Bissell Zing Compact 1427T – Stairs

At just over 4kg with the hose attached and designed with a convenient top mounted handle, the Zing is pleasantly easy to carry up and down stairs. Its compact dimensions means it sits well on individual steps as you go, and both tools can attach directly to the handle allowing you to get up close and personal with your stair carpets. That is unfortunately where the Zing’s talents on stairs comes to an end.

The paltry 5m mains cable and short hose meant that we could not quite get half way up our stairs without an extension lead, thanks to the nearest plug socket being a fair distance away. Working from the top down covered the section but, with such a limited cleaning reach, there is little danger of you being able to cover an entire flight of domestic stairs in one hit.

Moreover, neither of the supplied tools is particularly ideal for stairs. The main floor head is OK, and can be steered across turning steps thanks to its swivelling head, but its steep fixed angle makes it very difficult to keep it flat to each step. With a bit of practise and finagling of your technique, it does at least offer reasonable cleaning results on carpet and hard floor steps but its more compromise with stairs than ideal.

Bissell Zing Compact 1427T – Pet Hair

Of all the potential costs new pet owners should consider, a decent pet-specific cleaner is probably not one that falls obviously onto most people’s lists. However, as any experienced pet owner will tell you, dogs and cats seem to have the ability to shed almost their entire coat around the house on a weekly basis, and still not look bald.

If your home with pets is wall-to-wall hard floors, Bissell’s Zing will be OK. Its high air flow over hard surfaces provides ample suction power to pull in stray hairs and tumbleweed fur balls. While hairs do get caught a little in the near-solid row of floor head bristles, the head’s fixed angle means the front edge frequently comes off the floor allowing those trapped hairs to be sucked in. I doubt that was on the Zing’s design brief but it seems to work.

Dog hairs on carpet are a challenge too far for the Zing. The lack of rotating brush bar and the reduced vacuum  power when the head is flat to carpet means a whole lotta dog got left behind in our test. The 30cm test patch was cleared in about 20 seconds or so. While this is far from a disastrous result, thanks again to the big motor, that sort of performance would make cleaning a lot of fluffy and furry carpets a very time consuming task.

Related: Zanussi ZAN7620EL

Should I buy the Bissell Zing Compact 1427T?

Bissell Zing Compact is a cheap and cheerful bagless cleaner that offers reasonable cleaning performance for pocket money. It’s hampered by a number of niggling issues including a very short mains cable, an energy label that reads like a bad school report and an upholstery tool designed for dolls house sized sofas, plus its dust filtration is poor.

At the end of the day, though, with it currently on offer at just £40 in Tescos you can hardly buy a cheaper vacuum cleaner and it will get the basics done.

Verdict

Hardly a master class in vacuum cleaner design but the Bissell Zinc Compact 1427T will get the job done, and for £40 that’s about all that can realistically be expected.

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