8 Best Stick Vacuums of 2025, Lab-Tested and Reviewed

These highly rated cordless stick vacuums earn top scores in our lab tests for cleaning bare floors and pet hair. Some also include a storage tower and an automatic cleaning feature that empties the bin after each use. As demonstrated in our member surveys, cordless stick vacs have also become more reliable in recent years, leading CR to now recommend several cordless models.

Like the cordless models above, these top-rated corded models are also excellent at picking up pet hair. They may not be quite as maneuverable due to their cords, but they offer unlimited run time. 

To determine the best stick vacuums, we filter models based on their Overall Score, which is based on our rigorous lab tests. 

The Overall Score for each model incorporates results for each of these tests, as well as ratings for predicted reliability and owner satisfaction based on survey data from our CR members.

In our ratings of stick vacuums (corded and cordless), you can find how these and more than 50 other models scored for cleaning ability, noise, and other criteria, as well as how other models fared.

With the improvements in stick-vac performance, we’ve ratcheted up our tests for the category. We’ve made our pet hair tests a bit more challenging, and we now embed dirt in carpeting instead of scattering it on the surface as we used to do. For bare-floor testing, instead of combining all the debris into a messy array, we vacuum up each type separately.

Here’s how we assess stick vacuum performance in the following areas: 

Bare floors: In separate tests, we scatter cereal, rice, and sand on a section of laminate flooring. We use four swipes to remove the cereal and rice and two to pick up the sand. We weigh the vacuum before and after to calculate how much debris it picked up.

Pet hair: We embed 1 gram of Maine coon cat hair in a medium-pile carpet and then see how many strokes it takes to remove it, with a maximum of five. We note the number of strokes and see how much fur, if any, is left behind on the carpet or in the brush roll. 

Carpeting: We embed 100 grams of sand into a carpet and vacuum the debris at high speed for 16 strokes using a strobe light to highlight the test area. We weigh the vacuum before and after.

Run time: To test battery life, we time how long a cordless vac will run until the battery is depleted, first on high, and then again on low. If a vacuum has a medium setting (not every vacuum does), we test that, too.