BLACK+DECKER POWERSERIES+ 20V MAX Cordless Stick Vacuum Cleaner with LED Floor Lights, Lightweight, Multi-Surface (BHFEA520J) , Gray

I am a pet owner who is OCD about my floors, and I was a housekeeper for many years. I have used this vacuum for about 6 months now, and I LOVE IT. A few things I want to point out:First of all, with any cordless vacuum you are not going to get the same power or suction as a corded vacuum, period. Manage your expectations - you are trading suction power for the convenience of having no cord. Cordless vacuums are great for quick, daily upkeep in between your full cleaning days (where you should be using a regular corded vacuum).I got this vacuum because we recently got a bunny, and therefore introduced a lot of hay - and a LOT more fur - into our home. This thing picks up anything and everything, and works great on our hardwood, low pile rugs, and high pile carpeted bedrooms. We use it every evening for at least 10 or 15 minutes straight on the high setting, and it doesn't run out of juice.Some of my favorite things about it:1) It is easy to unclog. As an ex housekeeper, this is everything to me. Like I said, we use this mainly to pick up hay that our rabbit has scattered around. Inevitably, long bits of hay will get wrapped around the brush and cause a clog. We know and expect this to happen, considering the abuse we put this thing through. This vacuum has a simple, effective design that makes it easy to take apart and clean/unclog. The brush easily detaches with a button on the side of the head, and you can look down the neck to spot where the clog is.Since most people aren't vacuuming hay on the regular, you really shouldn't need to take this vacuum apart often. But if you need to, its nice to not spend hours fussing around, unscrewing parts, cursing like a sailor, and watching YouTube videos on how to put your vacuum together again. The design of this vacuum really is so simple and user friendly.2) It DOES stand up on its own. You just need to make sure you hear a click sound when you move the neck and handle to the upright position.3) It's very lightweight. I don't get fatigued using it or carrying it around.4) Good battery life. I am able to use this on the high setting for a quick once over of my entire ~1300 sq ft. home (with hardwoods, rugs, and carpets) before I need to recharge. If you have a larger home, again, manage your expectations.5) The handheld option and attachment is very convenient. I love to use it for sucking up the dust and dead bugs that get stuck in the tracks of our windows and sliding glass door.My not-so-favorite things about it:1) The low setting is basically useless. Even on hardwood floors, it doesn't seem to do much. I always go immediately to the high setting.2) The dust cup falls forward when you press the button to remove it. The first time you do it, it will feel like the thing practically jumps out to attack you. Just remember to have one hand on the clear canister part when you press the release button. It's really not a big deal, but it did surprise me the first time I went to empty it.Overall its a great little vacuum. Perfect for our evening tidying up before we go to bed, and its a quick and easy grab for random spills/messes. For a deeper, more thorough clean I will always rely on my corded Shark vacuum. For literally everything else, this B&D cordless vac is a winner. 10/10. You don't need to break the bank on a Dyson, I promise. If you have one really good cordless vac (this one), and one really good corded vac (I recommend the Shark Navigator Lift-Away), you won't need anything else.

Five stars because the price cannot be beat for what you get. Insane suction power! Smaller canister paired with the insane suction means you have to empty it often. The battery charge doesn’t last long but it’s $100 vacuum so 15 min is expected in my opinion. I want to get a second one for my upstairs to do daily touch ups. It’s perfect for vacuuming a 1000 sf or so hard floors. Rugs take a little more out of its but I vacuum our hard floors and 2 area rugs with it daily and it doesn’t run out of battery. I can’t get over the suction power for it being cordless.Things I’d change: I wish it had more attachments. I wish the canister was a tin bit bigger and the battery lasted like 30 min but can’t complain because it’s so cheap.

Love it. The only downside is that it dies so quickly, it has to be recharged after every use.

We love this vacuum! It is lightweight and powerful. It's easy to charge. We love that it's cordless and very durable. The trash co trainer fills up pretty quickly. We just empty it after every vacuum, it's easy to empty. We use it to vacuum the carpet, hardwood floors and tile and it does great on all surfaces. I also love that it changes suction on it's own when a stronger suction is needed. We are very happy with our buy!

