To help us provide you with free impartial advice, we may earn a commission if you buy through links on our site. Learn more
- Sensors automatically adjust suction power as needed
- Particularly good at removing cat hair from carpets
- Head adapts to different floor types
- Extension wand feels a tiny bit flimsy
- Slightly top-heavy design
Like many of the best cordless vacuums, the Vax HomePro Detect Pet-Design comes with plenty of useful features to help you vacuum around the home. The difference is that it’s more reasonably priced than many of its rivals – at the time of testing, there was a £150 discount on the Vax, and a free accessories kit was also included. But even if you paid full price for it at £370, it’s still a steal compared to most of Dyson’s cordless vacuums.
This new top-of-the-line model has been designed specifically with pet owners in mind and includes both a standard and motorised pet hair head, both of which have Vax’s HairWrap Resist technology on board. The question is, how well does it compare with more expensive vacuums, or can you get away with paying less?
Vax HomePro Detect Pet-Design Cordless Vacuum Cleaner: What do you get for the money?
The Vax was £220 at the time of writing, and I think it’s worth every penny. Not only is it an effective vacuum cleaner, but it comes with an impressively broad range of accessories, even without the free accessories kit. Clad in sleek black with a few blue accents, the Vax looks good, too.
In the standard kit you get the cordless vacuum cleaner itself, complete with a detachable battery and charging station. There is also the option to buy the Vax with two batteries but that does raise the price by £70. Speaking of batteries, the Vax uses the ONEPWR 4.0Ah MAX battery, which can be used to power other Vax vacuums and carpet cleaners, so if you already own one of those, you might already have a second battery you can use.
The standard head comes with Vax’s HairWrap Resist to help prevent hair wrapping around the rollers, as does the included Motorised Pet Head. You’ll also find a standard rubberised pet hair remover, stair tool attachment, crevice tool attachment and an extension wand. The currently free accessories kit adds a fine dusting brush for use in the home and car, along with a deep debris tool to loosen ground-in dirt and an extension hose that’s ideal for car cleaning as it helps you reach into tricky spots.
As with all cordless stick vacuums, there’s an extension wand in the box that connects the main floor head to the motor unit, so you can vacuum while standing up, and this has a reverse elbow, allowing it to bend in the middle for easier vacuuming under low furniture.
The HomePro Detect also comes with Vax’s new DebrisDetect mode, which automatically increases suction when it detects more dirt and debris, along with LEDs built in the main cleaning head and a protective bumper surrounding it that allows you to clean closer to skirting boards.
READ NEXT: The best vacuum cleaners for pet hair tested in 2024
What is it like to use?
Weight-wise, the Vax HomePro Detect shares a similar problem with the Vax ONEPWR Blade 5 Dual Pet & Car vacuum cleaner, in that it’s somewhat top-heavy. The handheld unit comes in at 2kg, while the rest of the unit, including extension wand and standard head, weighs 1.5kg.
It’s super easy to turn on and operate – I love the fact that it has a dedicated power button and a separate button for cycling through its three power modes (Boost, DebrisDetect and Eco) – but that weight distribution does mean it’s a little on the heavy side to use as a handheld.
I tested the Vax at the same time as the Dyson V16 Piston Animal, which is the most powerful cordless vacuum we’ve tested. So, I was concerned that the Vax would struggle to keep up. In fact, it performed admirably in real-world use.
I found the Eco mode on the Vax was more than powerful enough to deal with cleaning my wool carpets, but I did enjoy switching to DebrisDetect mode, which uses a bank of sensors to detect dirt and debris, increasing the suction where it’s needed without the user having to do anything.
This mode is great for battery life, as the sensors return suction power to a normal level once the extra debris has been lifted. I found it particularly useful with pet and human hair, which can easily become tangled in my wool carpets – the Vax had no trouble cleanly lifting this up.
