Draper 13785 Wet & Dry Vacuum Cleaner Review - Vacuuming Review
Vacuuming
How well does the Draper 13785 Wet & Dry Vacuum Cleaner clean hard floors and carpet? The Draper 13785 Wet & Dry Vacuum Cleaner’s 1250W motor promises a lot of suction power and cleaning abilities wrapped up in the lightest and easiest to carry machine we’ve tested. Kicking off the testing, we tackled elderly parquet […]
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How well does the Draper 13785 Wet & Dry Vacuum Cleaner clean hard floors and carpet?
The Draper 13785 Wet & Dry Vacuum Cleaner’s 1250W motor promises a lot of suction power and cleaning abilities wrapped up in the lightest and easiest to carry machine we’ve tested.
Kicking off the testing, we tackled elderly parquet flooring with plenty of gaps between the blocks and an area close to a hard-edge skirting. A mix of carpet refresher powder and talc was liberally sprinkled, and we gave the Draper one slow pass with the brush/blade holder positioned with brushes to the front. The floor-head glided over the parquet easily thanks to the brush fibres and pick-up was excellent with just some faint lines remaining. These were addressed on the second pass.
Hard floor test: Dirty hard floor (left) vs Clean hard floor (right) – move slider to compare
The basic structure of the floor-head delivered outstanding edge cleaning, possibly more by luck than design. With the brush at the front and blade at the back, plenty of air rushes into the floor-head from the open sides, cleaning right up to the edge of the room. Results were great either way. We used the same head orientation on laminate flooring, with equally good results for very little personal effort.
Interestingly, Draper recommends to use the brush/blade attachment only on hard floors and to use the bare floor-head on carpet. That’s just about possible, but the suction stick-down makes it difficult to push forward; there’s a real danger of the tubes pulling apart on the backstroke.
Leave the attachment in place and it cleans effectively on carpets without quite the ludicrous effort required. In fact, over a mix of rugs and carpeting areas, the core results were impressive, the Draper clearing dust, dirt and the remnants of a chewed-up dog bone.
Out in the garage, the Draper was at home with a generous amount of heavy debris, small stones and rubble. This machine is basically going to suck up anything that will fit into the tube, and only some larger shards of timber clogged up the floor-head. We also noted that the rotating neck on the floor-head allowed you to get under very low obstacles; we even managed to clean under the workbench.
How well does the Draper 13785 Wet & Dry Vacuum Cleaner clean wet spills?
The first challenge switching into wet mode was removal of the cloth filter and dust bag and installing the Antifoam filter, which proved fiddly. Test results went south from here. With a medium-sized glass of water poured over a tiled floor, the Draper did a good job of moving the water around with the squeegee-like blade, but failed to suck up much of the liquid.
It didn’t really matter which way round the brush/blade accessory was installed, either squeegeeing water on the forward or backstroke. Simply sticking the hose in a bucket of water to drain worked perfectly, with the potent motor lifting the water quickly. Yet for minor wet spills, the quirky floor-head design simply isn’t that great.
Wet test: Wet floor (left) vs Dy floor (right) – move slider to compare
How well does the Draper 13785 Wet & Dry Vacuum Cleaner tackle pet hair?
Tackling pet hair, we found an impressive pile of embedded fluff in our red rug in the living room; virtually a complete dog. We again tried the floor-head without the brush/blade attachment, as indicated in the manual, but the stick-down on our rug’s dense pile made it all but impossible. Thankfully, the Draper turned in quite impressive pet-hair-busting results with the accessory in place, so we stuck with that.
Pet hair test: Before cleaning (left) vs After cleaning (right) – move slider to compare
How easy is the Draper 13785 Wet & Dry Vacuum Cleaner to empty?
Emptying the Draper means unclipping the motor assembly from the stainless steel body and either pouring out the liquid contents or removing the bag. The side clips for the motor are simple plastic springs that we’d question the integrity of, but no amount of normal level of abuse from use could persuade them to break.
Overall, a mixed bag of test results. The Draper offers plenty of power but not the finesse in tool design to make the most of it, particularly with our wet spill test. It is super-light and super-powerful but beset by niggles, very short reach and so-so test results.
Trusted Score
Score in detail
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Usability 8
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Cleaning performance 7
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Features 6
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Design 7
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Value 8