Stick vacuums are a convenient alternative to corded designs, but which model wins for overall cleaning prowess? Our expert reveals all
• The best robot vacuums
• How to make your vacuum last longer
Choosing a cordless vacuum isn’t a decision that should be taken lightly. You’re likely to keep a vacuum cleaner for years, relying heavily on its ability to suck up dust, crumbs, mud, pet hair and any other dry spillages or sheddings that end up on your floor. Choosing the right model can be the difference between an effective cleaner that’s a delight to pull out of the cupboard and a dud that you dread having to unblock, detangle and clean after every use.
In this review, I took 16 of the leading cordless vacuum cleaners from a range of manufacturers and at various prices and inflicted the same cleaning tests on each one. That takes all the guesswork out of picking your next cleaner: I can tell you exactly which ones picked up the most mess.
Best cordless vacuum cleaner overall:
Shark PowerDetect Clean & Empty IP3251
© Composite: PR Image
© Composite: PR Image
© Composite: PR Image
I wanted our last family games night to be the best fun we’ve ever had. Maybe we should have stuck with Mario Kart …
It is the end of an era for the Diamond family. For 20 years, there have been five of us living together. It has not been easy. Militant vegan daughters, sons who have inherited Scottish tempers, and a youngest child who attracts trouble like an industrial magnet, have meant our house has been conflict-laden at times. Throw in the fact that we are beset with all manner of mental health bobbins and chronic illnesses that resulted in two of our three kids almost dying in hospitals and you get a family that is combustible – but extremely close.
Through it all, we had games. They always brought us back together. Not just us all hunkering over Super Mario Kart like some kind of UN-mandated family therapy, but the conversations that happen when any of us spy another playing something new. Games are a cultural touchstone that helped us crack through the veneer of disagreements and distrust and remind us that we have more things in common than we sometimes feel.
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© Photograph: Interfoto/Alamy Stock Photo
© Photograph: Interfoto/Alamy Stock Photo
© Photograph: Interfoto/Alamy Stock Photo
Shark’s cordless vacuum is a whiz at cleaning hard floors and pet hair, but a disarmingly short battery life caught our reviewer off guard
• The best cordless vacuum cleaners – tested
Vacuuming rarely starts with vacuuming. First you have to clear the floor of stray socks and abandoned toys left behind by children, pets or messy partners. Then there’s the irritation of finding the vacuum’s dustbin still full of dirt, or the battery flat because someone forgot to charge it.
The (take a deep breath – long name coming up) Shark PowerDetect Speed Clean and Empty Pet Pro cordless vacuum Ultramarine IA3241UKT certainly won’t pick up the scattered toys for you, but it has been designed to make the job of vacuuming as frictionless as possible.
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© Photograph: Andy Shaw
© Photograph: Andy Shaw
© Photograph: Andy Shaw
Avtar spent decades wondering what happened to the mother he never got to know. Thousands of miles away, Nicci was haunted by the story of a half-brother given away before she was born. How did a chatbot bring them together?
As a small boy growing up in Amritsar, India, in the 1960s, Avtar Singh used to hear whispers. Your mum isn’t really your mum, the rumours would say. Your mum lives abroad. Avtar didn’t really pay any attention to it. “I thought, the neighbours are just making up stories.” But the stories were true: the woman raising Avtar was actually his grandmother. When he was too young to remember it, his father had emigrated to Canada to work as a teacher, leaving Avtar in the care of his paternal grandparents. His grandfather, a police officer, was a fearsome authoritarian, but his grandmother brought him up with tenderness, as if he were her own son. She called him by his nickname, Titu. He felt loved.
When Avtar was around eight years old, he was told about his family in Canada: his dad, his mum and a little brother were waiting for him there, and he would soon travel to join them. Just after his ninth birthday, Avtar found himself sitting on a plane, dressed in a three‑piece suit and tie. He was travelling alone. He had never flown before. He didn’t speak a word of English. He landed in Halifax, Nova Scotia, on Christmas Eve, 1968; his family met him at the airport and took him home. “I didn’t know what to think,” Avtar, now 66, tells me in a video call from his home in Abbotsford, British Columbia. “Before I knew it, it was the first week of January, and I was put in school.”
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© Composite: Courtesy of Nicci Dhamu / Guardian Design
© Composite: Courtesy of Nicci Dhamu / Guardian Design
© Composite: Courtesy of Nicci Dhamu / Guardian Design
Archaeologists have debated whether royal women ever used the weapons in their tombs. Their bones may have settled the argument.
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