News Beat
The best vacuums for pet hair, tried and tested
Reviewed by Kulwinder Rai
Hoover’s HF6 Turbo Sense Pet, is, as the name suggests, primarily aimed at pet owners, as well as households with long-haired members, but hair collection isn’t its only claimed superpower.
One of the HF6’s headline claims is that it offers a maximum 100-minute run-time, but that’s measured in its underpowered Eco mode. The 37 minutes I got in mixed use (on the Standard setting) is more realistic. It’s easy to manoeuvre and handle, bar an annoyingly sharp-edged plastic moulding around the Mode button.
The anti-wrap floorhead is quite simple in design, but its credentials are enhanced by its effective floor-type sensing system, along with the front and rear LED lighting that automatically changes colour when you move from hard to carpeted floors.
Although the floorhead works as effectively going backwards as forwards, as claimed, the HF6’s anti-wrap brush bar regularly ended up with hairs tangled around itself, and these eventually needed to be cut off.
While collection of short hair and debris from hard flooring and short-pile rugs was good, the HF6 struggled with extracting embedded hair from my deeper pile bedroom carpets. Sadly, even with the Turbo mode engaged, this Hoover struggles to remove hair as effectively as the Shark PowerDetect Cordless Pet, my current benchmark at this price point. That’s a shame, especially given that the supplied Turbo pet tool did a decent job lifting hair from my sofas and pouffes.
While the HF6 isn’t quite an all-conquering all-rounder, it might still be worth considering if discounted, especially for pet owners with hard floors to maintain.
Key specifications
- Type: Cordless
- Power: 250 Watts
- Capacity: 0.7 litres
- Weight: 3.3kg
- Runtime: Up to 100 minutes (Eco mode)
- Filtration: EPA-rated
And if you need to do a deep clean…
