We pitted the best Hoover, Dyson, Shark, and other vacuums against the worst dog and cat hair-covered fabrics. Here's what we found

What is the best vacuum to buy for pet hair? It’s a hotly contested market. Any vacuum that sucks up hair and dirt could call itself a pet vacuum in theory, but it won’t deserve the name unless it has one or more of the following features…

A good filter is absolutely key. The 'pet smell' in houses comes from dander: microscopic particles of skin, saliva, sweat and other proteins which can be as small as two microns (two thousandths of a millimetre) and can hang in the air for long periods of time, before settling into every fibre of your carpet and upholstery. You want to make sure that when you vacuum the dander up, it stays vacuumed.

The acronym to look out for here is HEPA: a high-efficiency particulate absorbing filter will trap 99.95 percent of particles down to 0.3 microns in size, which includes pet dander as well as pollen, dust and many microorganisms, bacteria and some viruses.

“HEPA filters provide the best method of filtration,” says Katerina Petrova of the Happy House cleaning company. “You can find both bagged or bagless models and the prices range from cheap to considerably more expensive. Good examples of this type of vacuum come from Miele, Shark and Dyson.''

Of course, to be filtered the air first needs to be sucked up and that requires a powerful motor creating strong suction. Our buyer’s guide to the best vacuum cleaners explains the complicated matter of measuring suction, but if you can’t find any indication of the model’s waterlift (in mm), airflow (in m3/h) or output power (in airWatts), its motor power in Watts will give you a rough estimate: look for 600W or higher.

A bag or cyclone cylinder filled to the brim with pet hair will drastically reduce the vacuum’s suction power, so remember to empty the receptacle as regularly as possible. A cyclone has the advantage over a bag here, because the hair is visible, but its built-in filter will need to be cleaned regularly.

“Pet hair is small, fine, almost invisible and can get everywhere,” says Fola George of home cleaning specialists WeCasa. “It’s important to get it all up, especially if anyone in the house has allergies. That’s why I prefer the cyclones for that job, because it sucks it straight in, you can see it’s working and you get rid of it straight away.”

Finally, a good pet vacuum needs special attachments for removing pet hair, which can be finer than human hair, making it more likely to cling to fabrics due to static electricity. Hair can also easily clog the bristles of a standard vacuum cleaner head, reducing its ability to sweep up dirt. 

Motorised rotating brush rolls, ideally with anti-tangle features, are a feature of most good pet vacuums but you should also check for accessories like turbo nozzles, crevice tools and dust brush tools designed for getting pet hair and dander out of upholstery, curtains and inaccessible corners.

There are pet versions of the best cordless vacuum cleaners, upright vacuum cleaners, cylinder vacuum cleaners and even robot vacuum cleaners (their sensors can identify pet mess and avoid it). We’ve tested them all to help you find the best pet vacuum for you.

With a cat and a dog in residence, my house is the ideal test case: you can see their hair floating in the air when the sun shines and we’ve never found a standard vacuum that can remove it all in one go.

So I tested each of the current leading pet vacuums on carpet, rugs, upholstery, curtains and hard surfaces, getting down on my knees after each clean for a very close look at how much hair and dust remained. I was also looking for low weight, manoeuvrability and ease of use. It also mattered how noisy they were, whether the rooms smelled fresher after use and, naturally, what the vacuums cost.

Read on for the full reviews

We like: best combo of suction, filtration, usability and price

It's hard to find a vacuum that ticks all the boxes for pet owners. Each of the models below can beat this at one or two things, but none of them can beat it as an overall package. The 850W motor is up there with the most powerful, the HEPA filtration is the type you want for trapping pet dander, the bagless bin gives you a clear view of the contents and, at under six kilogrammes, it's light enough to carry around and small enough to store under the stairs.

There are a few other reasons why it came top in our tests. The long hose and telescopic wand give it a longer reach than the other high-power vacs, which was good for doing stairs and curtains. And although the special turbo tool was suction driven, not motorised, it really got stuck into fabrics to whip up pet hairs. It's see-through, too, so you can see when there are tangles and remove them. That may not be as clever as the anti-tangle technology on the Shark and Dyson, but it's obviously cheaper and one reason why this is under £100, another big mark in the Vax's favour. The only slight disappointment is the lack of a charcoal filter to trap pet smells.

