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- Well-designed with three configuration options
- Automatic flooring detection
- Great dust pickup
- Struggles with large particles on hard flooring
- Long hair can get tangled in the head
The Miele Triflex HX3 Cat & Dog is the second cheapest vacuum in Miele’s new HX3 range and, as the name suggests, has been designed to appeal to pet owners. Of course, the Miele brand needs little introduction and has, for many years, made some of the best bagged and corded vacuum cleaners around.
So, how do its cordless vacuums fare and does the HX3 deserve a place in our best cordless vacuums round up? Beautifully designed and with several options to deal with pet hair, there is much to recommend it, but there are also a few niggles. Read on to find out more.
What you need to know
The HX3 range replaces the HX2 set of vacuums with machines that have longer battery life, a display that shows how much battery capacity you have remaining in minutes, and a new boost mode.
The Triflex range’s main appeal is its flexibility. You can use it as a handheld device with a head attached directly to the main unit or add the extension wand and floorhead and use it as a standard stick vacuum, with the motor unit and dust collection at the top near the handle.
But Miele has added in a third configuration, where you can clip the motor unit directly into the floorhead. You then clip the extension wand into the top of the unit and add the handle back on at the top end of the wand. In this form, it resembles an upright vacuum, keeping the weight lower down, which makes it less strain on the wrists and arms. It will also stand up on its own when set up like this, which is something of a blessing.
You’ll now get up to 70 minutes run time in eco mode, which is a huge improvement on the HX2’s 28mins 43secs and there’s a bright LED front light to help illuminate dust and debris. Automatic flooring detection and power adjustment means the HX3 only needs one main floorhead, with the vacuum adjusting both the suction power and the speed of the roller as necessary. I also really liked the fact that the display shows you how long you have left in minutes for each mode, taking the guess work out of your cleaning.
I tested the HX3 Cat & Dog model, which comes with the brand’s motorised Electro Compact handheld brush that’s specifically designed to help remove pet hair. But there’s also a standard HX3 and HX3 Plus to choose from with different attachments. There’s also the HX3 Aqua, which comes with an “AquaTwister” brush that allows for wet cleaning. You can buy this brush separately, too, a rather expensive £150, and I suspect Miele has introduced it as a rival to Dyson’s Detect Submarine, first introduced alonside the Dyson V15s Detect.
Price and competition
You don’t buy a Miele if you’re looking for a budget vacuum and the Triflex HX3 Cat & Dog is no exception at £699. That’s marginally more than both the Dyson V16 Piston Animal at £630 and my current favourite vacuum, the Shark PowerDetect Speed Clean and Empty Pet Pro at £500. The standard HX3 is only marginally cheaper at £649.
If you’re looking for cheaper options that still pack a punch when it comes to pet hair, I’d recommend the Dyson V8 at £350 and the Henry Quick Pet at £300.
Design and controls
The HX3 Cat & Dog is clad in Miele’s signature Obsidian Black and is an elegant, streamlined machine. At 3.6kg it’s quite heavy (the Halo Capsule XR is nearly a kilo lighter at 2.7kg), but because you can configure it with the weight at the bottom of the wand, it’s still very easy to push around if you set it up this way. Use it as a traditional stick vacuum, though, you will notice it’s a little top-heavy. Either way, it’s simple to put together and the parts are all well-made and feel solid.
The controls are pretty simple as well. Miele has added in an integrated display that shows you how long the battery has left in each cleaning mode (eco, low, high) that switches to a timer in boost mode. When you’re charging the HX3 it will show the charging status as a percentage. There’s a button to turn the vacuum on and off, along with one to select the mode you want and a final one to activate the boost function for ten seconds.
Accessories
The HX3 comes with the all of the accessories you’d expect: there’s the main floorhead, a crevice nozzle and a dusting brush. But you’ll also get an extra-large upholstery nozzle and a small accessory holder that allows you to attach two accessories to the extension wand of the vacuum.
The Cat & Dog variety also comes with the motorised Electro Compact handheld brush that I mentioned above, along with a wall mount and accessory storage unit.
How I tested the Miele Triflex HX3 Cat & Dog
To ensure consistent results, I ran the same, standard set of tests that we always run on cordless vacuums. First, I tested for pickup efficiency, to see how well the HX3 would be able to clean up various substances on different floor surfaces.
I tested with Cheerios, flour and pet hair on both hardwood and carpet, measuring how much the bin collects from a single pass. These tests are carried out before using the vacuum cleaner around the house.
