How well does the Gtech HyLite clean carpets?

With its motorised brush head and short airflow path, the HyLite is capable of sucking up dirt from carpets, although not in a single sweep. Testing on carpet, we spread some flour right up against a skirting board, then allowed the Hylite a single sweep through. On this first past, a lot of dirt was visible, as you can see from the image below.

Carpet test: Dirty carpet (left) vs Clean carpet (right) – move slider to compare

A few more sweeps through was enough to pick up all of the dirt, but the HyLite takes a bit more work than other vacuum cleaners.

Moving to hard floors, the problem was a slightly different one. We spilt some rice on the floor, then made a single pass through. This time, the Gtech HyLite pushed the rice around, rather than picking it up, so we had to keep tilting the head to collect everything. We made a clean sweep in the end but it was a bit more work than we wanted.

Hard floor test: Dirty hard floor (left) vs Clean hard floor (right) – move slider to compare

How well does the Gtech HyLite clean pet hair?

The Gtech HyLite is not designed for pet hair, although the cleaner gave it its best shot. We took hair from our cats and combed this into a carpet sample. After a single pass over, the surface level pet hair was mostly gone, leaving the carpet looking a lot cleaner

Pet hair test: Dirty carpet (left) vs Clean carpet (right) – move slider to compare

However, on closer examination, there was still quite a few strands of pet hairs, even after a few sweeps of the HyLite over the area. You’ll want to break out a bigger and more powerful vacuum if you have pets around.

Closer inspection shows a few stray pet hairs left behind

How well does the Gtech HyLite clean stairs?

Going handheld, the HyLite’s head fits onto the stair treads well, and gives decent coverage, with a few sweeps needed to pick up the dirt. The main issue is that it’s hard to get the detail work done as there are no accessories.

You can clean stairs, but the lack of accessories makes detail work harder

A crevice tool would have made it easier to get into the corners of the stairs, and pick up dirt at the side. Without these options, the HyLite isn’t ideal for this job.

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