VACUUM VERIFIEDHow we test
Every vacuum on this site runs the same 40-hour protocol: identical debris courses on hard floor and mid-pile carpet, a fixed hair-wrap test with human and pet hair, edge and corner passes, a week of real-household runs, and a dock/maintenance audit. Units are purchased at retail where possible; when manufacturers loan units, that is noted on the review and the unit is not returned with any commitment about the score.
The DustScore rubric
Hard floor debris, embedded-carpet fur, hair wrap, edge/corner pickup.
Mapping speed, route efficiency, obstacle avoidance, recharge-and-resume.
Dock capacity, bag/bagless running cost, brush and filter servicing.
Performance per dollar at current street price, including dock consumables.
Clean/run loudness, app polish, setup, reliability during the test window.
Sub-scores are weighted to produce the headline DustScore (0–10). We publish sub-scores so you can re-weight for your own priorities — a quiet-home buyer cares about different things than a shedding-season household.
The ValueScore metric
Every product card, profile and comparison table shows ValueScore (1–10) — a price-performance ratio. We compute each machine's DustScore-per-dollar (using the deal-adjusted checkout price when a captured promotion applies), then normalize against the strongest ratio among quality machines (DustScore 8.0+) of the same type: the class leader scores 10, and everything else is proportional on a 1–10 scale. So a ValueScore of 8 means "within ~20% of class-leading value for money"; a 2 means you are paying a large premium per DustScore point. Compare within a product type — handhelds and flagships live on different value curves. The quality bar keeps a cheap, mediocre unit from ever defining the scale. It is a tiebreaker between machines you already like, not a substitute for the rubric — a shop-tested answer to "bang for the buck."
How prices are verified
Prices and stock status load live from merchant product listings each time you view a page, and we re-verify the top five picks of every ranking manually at least monthly. The “last verified” date on each list is the day the ranking, scores and specs were last reviewed by an editor. Every list carries a public changelog of material changes.
Corrections
Find a spec that's wrong or a score you can reproduce differently? Email corrections (at) this domain — verified corrections are fixed within 48 hours and noted in the page changelog.