Upright and cordless vacuum cleaners are both popular fixtures in most homes today. While the most obvious difference may be the lack of or inclusion of a power cable, there are actually a number of considerations to make when choosing between the two.
Here we discuss the main features, benefits, and use-cases of both cordless and upright vacuum cleaners.
What is an upright vacuum cleaner?
Upright vacuum cleaners are one of the most familiar house-cleaning accessories in homes today. As the name suggests, they stand upright with the handle at the top - allowing you to manoeuvre the floorhead by pushing the vacuum along the surface.
All of our Hoover Uprights are corded - sourcing their power from the mains. They are powerful with a large on-board capacity, allowing them to run without time limits across every surface in your home.
Uprights are versatile vacuums, suitable for everything from everyday household cleaning to car valeting and upholstery care.
Here are some of the key features of Hoover Upright Vacuum Cleaners:
Hoover’s Upright Vacuum Features
- Uses multi-cyclonic technology with no loss of suction
- Agile and steerable floorhead
- HEPA anti-allergy filter
- Bagless
- Easy to empty
- Mains corded
- Great for hard floors, cleaning stairs and carpets
What is a cordless vacuum cleaner?
Cordless vacuums are built with a sleek, portable, lightweight design - making them easy to carry around every room in your home.
A cordless stick vacuum can convert instantly from cleaning floors to become a handheld vacuum, ideal for cleaning surfaces around your home or inside your car.
Furthermore, a Hoover cordless stick vacuum comes with an array of attachments including brush heads, crevice tools and motorised pet hair brush (select models).
Rather than plugging into the mains, cordless vacuums have a Lithium-ion battery powering the motor for up to 40 minutes. You can choose the power setting to suit your needs.
It’s important to consider that using a more powerful suction setting means the battery will run out a lot faster. Look out for models which come with two battery packs included for the ultimate convenience, such as the H-FREE 500 Pets Twin Battery.
Hoover’s Upright Vacuum Features
- Powerful suction with a lightweight, portable design
- ANTI-TWIST technology removes hair from the floorhead
- Handheld conversion for stairs, sofas, and car cleaning
- Easy to empty and maintain
- Wall-mounted for easy storage
Should I choose an upright or a cordless vacuum cleaner?
To help you choose the best vacuum for you, it's important to look at their differences and applications in greater detail:
Power
Perhaps one of the features which most people are interested in - the suction power.
Uprights and corded vacuums in general get their power directly from the outlet into a motor which enables them to run indefinitely. This means that an upright won't suddenly stop mid clean.
Cordless vacuum cleaners such as HF500 are capable of comparable suction power to an upright, with the use of turbo mode, but it does come at the expense of battery life which will drain quickly in this mode.
As a direct comparison, if you find yourself cleaning little and often for a few minutes, then a cordless is a fine choice but if your cleaning sessions tend to be longer, doing the whole house or spending over 30 minutes or even an hour then an upright has a clear advantage here.
Weight
Cordless vacuum cleaners are designed to be as light as possible, with a smaller bin and motor. However, that gap is closing thanks to the introduction of the new Upright 300.
Our lightest cordless vacuum cleaner is the HF50 - weighing just 2.5kg whereas the Upright 300, the lightest, steerable upright Hoover vacuum ever* is 4.94kg.
If having a lightweight vacuum cleaner is a top priority then a cordless vacuum cleaner is the best option out of the both.
However, the point should be made that despite being heavier, our uprights are very agile and nimble in their own right - especially the Upright 300, which is our most steerable upright ever with 80° steering angle allowing the swivelling floor nozzle to glide around your home and furniture with ease.
Capacity
In terms of dust capacity, Hoover upright vacuums have larger dust bins than the cordless stick variants. Our uprights have 1.5L of space in their dust and dirt bins compared to 0.45-0.7L for cordless.
Simply put, uprights can clean for longer before they need to be emptied.
The reduced capacity in the cordless is to help make it as light and agile as possible and the bin itself is very easy to empty, so despite being smaller the cordless is still very convenient as an overall package.
Both cordless and uprights are bagless, making them easy to empty without the need to replenish the internal bag system.
Reach
Cordless vacuum cleaners can go anywhere, as they are not tethered to a power outlet and can then be converted to a handheld if needed to reach above floor areas or the inside of the car.
Uprights are limited in range but they still have impressive reach thanks to a long power cord and an extending hose.
The maximum range of our uprights is 15m which is more than enough for even large open plan rooms or to take outside to clean the car.
Versatile cleaning
Both upright vacuum cleaners and stick vacuums can both tackle carpets, hard floors, stairs, above floor and car interiors.
However, uprights can do it all with the floor head and the long hose, whereas cordless vacuums can easily convert to handheld mode. The deciding factor on which might be best for you comes down to your preference.
Technology
All our uprights use multi-cyclonic technology to separate the dirt to make it easy to empty. Within our Cordless sticks we offer cyclonic separation on the HF500.
Storage
Cordless vacuums are lighter and smaller in size and are easier to store away than upright vacuums.
The HF500 is particularly compact and has a storage mode which makes it just 69cm tall - small enough to fit in a cupboard. Or, if you prefer, our stick vacuums can all be wall mounted, ready to grab and go. If space is a premium in your home then a stick vacuum is the way to go.
Final Comments
Which one of our vacuum cleaners is the best for you is down to personal choice on how you want to use it, how light you need it to be, how long do you need to clean for, the storage space you have available and of course how it looks.
We cater for many different needs and preferences at Hoover and this can be seen in our wide range of vacuum cleaners.
*Upright 300 combining a net weight of 4.94 Kg excluding tools and power cord, with an 80 degrees floor head swivel range.
