Verdict

Pros

• Good value (at real prices)
• Pet Turbo head effective
• Lightweight
• Easy to empty
• Metal telescopic tubes

Cons

• Carpet head waste of time
• Very short cable
• Non-adjustable standard head
• Very noisy, especially with pet head
• Turbo brush vibration
• World’s smallest crevice tool

What is the Hoover Blaze SP81BL03001?

Hoover’s Blaze is a compact bagless cylinder cleaner aimed at smaller flats and starter homes. It comes to your floors at a rather attractive price too, particularly if you shop around online. Its 850watt motor, good size 1.7-litre dust bin and additional smaller Pets Turbo Brush head tick all the essential boxes.

It’s light and easy to tow around thanks to its two large diameter wheels and single castor underneath, and the flip-up carry handle means stair climbing with the Blaze should pose few problems for house owners. Metal tubes, a range of accessories and washable filters will all add up to a genuine Hoover ‘hoover’ at a bargain price if it sucks up to the mark.

Hoover Blaze SP81BL03001 – Design and Features

Having tested most of the UK’s premium vacuum cleaners throughout 2015, with prices often hitting several hundred pounds, the Blaze is something quite different with its realistic online price well under £100. As such, we can’t help but be impressed by quite how much Hoover has crammed into the Blaze’s bargain box.

Related: Best Vacuum Cleaners

Its telescopic metal tubes are a nice touch and give it a solid feel, even if the hose and handle feel a bit lightweight and plasticky in comparison. The handle and tools fit together with a simply push-fit and there is a handy suction release slider on the handle for when you have vacuumed up a rug, curtains or the cat. The automatic cable rewind is a nice touch although the cable itself is woefully short at just over 4m.

Three floorheads are on offer, the largest of which is a dedicated carpet brush with a rubber blade to tease dirt from fibres, wheels for easy movement and a flexible neck. For hard floor duties, the slightly smaller hard floor head is a traditional design with stiff bristles at the front and a rubber blade at the back to create a good suction down into floor cracks. The compact Pet Hair Remover head features an air-powered brush bar in a fixed head.

The tool complement is complete with perhaps the smallest crevice tool and dusting brush ever to grace a full size cleaner. At just a few inches long, don’t expect to get too far down the back of radiators, and the clever flip-over dusting brush is about the size of a tooth brush. Still, that proved very handy for keyboard cleaning and I am typing this from spotless keys. This tool can be stored on the cleaner or even in a very small back pocket while you are cleaning.

Hoover Blaze SP81BL03001 – Cleaning

Fire up the Blaze and it leaves you in no doubt it is working as it sounds like a small jet-engine. Running at 87dB with the normal heads and peaking at 90dB with the Pet head attached, that is up there with motorbikes and lawnmowers. If you used this cleaner for work it would exceed the HSE’s sound exposure limit values and your employer would have to supply hearing protection. Hang on, I am at work… where are my ear plugs?!

Before

After

The noise of the motor and air-flow do translate into a pretty good vacuum and there is certainly no reason to complain about the Blaze’s sheer suck. Yet, with no way to reduce motor power the carpet head sucks down onto short-pile carpet like a limpet, making it a high-energy task to push it back and forth. Moreover the rubber blade didn’t seem to have the desired effect of lifting dirt and there was a fair bit of simply pushing debris around.

Before

After

The hard floor head was better all round and became our go-to tool of choice for carpets and hard floors. The bristles stopped the head gluing itself to the surface and the bristle/blade combination proved excellent on hard floors. Here it produced a clean sweep without leaving test powder behind or simply pushing it out of the way.

On both surfaces, edge cleaning was very good. The bristles did tend to collect pet hair from carpets rather than suck them up, but for that you have the Pet head. This worked well, as long as you can stand the noise and, in our sample at least, an unbalanced rotating brush bar causing enough vibration to make your eyes go fuzzy.