Vax make a similarly powerful upright version with a HEPA filter and a turbo tool, called the Vax Air Lift Steerable Pet Pro. We've tried it and found it easier to use on carpet than the Air Stretch, but it's slightly costlier at £109, somewhat heavier and has a shorter hose, so not as good for stairs and upholstery.

Key features: 850W motor, 1.5l capacity, 5.5kg weight, 12m reach, HEPA filtration, turbo tool, one year guarantee

Best cordless vacuum cleaner for pet owners

We like: light and cleverly designed to get into every corner

Cheaper and more widely available than Dyson, American challengers Shark now rival them in popularity. The USP here is a flexible wand that bends in the middle, with a light on the end to allow you to clean under furniture more easily. It also means the cleaner folds in half for convenient storage. 

Upfront we should say that Shark make a corded upright pet vacuum (£269, Currys) which is much, much more powerful at 750W and, naturally, has no limits to its run-time, whereas the battery here lasts 60 minutes. We like the corded version a lot, and have reviewed it in our guide to the best upright vacuum cleaners. But cordless vacuums are on their way to being the only game in town: people love how light and portable they are, especially in flats and small houses.

Both versions boast Shark’s “DuoClean” floorhead, containing two motorised brush rolls – one of stiff bristles, the other of rubber fins that dig deep into carpets to release more pet dirt. This model also has anti hair wrap, removing strands from the rollers as it goes along. It’s not 100 percent effective, but a huge improvement over traditional vacuums.

Removing the stick turns this into a handheld vacuum. It’s somewhat bulky, but does allow you to use the pet tool which is motorised, something not all competitors can boast, and gives visible results on dog beds and fur-covered sofas and stairs.

It comes with a HEPA filter and anti-allergen seal to trap 99.9 percent of dust and allergens but unlike some other pet vacs, there’s no charcoal odour-neutraliser, so you’d be advised to regularly wash the filters to keep things fragrant. 

While not the most powerful pet vacuum there is, this hits the sweet spot for price, usability and fluff-removing tech. 

Key features: 60W motor, 0.7 litre capacity, up to 120 minutes battery life (across two batteries), ‎4.6 kg weight

Best vacuum for long pet hair

We like: wide head, light weight and large capacity make it an all-in-one tool

Supply chain problems have made Dysons hard to get hold of recently. The one with Animal in its name, the V15 Detect Animal, is currently unavailable but it may be worth the considerable outlay for this, which has much of the same pet-specific technology and quite a bit else besides.

Outsize refers to the 25 percent bigger high-torque carpet cleaning head and 150 percent bigger bin, making this a reasonable replacement for a whole-house vacuum. If you do own a long-haired pet, the big attraction is the hair-screw tool: a conical-shaped motorised brush specifically designed to pick up long hairs without tangling. In our tests it worked better than anything else.

A third, washable ‘Fluffy’ head is provided for hard floors. All three handled big dirt like grit, gravel and broken crisps as well as the hair and dander that pets leave around.

The battery doesn’t last long on high-powered tasks like dog-bed cleaning: more like ten minutes, rather than the 50-60 minutes you get when cleaning hard floors. But it wins on almost any other metric and is only kept from the top spot by the high price. 

Key features: 220 AirWatts suction power, 1.9l bin, 3.56kg weight, six-layer filtration traps 99.99 percent of particles down to 0.3 microns

Most reliable pet vacuum cleaner

We like: low price and solid construction

Anyone who’s used trusty old Henry vacuums knows the negatives: they’re noisy, heavy, slightly annoying to pull around on their casters and, since you have to wind the cord in manually, not great if you have a bad back. The positives are that they’re good value and robust to the point of being bombproof. They also hold a stupendous amount of dust in their nine-litre bags. To this basic package, Henry Pet adds a charcoal-activated mesh filter to neutralise odours and a HepaFlo filter, which is not quite the gold standard but still removes 85 percent of 0.3-micron particles.

I used the hair-capturing EcoBrush head on my carpets, which uses the suction of the vacuum to spin the brush, scooping pet hairs into an aperture that’s narrower than on the standard Henry head so that the suction power is more focused. It’s very noisy and not quite as good as the motorised brushes on costlier pet vacs, but did a decent job of lifting hairs and was easy to push around. 

The upholstery head is even smaller, for terrific suction, and has a lint brush ahead of the aperture. It’s best used in repeated, pulling-towards-you motions and took quite a bit of elbow grease, but achieved proper deep-clean results.