My first review said it came without a charger and I wanted to return it. My fault, later found charger in the packaging. Sorry, Amazon!Pros:—Maneuverable for angles, able to put it under most furniture—I like the light which shows me the efficiency with which it gets dust and fur, and it is quite good at that.—For getting corners and next to baseboards I give it a 7 out of 10. About a quarter of the time I had to make a second try.—Not heavy, but see below about weight distribution.—Initially I found the auto-acceleration of power disconcerting. But it's okay. It also seems to self-adjust to carpet vs bare floor, and to depth of carpet. No complaints about suction power on either type of floor. Watch out, it will suck in carpet fringe quick as a wink. I did have to stop once and cut threads, possibly from the fringe, that had wound around the roller. I've never had a beater-bar vac that didn't have this problem so no big deal.Cons:—Very small dirt receptacle if you have, for example, a lot of dog hair. Also, I find the receptacle easy to remove for emptying but hard to snap back in.—My sinuses reported that a bunch of dust was bypassing the filter and getting back into the air.—Balks at tiny stones that my dog brings in between her toes.—The user's manual is totally inadequate: tiny print on flimsy paper (print is so tiny you would think they were printing it on something rare and valuable like gold leaf); exploded diagram showing parts and controls is on one page then you turn the page to find out about them; I ended up photocopying the diagram so I could look at it side by side with the inadequate picture "directions".—Design suggestion: the device is heavier at the top of the handle, where one holds it, and if more weight were put lower down it would be more balanced and less heavy to operate. Total weight isn't that much but bad weight distribution makes it seem like more.—Battery lasted for 2/3 of my medium sized house which is okay with me, I usually get tired before getting the whole house vacuumed, and come back to it later. For similar reasons, I don't much care about speed of recharge, as long as it's within 3 hours, and I haven't checked on that yet.Summary:Adequate so far.These are made as cheap limited-life appliances. Short of paying $600 for a rechargeable vac, we have little recourse. Maybe our reviews will help, if they influence sales.Another reality of modern cheap manufacturing, I believe, is poor quality control, which is why for some products most people give reviews of "adequate to great" while a minority say that it fell apart after an hour, the parts don't fit together, the battery wears out after 10 minutes, etc. Knock on wood, mine wasn't made on Monday and it may work adequately for a year or more. That is all I feel I can expect.================ADDED after further use. Speed control problemThe suction power has two speeds that are controlled either automatically or by the user, and for me the design of this is very flawed. The user-control method is that the on-off switch has not 2 but 3 states: Click once to turn it from off to on, and then while it is running if you click again you get the higher speed, click another time to turn it off. If you've accidentally vacuumed up some rug fringe or a light-weight floor mat, so it's caught up in the vacuum, you go to turn the thing off and it just goes faster so sucking the fabric up even worse. There is no way to go from low speed directly to off.The automatic control is even more troublesome to me, because some things on my floor need to be vacuumed at the lower speed so as not to catch up fringes and mats as mentioned above (My doors to the outside have extremely low floor clearance so I have had to find very thin door mats). But as I vacuum, the machine will decide that this task needs higher speed, it will increase the power, and suddenly my Ruggable mat, about the thickness of corrugated cardboard, has been sucked up and the whirling bar is jammed. It happens with mats thicker than Ruggable too, the kind of small washable rugs that you vacuum from front to back while standing on them to hold them in place. I see no need for automatic speed increase, and the manual speed increase should be separate from the on/off process. Same with rug fringe, at low speed I can run the vac quickly over the area next to the fringe and not get the fringe tangled in the revolving bar, but suddenly the auto-control decides to put it into high gear. This tangling isn't good for the rugs, and the sudden stopping isn't good for the machine.Sometimes I wonder if the manufacturers ever put these new designs into the hands of ordinary people, in various household situations, for long enough, and then do they listen to the feedback they get. I don't think so! And the result is that the user has to adapt to the machine because no way to know that a different brand wouldn’t have equally significant failings. I'd like to see product descriptions like this: "In designing our new cordless vac we surveyed a thousand users in detail about their current vacuums, strong points and failings; we designed accordingly; and then we put a small run of the new model into the hands of ordinary users for 3 months, and made adjustments once more based on their reports. Here are some of the users' comments specific to what they found to be the pros and cons.Without effective engineering for real-world users, we are often stuck with products that are the lesser of two evils: short battery life or speed controls that destroy your rugs; shoddy construction or bad ergonomics leading to backache; and so on. Once they've got our money they really couldn’t care less, it seems.