Vax LiftOut Reach Pet Corded Upright Vacuum Cleaner Review

Design and Features

• Large cleaning radius
• Extra tools if you buy direct from Vax
• Useful LiftOut mode

The Vax LiftOut Reach Pet Corded Upright Vacuum Cleaner has a lot in common with the slightly cheaper Vax LiftOut Pet Corded Upright Vacuum Cleaner. In fact, aside from the slightly different colour scheme, you’d be hard-pushed to tell the two apart at first glance. So, why pay £20 more for this model?

Simply put, it’s because the Vax LiftOut Reach Pet Corded Upright Vacuum Cleaner has more reach, so less plugging and unplugging to clean your home. Headline figures include a 10m cord (it’s 9m on the regular model), which wraps around the tidy, and a massive 3.5m hose (it’s 2m on the standard version).

Overall, the combination gives a cleaning radius of 14.5m, vs 12m on the standard model. It’s not just about the extra reach, as the longer hose, in particular, gives some advantages.

For example, when cleaning the stairs, the long hose lets you reach further without having to move the vacuum cleaner’s body. It also gives you more reach for cleaning up cobwebs around the ceiling. If you find that your cleaner won’t quite reach where you want it, the Vax LiftOut Reach Pet Corded Upright Vacuum Cleaner could be for you.

Otherwise, this vacuum cleaner is similar to the standard model, which is to say it’s thoughtfully designed. There’s a simple power button to turn the vacuum cleaner on and off.

There’s no power control, but there is an air vent. Just open this up if you want to reduce suction because you’re having trouble pushing the cleaner on a floor.

It’s nice to see the button to turn the brush-bar on and off, too. While the brush is useful on carpet to agitate dirt, on hard floors it can ping dirt around. By turning it off and relying on suction only, you avoid that problem.

While the cleaner is easy to push around and quite manoeuvrable (at 6.4kg, it’s just about 300g heavier than the regular mode), the LiftOut mode turns this vacuum into a nimbler cylinder-style cleaner.

With the main cylinder removed, the vacuum is much easier to move around, for cleaning stairs, sofas or cars.

Unlike the Vax LiftOut Multi Pet-Design, the Vax LiftOut Reach Pet Corded Upright Vacuum Cleaner can’t have its wand attached to the floor head in LiftOut mode, so it’s not so good for vacuuming under sofas or other low bits of furniture. It’s the same restriction as on the non-Reach version of the vacuum.

Accessories can all be used at the end of the hose or with just the handle when you need a bit of close-up work. 

Vax provides storage for the crevice tool and one other tool of your choice on the vacuum cleaner.

This can be anything from the provided list: a crevice tool with a handy slide-down brush; a pet hair removal tool; a stair tool; or a mini motorised brush.

Buy directly from Vax, and you also get an accessory kit that includes a flexible crevice tool, a deep debris tool, a fine dusting brush, and an additional washable filter.

That second filter is very handy to have. Once the main one gets dirty, I could remove it, clean it and leave it to dry, but swap in the spare to keep on cleaning.

In addition to the washable filter, there’s a second post-motor filter, which can’t be replaced. Instead, when it looks discoloured, this should be replaced with a fresh one.

As standard in the LiftOut line, there’s a 2-litre bin that lifts out for emptying. Both the top and bottom open, so it’s easy to push out any dirt and rinse it off when it starts to get dirty.

Performance

• Decent suction power
• Very good on carpet
• Edge performance could be improved

With a 600W motor, the Vax LiftOut Reach Pet Corded Upright Vacuum Cleaner has the same core power as the other vacuum cleaners in the line-up. I found that it managed 153AW, when measured at the handle, which is pretty much the same as the other vacuum cleaners in the line-up.

The cheaper Hoover HL4 is more powerful, but it uses more power, so costs a bit more to run. What you get with the Vax is a sensible mix of power: enough for all jobs.

To show the level of power, I lined up a row of rice next to a tape measure. Placing the crevice tool at the end, the Vax LiftOut Reach Pet Corded Upright Vacuum Cleaner could collect particles from 2cm away, showing it can handle fast debris removal in hard-to-reach areas, such as all of those little crevices in a car.

Next, I moved on to my regular tests, starting by adding 20g of dust to the carpet. With a clean sweep backwards and forwards through the mess, I was impressed to see that the cleaner left sharp edges. After finishing vacuuming the carpet, I found that it collected 97.25% of the dust, which is an excellent result.

Next, I added 10g of dust on carpet tiles, right up to the edge of the room. Here, the 91.7% collection was good, but there was still a thin line of flour left behind that had to be tackled with the crevice tool.

On hard floor, I put down 20g of rice, and the Vax LiftOut Reach Pet Corded Upright Vacuum Cleaner managed to collect it all. I turned the brush bar off for this test.

Cat hair proved no problem. After combing in some hair to the carpet, the Vax LiftOut Reach Pet Corded Upright Vacuum Cleaner moved over and sucked it all up without problem.

I finished off by adding human hair to the test carpet. I was pleased to see that this was collected without any strands getting caught around the brush.

Noise came in at 73.6dB, which is average for a plug-in cleaner like this. It’s just as loud as other vacuum cleaners, but not particularly annoying.

Should you buy it?