I spent two weeks cleaning my own house with 5 handheld vacuums. One of them never went back in the drawer.

Every unit got the same three passes: dry oats on a low-pile rug, sand in a car footwell, and cat hair worked into a woven sofa cushion. I counted how many passes each one needed to clear a 30cm square, then repeated the hair test with the dust bowl half full, because that is where cheap handhelds fall apart.

I did not rank on the Pa figures printed on the boxes. There is no enforced test standard behind them, so they are not comparable between brands — I wrote up why in the suction ratings explainer.

The tiebreaker was usage frequency. I logged every time I picked each vacuum up over two weeks. Storage location predicted that number better than any specification did.