The other important feature to consider here is the materials the battery is made from. Lithium is the modern battery of choice. It’s much lighter than the older lead-acid batteries and its lifespan is significantly longer too – you should experience (close to) a lossless battery performance. Unfortunately, the combination of limited cleaning ability and our coarse stair carpet with embedded pet hair was a challenge too far for the Freedom, and its struggled to clean efficiently. The brush bar spins relatively lethargically, but that does mean it doesn’t rob you of too much run-time. We managed a little over 21 minutes of cleaning with the brush bar engaged.

If you have the wrist strength and energy to manoeuvre the Hoover Freedom, it’s actually quite handy for stairs. Its cleaning power on carpets and hard floors is equally limited, however, and its disappointing build quality and poor ergonomics make it an ongoing challenge to use. The low suction power and lethargic brush bar didn’t really stand much of a chance with pet hair embedded into a nylon test carpet. The results were very poor. Given the 20-minute run time. The device’s charging time is a little disappointing. Charging from empty-to-full takes 8 hours. That said, charging time is an area where you can expect budget devices to cut corners. If this is a deal-breaker, fear not, more expensive cordless vacuums boast faster charge times.

Model No. FD22L

The FD22L comes with only two attachments. The standard vacuum brush head and an accompanying tool. There are no specials tools for pet hair, upholstery cleaning or large/small dusters. This isn’t so much of an issue when you’re using the tube and floor-head to support the cleaner. Lifting it up to clean anything above the floor, or even moving from room to room, does require quite a feat of wrist strength. Getting those high cobwebs with the extension tube and tool attached is definitely a two-handed operation. This is a good few minutes shy of the similar Vax SlimVac or, indeed, Hoover’s own claimed run-time. However, there’s certainly a little more suction power on offer than the Vax – and a more efficient floor-head – so we’re happy to lose that 4 minutes. See also: Best Halogen Oven 2018: The 6 BEST Halogen Cookers. Hoover FD22L Freedom Lite review: Design and attachments In either hand, the one thing we can guarantee after 20+ minutes of cleaning is wrist-ache and a few areas of soreness where plastic has been digging into your hand.

The tool complement is complete with an extension tube and a basic, but again very serviceable, crevice tool. It’s fairly long, suitably narrow and quite robust. That said, the tool clips are positioned on the cleaner body rather than on the tools, which makes dismantling awkward. Once the charging cable is connected, the light on top flashed red and blue. From a completely flat battery, it turned blue to indicate it was fully charged some five-and-a-half hours to six later. The brush tool was a real favourite, being large enough to clean a good-sized area and with bristles soft enough for a variety of tasks. Using the upholstery tools on the stairs produced a much better result, albeit taking a while longer than with the larger floor-head. The action of agitating the tool against the carpet shifts a fair bit of debris – but again, you need some arm strength to do it. The pistol grip at the rear of the cleaner with motor, battery and bin in front give the Freedom a very front-heavy design.

The cable-free Hoover Freedom Cordless Vacuumis a practical and powerful cleaner for carpets and hard floors. A clever detachable head design makes it easy to carry and effective for cleaning anywhere from the inside of your home to the interior of your car. Although this happened less frequently with the Hoover than on the Vax, it was often enough to suggest that this cleaner is far from pet-friendly. I’m not sure the cleaning results are worth the pain, either. Suction appears to be a little better than the SlimVac, but when spread across the larger floor-head it’s still rather asthmatic.