Alongside this, I measured suction and ran battery tests in the lowest and highest power modes to show how performance varies across the various settings.
Cleaning performance
I ran into a slight problem when trying to test the suction power of the HX3 Cat & Dog as Miele has now designed the vacuum to cut out the minute it senses a blockage. And unfortunately it registered the suction gauge as a blockage, meaning I was unable to get any readings.
The Miele HX3 was particularly impressive on carpet, collecting 100% of both the Cheerios and pet hair, along with 49g out of 50g when it came to flour. Results for pet hair and flour were almost as impressive on hard flooring, with the HX3 picking up 100% of the pet hair and 45g of the flour.
When it came to the Cheerios on hard floor, however, the HX3 displayed the same problems as its predecessor, the HX2. The floorhead has a lip that runs very close to the floor and this means there’s not enough of a gap for it to ride up over the sticky cereal sweep it away; all the HX3 did was push the Cheerios in front of the floorhead. You’ll have to swap to the crevice tool for larger particles like this. Note that other brands such as Shark do have floorheads that will deal with Cheerios on all floor types.
Of course, the real test is in how a vacuum performs from day-to-day in real-world use. I found the HX3 easiest to use in its upright configuration, as this kept the vacuum nicely-balanced and made it easier to push around. Before using the HX3 I did wonder if this was just a bit of a gimmick but I’m now definitely a convert and wish more cordless vacuums had this option.
As you might expect, suction on the HX3 is excellent and its LED lights are bright enough to help illuminate any lurking dust or debris. They weren’t quite as bright as the LEDs used on the the Shark Pet Pro or the Dyson V16, but they did a good enough job to make it easy to see how clean the floor was. Miele say the HX3 picks up 99.99% of dust from the floors and while I have no way to test that exact figure, the vacuum certainly did a good job.
The automatic floor detection works really well too, and I could hear the change in the vacuum’s suction as I moved from carpet to hard floor. Power modes are slightly different on the HX3 to many other brands. You’ve got an eco-mode but there’s also a low and high mode to pick from. Boost on this vacuum isn’t a mode on its own but rather gives you a short ten-second burst of extra power when the button on the handle is pressed. Personally I didn’t find this long enough to really go at ingrained dirt, but I will say that the high mode was more than powerful enough to deal with stubborn spots on its own.
I do have one gripe about the HX3 and that’s its floorhead design. Both the floorhead and Electro Compact handheld brush use a roller that doesn’t have anti-tangle tech. That’s not to say both these options don’t do an excellent job with pet hair and, in fact, I never had a problem with any cat hair getting tangled in the rollers.
But it was a different story with longer hair, some of which got stuck in the roller and needed cutting off. Considering both Shark and Dyson have anti-hair wrap heads and sit in the same price bracket, it does seem like a bit of a failing on Miele’s part.
Battery life, filters, cleaning and emptying
Miele says you’ll get up to 70 minutes of cleaning runtime in eco and low modes and this appears to be pretty accurate. I measured the battery life at 68 minutes and 45 seconds. With high mode selected, this dropped to a still respectable 15 minutes. From flat, the HX3 takes 240 minutes to charge to 100%.
Another negative point is the bin size, which comes in at only 0.5 litres. That’s a similar size to the Shark Pet Pro, but that has a docking station with a 2-litre bin on board. The Dyson V16 has a much larger 1.3-litre bin with compaction, allowing you to vacuum for much longer before having to get your hands dirty emptying it. In fairness, the HX3 managed a full vacuum of my two-bedroom house without needing to be emptied.
Filter-wise, the HX3 has a fine dust filter and pre-filter that Miele recommend are cleaned every three months with the dusting brush attachment. You can’t use water on the pre-filter, but the dust container can be rinsed out with warm water and a mild washing-up liquid.
Miele Triflex HX3 Cat & Dog: Verdict
As I said at the start of this review, there’s a lot to like about the HX3. It’s really well-designed, and the ability to configure as a cordless upright is something I would love to see both Dyson and Shark adopting.
There are very few cordless stick vacuums that stand up on their own, so the ability to just leave this in the middle of a room if you need to take a break from vacuuming, rather than balancing it precariously, is a real boon. I also have no doubt this vacuum will stand the test as it’s very well made.
Floor detection and automatic suction adjustment means that you really don’t need anything other than the main floorhead to cover all floor surfaces in the house and the HX3 Cat & Dog lives up to its name when it came to cleaning pet hair from carpet. But for the price, the lack of anti-hair wrap technology is disappointing and it’s overall cleaning performance isn’t up there with the very best.
