Best Vacuums for Pet Hair

To rate vacuums that excel at cleaning up pet hair, we devised a pet-hair lab test for full-sized upright and canister vacuums in which technicians take 5 grams of long, feathery fur from Maine Coon cats and scatter, stomp, and smash the hair into a medium-pile carpet.

Then we make multiple passes with each vacuum to see how much it picks up. Vacuums that get top ratings collect all the fur in a bag or bin. Average vacuums, by comparison, leave behind visible patches, or the fur becomes entangled in the brush. 

We also tested smaller vacuums like robotic, stick, and handheld models for pet-hair pickup. But because we don’t expect them to accomplish the deep cleaning of a full-sized vacuum, we use a bit less cat hair in our tests. In other words, we design our tests to challenge the cleaning capabilities of each type of vacuum we rate.