Vax Air Revolve Pet – Stairs

The Air Revolve’s hose and tubes are pretty short, nothing like as long as Vax’s own superb Air Stretch for example, meaning you and the cleaner will be taking on the stairs one step at a time.

If you can physically overcome the Air Revolve’s not inconsiderable weight, it sits more solidly on steps than most cylinder cleaners and the green cable is easily seen against most floor coverings. All of the five tools supplied will clip directly to the handle without the telescopic tube so you can get up close and personal with your dirt. Given the size and sheer mass of the main floor head however it isn’t overly practical unless you have arms like Arnold Schwarzenegger.

That leaves you with the upholstery brush for carpeted stairs. This is a good size for the task, but far from ideal. With no rotating bar you only get something of a surface clean and as it doesn’t tilt or pivot you need to have acrobatic arm dexterity to get into corners. Its plastic-felt strips along the base also have fibres that lay in one direction, making it a whole lot easier to pull back towards you than to push forwards. Polished wooden stairs are easier with the dusting brush or hard floor tool though.

Unfortunately, the average 6m cable also meant we had to do a change of mains plug sockets, half way from downstairs to upstairs, to get to every step.

Vax Air Revolve Pet – Pet Hair

The rotating brush bar with stiff bristles and outstanding suction translate directly into very good pet hair cleaning over carpeted floors. Our standard 30cm test patch of mixed collie and Labrador hairs rubbed into a short pile carpet was dispatched in comfortably less than 10 seconds, making this a great choice of cleaner for larger carpeted homes with furry friends.  

Likewise, the hard floor head worked well with pet hairs. The rubber blades resist hairs getting caught up on the head much better than bristle-fronted heads. The fixed angle of the hard floor head posed less of a problem with pet hairs as they would be sucked in even if the head was tilted at a fairly acute angle off of the floor. We still couldn’t get under the sofa, though.

Pet hair detail cleaning and on stairs was not so good. The upholstery tool was passable, but its fibrous strips on the underside collected and hung onto pet hairs tenaciously. The dusting brush is just too soft to agitate up hairs that are wound into the carpet but did OK on wooden steps.

While the Air Revolve Pet does what its name suggests for the most part, its bulky tools are not as practical as they could be for cleaning up pet hairs on anything but open floors.

Related: Best vacuum cleaners you can buy

Should I buy the Vax Air Revolve Pet?

Fun, funky and powerful, the Vax Air Revolve Pet is a heavyweight cleaner aimed at larger homes with family and other animals. Cleaning performance on open carpets and hard floors is outstanding, but the cylindrical design is not as practical as it looks and the sheer mass of the cleaner, tubes and tools makes this a very physical cleaner to operate.

With minor issues like the non-tilting hard floor head, poor button position and unusably large crevice tool adding up, the Air Revolve Pet was more miss than hit with our testing department – proving that a quadruple A rating on the EU energy label is no guarantee of a great cleaner.

Verdict

A powerful vac that’s great for wide open spaces but is awkward for more intricate cleaning tasks.

Trusted Score