I’m also a fan of the design of the main cleaning head, which works on both hard floor and carpets – you don’t need to switch heads when moving from one to the other. The LED lights mounted along the front of the head are impressive, too, making it easy to spot any dust or debris you might have missed.
And it’s great that this and the motorised pet head include Vax’s HairWrap Resist feature, which is designed to help prevent hair getting tangled up in the rollers, so you don’t have to spend ages snipping and slicing it away. It works pretty well, too, although I did find the odd one of my long hairs tangled around the rollers when I inspected it after a clean.
For pet hair, though, you may want to use the rubberised pet hair remover instead. It took my husband and I a minute to realise this tool works best if you vacuum back to front – i.e. by vacuuming towards you – but once I had worked it out I found this a brilliant tool for removing pet fur from upholstery. It works by dragging the fur out with its pronged teeth before it’s sucked up into the bin.
On the negative side, I had issues with the build quality of the crevice tool attachment. This has a small button on the side to extend a set of bristles, but it’s flimsy and fell off at one point when I pressed it. It was easy enough to fit back on, but on a tool that’s likely to get a fair bit of use, this is disappointing.
One thing I did like about it was the way the head clicks into place to keep the vacuum cleaner standing upright, but again the build quality didn’t exactly inspire confidence. It’s very stable once it’s in place, but the noise it makes when engaged it is worryingly creaky.
Finally, to emptying, which is something you’ll need to do on a fairly regular basis as the collection bin only has a capacity of 0.7 litres. It’s very easy to empty, though. You simply click the button just under the dirt collector and the lid swings open to allow the debris to fall straight into a bin. The whole process is hands free and you can also remove any remaining bits of debris by sliding the release cuffs back and forth.
How well does it clean?
We conduct the same tests for all our vacuum cleaners. We spill measured quantities of Cheerios, flour and pet hair onto a short-pile carpet sample and hard floor, weighing the collection bin before and after a single pass at maximum power, to see how much the vacuum collects.
And we carry out all these tests before using the vacuum in real-world testing to ensure results are consistent with other vacuums we’ve reviewed. We also test battery life and suction power to provide a balanced look at overall performance.
As I previously mentioned, I tested the Vax shortly after the Dyson V16 and the Vax beat it hands down when hoovering up Cheerios. It collected 24g out of 26g on the carpet and scored perfect 100% on hard flooring. The design of the main head means that it runs ever so slightly over the top of substances on the floor, which prevents them from simply being pushed along. The Vax also performed well with flour, picking up 45g out of 50g on carpet and again achieving a 100% perfect score on hard floor.
I was most intrigued to see the results on fur, given Vax has put the word “Pet” in the name. So I tested the main head but also conducted the same test with both the motorised and standard pet heads. On carpet, the main head and pet heads performed best, picking up 4.5g out of 5g, while the motorised pet head picked up 4g. And on hard floor, the standard head picked up 4.5g while the standard pet head a perfect 5g. This was where the motorised pet head struggled a little, only picking up 3.5g. This attachment is primarily designed to work on carpets, though, so it isn’t particularly surprising.
I also ran battery tests to see how long the battery lasted from fully charged. In Boost mode, the vacuum ran for 11mins 21secs; in eco mode it lasted 38mins 40secs. It lags behind the (far more expensive) Dyson V16 Piston Animal and the Shark Power Detect Clean and Empty IP3251.
Should you buy the Vax HomePro Detect Pet-Design Cordless Vacuum Cleaner?
The Vax HomePro Detect Pet-Design is a solid cordless vacuum cleaner with a good level of power that makes short work of cleaning your carpets and floors. It particularly excels on carpets and does a great job removing both pet and human hair. Its anti-hair wrap system isn’t 100% perfect, but it’s not far off.
The vacuum comes with a broad range of attachments that pet owners in particular will appreciate, and its smooth action makes it a pleasure to use. A few of its attachments feel a tiny bit flimsy but, considering how expensive its rivals are, I feel this is a compromise worth making.