Best of all, I detected no doggy smell when I changed the bag. This is a great improvement on my dog-loving great aunt’s vacuum, rarely emptied, which I can testify smells worse than anything on earth.

Key features: 620W motor, 9l capacity, 26m operating radius, 8kg weight, self-seal HepaFlow filter bags with odour-neutralising charcoal mesh, special pet hair brush head

Best vacuum for pet hair on carpet

We like: high power and old-fashioned simplicity

Corded upright vacuums are often considered best for pet hair removal because of their strong suction and Sebo — who originally manufactured industrial-strength vacuums for German hotels — have a high reputation among those in the know.

The Sebo Automatic X7 Pet is heavy and won’t win any beauty prizes, but its old-fashioned design holds a very powerful 890W motor and a foot-wide brush head, sucking up more hair and dust in one pass than the other vacuums we tried. Though it looks unwieldy, with the carpet-cleaning motors turned on it whizzes around very easily and lays completely flat to fit under sofas and beds, with a bright light to find the dust bunnies.

Like the Henry it uses activated charcoal to neutralise pet smells. The filter is rated as S-class (S for schwebstoff - airborne particles), a European rating that’s even more demanding than HEPA since it traps 99.9 percent of particles down to 0.03 microns.

Despite the turbo brush accessory and its long hose and power cable, it’s not the vacuum I’d choose for going up and down stairs or for cleaning upholstery and crevices. The operations are a little basic, too: unless you have prehensile toes you have to kneel down to press the performance boost button (for ground-in dirt) or to turn the headlights on. But a lot of people will see that simplicity as a plus. In a house with wide areas of carpet, where speed and power across the floor are key, this is the one to choose.

Key features: 890W motor, 7.4kg weight, 1.5l bag, S-class filtration with odour control, computer-controlled brush height system, 6m stair cleaning hose, 10m cable

Best pet vacuum for cars

We like: old-school upright bundled with separate handheld unit for cars and crevices

Having just used one to do a whole-house clean, I can testify that Hoover’s upright is also the best for stair cleaning: the ‘Reach’ in the name refers to an extremely long hose, to which you can attach a motorised mini turbo brush. It's as good as the Shark’s, if not quite as impressive as the Dyson in picking up pet hair. 

The drawback is that the main body has to stay at the foot of the stairs, which is why the 500 has been superseded by a new lift-away model. That’s good news for people with cars, because to keep this model in competition they’re now offering it bundled with a proper handheld vacuum, which I’ve always preferred for clambering around in car footwells. It has a fraction of the main Hoover’s power, but you can attach that motorised turbo brush, making it much better than other handhelds for removing dog hair from car seats. The big 1.5l capacity is also better than competitors. 

This pair might be old-fashioned, but at this price it’s a pretty irresistible deal.

Key features: 700W motor,  6.2kg weight, 15m reach,1.5l bin, HEPA13 filter (catches 99.95 percent of 0.3 micron particles); handheld weight 640g, 12 min run time

Best vacuum for cat hair

We like: very strong suction and a few neat tricks

I can offer special expertise in Miele’s pet-focused cylinder vac since it’s the one my mum uses, on the recommendation of a professional cleaner who’d used one for decades. Like the Sebo it packs a very powerful 890W German motor and better-than-HEPA filter (rated to trap 99.99 percent of particles), with additional charcoal layers for neutralising pet smells. But it’s a bit more sophisticated than the Sebo, with settings for curtains, upholstery, carpets, rugs, hard floors and a low-power quiet mode that you can cycle through using the + and - foot-buttons.

The only thing it lacks is a motorised brush head: instead the Turbo head’s rotating brush is powered by suction, as on the Henry. It also doesn’t have anti-tangle tech, but it worked better than any of the other vacuums at getting cat hair — which is fine and stubbornly clingy —  out of cushions, upholstery and beds.

The Miele is twice the price of the Henry, but for me (and my bad back) that’s almost justified by a single pedal that whips the entire cord back into the body of the vacuum in a second. Another big plus is that the dusting, crevice and upholstery attachments are all housed under a flap on top of the machine, which to my mind beats Dyson’s shelf-full of attachments hands down.

I’m more of a lightweight cordless fan myself, but if it’s power you’re after, this is a serious contender.

Key features: 890W motor, 7.2kg weight, 12m reach, 4.5l bin, corded

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