’t struggle with sucking up long human hair, either, and it has a sealed filtration system to keep dust and allergens at bay. We achieved a 35-minute runtime with the Shark on its low power setting.

We also appreciated the Vortex’s unique MultiFLEX feature that allows the vacuum to both stand up on its own and also bend its wand for cleaning under furniture. Overall, it's an excellent stick vacuum that delivers plenty of power for pet owners.

The Tineco A11 Hero is a lightweight cordless vacuum that comes at a much more attractive price point than Dyson’s stick vacuums. A Dyson vacuum will offer users a bit more suction power, but this one still delivers exceptional cleaning performance. Not only that, the Tineco A11 vacuum is significantly quieter than Dyson’s high-powered vacuums. You can hear the difference yourself in this Vacuum Wars YouTube video.

Our parenting editor put the vacuum through the paces, cleaning up household debris like cat hair, litter, soil from a fallen spider plant, and kinetic sand. She said nothing got stuck and that the vacuum will clean up messes in just a single pass.

The included roller brush transitions well from hard floors to carpet, and we love that the cleaner head has built-in LED lights, something most other stick vacuums lack.

The Tineco comes with several useful attachments, including a motorized brush for cleaning furniture, a dusting brush, a crevice tool, and a nifty accessory for cleaning its filter. Its battery lasts for up to 40 minutes on the normal speed setting and around 10 minutes for the higher suction speed.

This Dyson stick vacuum delivers unrivaled power and cleaning performance, a superb battery life, and some incredibly useful features that you won’t find anywhere else.

It has a laser dust-detection system that’s basically a green headlight that allows you to actually see how dirty your floors are. There’s a new piezo sensor that can sense the size and quantity of the dust being vacuumed up. The more dust it senses, the higher the suction intensity.

However, Some features of the V15 Detect are a bit overkill. For example, its LCD display shows an illustrated bar graph to inform you of the size (in microns) and quantity of the dust particles it collects. The screen also tells you which mode you’re vacuuming in, how much time you have before the battery runs out, and instructions on what to do if there’s a blockage.

Without an ounce of doubt, the V15 cleans better than any other stick vacuum. It’s great at eliminating pet hair (especially on furniture with the included Hair Screw attachment), sucking up fine dust from carpets, and is more powerful than many full-sized corded upright vacuums. The only downside is its steep $700 asking price. If you can swing it, don’t hesitate.

For buyers with large floor plans, consider shopping for the Dyson Outsize, instead, which has a 150% larger bin and 25% wider cleaner head, so you can cover more ground in less time without needing to empty the dust bin as frequently.

If you want a more affordable Dyson stick vacuum that’s still high-end, the $600 V11 Animal delivers comparable cleaning performance to the aforementioned V15 Detect, just without as many bells and whistles. It still has three cleaning modes, including the useful Auto mode — which intelligently adjusts suction to suit the floor type and extend battery life.

Dyson says this model captures 99.97% of particles 0.3 microns and larger. It also comes with a generous assortment of accessories, including a crevice tool for reaching into tight spots, a dusting brush, a motorized tool for upholstery, among others. Its main cleaner head has incredible prowess at eliminating dust, debris, and pet hair from both carpet and hard floors.

Unfortunately, the V11 Animal doesn’t show the exact amount of battery life you have left while vacuuming, since it uses an LED screen instead of an LCD display like the pricier Dyson models. Fortunately, there are three battery bars, so you have some indication as to when it needs to be recharged.

Considering that the V11 offers an impressive hour-long runtime, excellent cleaning performance, and plenty of useful accessories, it’s worthy of your hard-earned dollars.

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The Dreame T20 is an excellent stick vacuum that performs as well as competing cordless vacuums like the Tineco Pure ONE S11 and the Roborock H6 which typically cost around $400. It’s packed with premium features, including automatic suction adjustment, a digital display, and swappable batteries.

Our art production manager who tested the vacuum said it effortlessly switches from hard floors to carpet. When it senses it's on a rug or some carpet, the T20 will increase the suction, but when you glide back over to your tile or hardwood, it slows things down a bit. This helps stretch battery life further, without requiring you to make any manual adjustments.

The vacuum offers three suction speeds — Eco, Medium, and Turbo mode. You can expect 30 minutes of runtime with the standard speed setting, 8 minutes with the strongest suction, and an hour with Eco mode.

Besides its above-average cleaning ability, what we like most about the Dreame T20 is that it is equipped with a continuous mode, meaning that you don’t have to hold down its trigger to keep it powered on. As you’d expect, this lightweight vacuum includes various attachments including a crevice nozzle, motorized brush, extension hose, and a dusting brush.

The Miele Triflex HX1 vacuum is one of the most standout stick vacuums we’ve come across. It’s a bit of a transformer. Not only can the Triflex be used as a handheld vacuum, but the appliance’s motor assembly, battery, and dust bin can also be fitted at the top or bottom of the vacuum.

One of our biggest annoyances with stick vacuums is how top-heavy they are, but when the Triflex HX1’s components are at the lower end of the stick assembly, the vacuum solves this problem completely. It’s a much more ergonomic experience. Not to mention, the vacuum can conveniently stand up on its own as well.

If you’re looking for a stick vacuum that handles really well and offers amazing suction and top-tier carpet cleaning performance, the Miele is a great option. It’s arguably one of the most comfortable stick vacuums you can buy, but it’s not without its faults.

The Triflex’s cleaning head has a bit of a low profile, which impacts its ability to pick up larger crumbs. Its roller brush is more susceptible to hair tangles, and testers at Vacuum Wars and Wirecutter found the Miele’s four-step process for emptying the bin to be overly complicated. Despite these faults, given the vacuum's versatility, long runtime, impressive suction, and improved ergonomics, we think it’s worth considering.

The Dyson Omni-glide is a new take on the cordless vacuum that’s much slimmer and nimbler, so it can fit in the tightest of spaces. It’s basically a more futuristic version of an electrostatic floor cleaner — which you’ve likely seen at a restaurant or hotel.

Just as its name suggests, it effortlessly glides across hard floors in all directions to pick up large debris. Its two soft brushes spin opposite of each other to help the cleaner suck up even the smallest of debris that gets stuck in your tiling.

During our tests with the Omni-glide, we found it to be extremely comfortable to use. Larger vacuums can cause wrist fatigue, but this one is lightweight and propels forward without hardly any effort on your part.

The vacuum can lie down flat, which came in handy for cleaning under and in between furniture. We were also impressed with the Omni-glide's ability to suck up pet hair and crumbs. Since its bin is smaller, it’ll likely require more frequent emptying.

Fortunately, its battery is removable, giving owners the option to buy multiple batteries to extend its run time. You can expect 22 minutes of use before you’ll need to stick it on the included wall-mounted charging dock to recharge.