Verdict

Pros

• Excellent on open carpet and hard floors
• Great for pet hairs on carpet
• Easy to empty and clean filter
• Funky design
• Relatively quite

Cons

• Heavy cleaner and main floor head
• Bulky tubes and over-sized tools
• Hard work on stairs
• Cant clean under sofas/obstacles
• Poor button position on handle

What is the Vax Air Revolve Pet?

If you are looking for a completely different vacuum cleaner, Vax may have the answer with its funky and fun Air Revolve Pet. The unique cylindrical shape allows for various orientations in use, it comes with a powered brush head and sports a vivid green and grey livery.

You can carry it, tow it around, flip it over or place it on its end in use. The spec sheet is just as comprehensive too. A quadruple ‘A’ rating, 750Watt motor and monster 2.2-litre bin ticks all the boxes for a top class machine. But can the funky design and unusual ergonomics add up to more than just a design statement?

Vax Air Revolve Pet – Design & Accessories

Open the colourful box and you are presented with a bewildering array of parts and tools, wrapped up in cardboard by someone with a black-belt in origami. It’s a safe bet that once out of the box it’s never going back in the same way. Yet the tools and parts certainly deserve this extensive packaging as they look and feel every bit the premium end of vacuum cleaning.

And by ‘solid and premium’ we do also mean weighty. The main body naked goes to 5.5kg and once you have added the hose and handle, extension tube and main powered floor head you are getting close to 9kg. Perhaps thankfully, there is no on-board storage for the four other tools as it would become a proper double-digit porker. This is certainly no flyweight cleaner.

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The hose attaches to the body via a unique pivoting mount that is clearly made to withstand being used to heft cleaner around. The hose is robust yet flexible and fitted with a union and handle that look like they can withstand professional abuse. The handle has sealed switches for the power and brush bar as well as a suction release slider. In use the buttons are awkwardly placed as it’s easy to switch them off accidentally while you are cleaning – a silly misstep.

The downtube is even more of a beast with a telescopic aluminium extension and monster release clip that makes it look more like a pump-action rocket launcher. It’s the only machine we have tested to date where Richard insisted on shouting ‘lock and load’ before cleaning the house…

The main floor head is enormous. It’s wide and deep with a freely pivoting neck and offers a motor-powered brush bar in a clear housing. The bar is traditionally appointed, with rows of stiff nylon bristles, and it can be removed for cleaning when it gets wrapped up in hairs and threads. That’s not overly simple though, requiring a cross-head screwdriver and the user’s ability not to misplace three small screws when you are cleaning the bar.

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The ancillary tools include an excellent soft and large dusting brush, rubber bladed hard floor tool, crevice tool and Vax’s large upholstery brush. We have had issues with the latter’s over-sized air channel cut outs when used with Vax’s cordless models, but for this powerful mains cleaner they are perfect for stopping the head getting stuck fast to your sofa. The crevice tool design has gone a bit too funky for its good though. Its big, strong and pointy enough to be used as a bayonet for your rocket launcher down-tube. Yet it’s unusually wide triangular profile means you need crevices like chasms or it just won’t get in there.

Vax Air Revolve Pet – Cleaning

If you are familiar with typical cylinder cleaners then just getting your head around the Air Revolve takes some doing. The main body can be placed very solidly on one end using the handle and flat base opposite or it will roll around easily on the large green wheels if placed flat down.

Emptying the good-sized bin is equally unusual but works well. You stand the machine on its end, press the clip and lift the machine off of the bin. This has a simple flap to release to empty over your dustbin and an easily removed two-stage washable filter in the top.

The power cord is wound into the middle body of the machine on a sprung rewind mechanism and measures a reasonable, if not overly generous, 6m in length. The cord rewind spring was rather feeble on our sample and we found we had to guide in the cable, especially the last meter or so. By dint of the cable’s luminous green colour we decided it probably made a significant contribution to vacuum cleaning safety as a much more visible trip hazard than the usual black or grey.

Before

In use, the Air Revolve moves easily and follows you around like some bizarre grey and lime green puppy with its head nodding as you pull it forwards. Yet the large wheels do mean it likes to go straight on and the shape tends to get caught on chair legs or similar obstacles.

Arguably, a traditional cylinder with tear-drop shape, rear wheels and trolley type jockey wheel at the front is probably a little easier to manoeuvre around obstacles and furniture. That said, on more gung-ho vacuuming there is no danger of the Air Revolve turning turtle during high speed cornering and its ability to be flipped over and head off in the opposite direction is unique.

After

It is also relatively quiet, measuring around 78dB with just the vacuum running and just over 81dB with the powered brush bar over carpet. Both figures are well shy of the EU energy label noise level of over 85dB so we retested using different equipment… and got the same low result. 80dB is lower than being inside a car in town, so far from intrusive.

What certainly isn’t lower than the EU energy label is the Air Revolve’s cleaning performance. We can easily see why it achieves an A for cleaning on both carpets and hard floors with excellent power and efficient floor heads. For a 750watt machine it packs an astounding amount of brute force suction with high air-flow, and both the powered floor head and hard floor head make good use of that performance.

On open carpets, the main floor head does an excellent job of beating, sweeping and cleaning, leaving well-groomed pile. On smooth low-pile carpets you can feel the floor head wanting to stick down even with the brush bar running which, along with the weight of the tubes and floor head, makes cleaning quite a physical operation.

Turn the brush bar off and the head will stick down like it has been super-glued. The air release vent on the handle is way too small to let off any significant suction from the serious motor, so that doesn’t help much either. With no variable power control, keeping the brush bar running over carpets is pretty much essential to keep moving.

Before

Obstacles and edges posed a little more of a challenge for the main floor head. The neck will only pivot down so low, meaning keeping it flat to the floor under sofas is just not possible and close to edge cleaning isn’t as good as open-carpet performance. The brush bar and air channels don’t extend close enough to the edge of the head meaning a light dusting of our test powder was left behind during the skirting board test.

After

The Air Revolve’s general hard floor cleaning performance is excellent, including getting right up to the edges. Yet the hard floor head is not without its issues either. The double bladed design is brilliant at sucking dirt deep from groves and cracks in riven tiles and floorboards – as long as you can maintain the angle to keep it flat to the floor.

As this head is fixed you have to keep the bulky downtube at a constant angle to the floor or one of the blades lifts off, reducing suction. Clearly, getting under any low obstacle with this head is impossible. So much for those dog hair fur balls that have rolled under the sofa then.

As for the other tools, the upholstery tool is a good size and does a great job on soft furnishings without sticking down thanks to its air channels at the side. The dusting brush does what it says efficiently and became our tool of choice for shelves and high cobwebs. As for the crevice tool – well, we just couldn’t find a big enough crevice to test it.