In addition a handheld pole provides an extra-long reach for ceilings corners so you don't miss a spot. With the floor-head attached directly to the body, it is possible to leap up the stairs gazelle-like without fear of coming a cropper on a trailing cable.

Clean all corners of your home with three included attachments. A floor nozzle with a rotating brush bar cleans deep into the fibres of your carpet. A 2-in-1 dusting brush and upholstery tool is perfect for cleaning delicate fabrics, and a crevice tool helps you clean difficult to reach areas. The pistol grip at the rear of the cleaner with motor, battery and bin in front give the Freedom a very front-heavy design. The brush bar spins relatively lethargically, but that does mean it doesn’t rob you of too much run-time. We managed a little over 21 minutes of cleaning with the brush bar engaged. This is a good few minutes shy of the similar Vax SlimVac or, indeed, Hoover’s own claimed run-time. However, there’s certainly a little more suction power on offer than the Vax – and a more efficient floor-head – so we’re happy to lose that 4 minutes. If you have the wrist strength and energy to manoeuvre the Hoover Freedom, it’s actually quite handy for stairs.The tool complement is complete with an extension tube and a basic, but again very serviceable, crevice tool. It’s fairly long, suitably narrow and quite robust. That said, the tool clips are positioned on the cleaner body rather than on the tools, which makes dismantling awkward. Once the charging cable is connected, the light on top flashed red and blue. From a completely flat battery, it turned blue to indicate it was fully charged some five-and-a-half hours to six later.

It took about a nano-second after getting the Hoover Freedom out of the box to realise that the main cleaner is all but identical to arch-rival Vax’s SlimVac Total Home. A couple of different mouldings and slightly different colour, but essentially the same item straight out of the same Far East factory.

The brush tool was a real favourite, being large enough to clean a good-sized area and with bristles soft enough for a variety of tasks.

Its cleaning power on carpets and hard floors is equally limited, however, and its disappointing build quality and poor ergonomics make it an ongoing challenge to use. Although this happened less frequently with the Hoover than on the Vax, it was often enough to suggest that this cleaner is far from pet-friendly.I’m not sure the cleaning results are worth the pain, either. Suction appears to be a little better than the SlimVac, but when spread across the larger floor-head it’s still rather asthmatic. Using the upholstery tools on the stairs produced a much better result, albeit taking a while longer than with the larger floor-head. The action of agitating the tool against the carpet shifts a fair bit of debris – but again, you need some arm strength to do it. On the plus side, the floor-head, and particularly the detail tools, are better designed. The floor-head has more bite and pulls dust and debris from the carpet better, although our carpet test still showed it wasn’t great.

Unfortunately, the combination of limited cleaning ability and our coarse stair carpet with embedded pet hair was a challenge too far for the Freedom, and its struggled to clean efficiently. The cable-free Hoover Freedom Cordless Vacuumis a practical and powerful cleaner for carpets and hard floors. A clever detachable head design makes it easy to carry and effective for cleaning anywhere from the inside of your home to the interior of your car. The low suction power and lethargic brush bar didn’t really stand much of a chance with pet hair embedded into a nylon test carpet. The results were very poor. A 25-minute battery provides more than enough power for many routine cleaning tasks around the living room, bedroom or even your car.

Technical specifications for HOOVER Freedom FD22G Cordless Vacuum Cleaner - Silver & Grey OVERVIEW Type