Vax Blade 4 Pet & Car review: A stick vacuum cleaner with all the trimmings
One of the best-value cordless vacuums around, bundled with every attachment you could think of
Pros
- Lots of attachments
- Good cleaning ability
- Removable battery
Cons
- Bulky and heavy
- Poor at tackling larger particles
- Extra tools are costly
The latest addition to Vax’s Blade 4 family, the Pet & Car, comes with a box brimming with attachments.
The main cordless stick vacuum unit is the same as you get with the standard Vax Blade 4 but, as its name suggests, the Pet & Car bundles the extra tools you’ll need to lift pet hair from soft furnishings and reach into all your car’s dirt-collecting nooks and crannies.
Vax Blade 4 Pet & Car review: What do you get for the money?
The basic Vax Blade 4 comes with the main handheld vacuum unit, an extension wand that turns it into a cordless stick and a motorised floor head that attaches to the end of this. You also get the Blade 4’s 4Ah battery, which is a bit more powerful than the 3Ah battery that comes with the Blade 3, a dock to charge it in and a crevice tool.
The Blade 4 Pet & Car adds a couple of extra tools that significantly enhance the vacuum’s proposition as a handheld cleaner. The first is a mini motorised pet tool, a smaller version of the main floor head with its own motorised spinning brush roller that can be attached straight onto the unit without the extension wand. This makes it ideal for using on sofas, stairs and other places that are impractical to clean with the floor head.
The other useful tool is the powered hose. This flexible tube is a step beyond what you would normally expect: not only can it be used to bend and stretch into places that might otherwise be tough to reach, it can also be used to power Vax’s motorised pet tool. This gives it more power to gather up stubborn dirt such as pet hair by agitating the dirty surface as well as using the vacuum’s suction.
These extras add £80 to the base price of the Blade 4, taking the price up to £299.
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Vax Blade 4 Pet & Car review: What’s it like to use?
The Blade 4 itself hasn’t changed since our initial review, so the same arguments still apply. It’s relatively heavy for a cordless stick, particularly around the handle, because the collection bin and all the workings are right up at the top.
However, the Pet & Car attachments give the vacuum an added versatility. The motorised pet tool has an adjustable end and flexes to the side at the neck, so you can easily change the angle as you clean. This is a huge improvement on stairs compared to trying to use the main floor head, which goes floppy when you lift it up.
The powered hose also makes things easier. As well as simply helping you reach into tricky crevices it also spreads the weight, making it easier to wield, placing the pet cleaning head in one hand and the motor unit in the other.
Vax Blade 4 Pet & Car review: How well does it clean?
The Vax Blade 4 is a capable cleaner of dust and small particles. In our flour tests, it collected 48g of a 50g spillage on hard floor, and 44g on carpet. However, its motorised floor head isn’t as useful when it comes to larger particles as the enclosed front of the head prevents larger pieces (we use Cheerios to test this) from getting in.
The additional tools in the Pet & Car package help with stubborn and hard-to-reach cleaning tasks, but they don’t change the overall cleaning capability of the Blade 4, which you can read about in more detail in our main review.
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Vax Blade 4 Pet & Car review: Should I buy it?
One of the things we liked about the original Vax Blade 4 was that it was terrific value for money. The £80 price increase that comes with adding the extra accessories to the package takes the edge off this a little. However, both the motorised pet tool and the powered hose are fantastic additions that provide significant benefits to the overall package, particularly for those with more demanding cleaning requirements. If your budget can stretch to include them, they’re definitely worth having.
The increase in price also puts it up against some stiff competition. If you don’t need the accessories, more basic Blade 4 models are available with fewer options, with the basic vacuum cleaner available for £219. Other rivals, such as the Eufy HomeVac S11 Infinity, also come with a good collection of accessories, including an additional battery that comes in handy if you have extensive cleaning work to perform.
The price rise also pushes the Blade 4 into the same bracket as the cheaper Dysons, with the Dyson V8 Animal currently available for the same price, although you won’t get as many accessories with that.