The name Hoover is synonymous with vacuums. Not sleek, svelte stick vacuums like the Editors’ Choice Dyson DC59 Motorhead ($500.00 at Amazon)(Opens in a new window) , but vacuums of the larger, corded, upright variety. That makes the Air Cordless Series 3.0 ($299.99 at Amazon)(Opens in a new window)  a very pleasant surprise. It’s an attractive, full-size vacuum with the ease of use of a stick model. It isn’t quite as mobile as the aforementioned Motorhead, but at $299.99, it’s far less expensive. It’s a great choice if you’re seeking the power of an upright vacuum, but want something lightweight and cordless.

Design
The Air Cordless is attractive in a futuristic, RoboCop kind of way. It’s made primarily of different shades of gray plastic, with blue accents that are often used to highlight a functional part of the design, like the Power and Brushroll buttons. It stands just under four feet tall, and the handle has a rubberized grip that’s very comfortable to hold. It weighs 9.9 pounds, which is twice the weight of many stick vacuums, but lightweight for a full-size model. The relatively light weight and lack of wires make it easy to navigate from room to room.

One major benefit to using a full-size vacuum instead of a stick is that you get a much larger dust compartment. The Air Cordless can hold up to 1.05 liters of debris, which is more than double the 0.45-liter capacity of the Dyson Motorhead. Removing and emptying the bin is simple: An Eject trigger at the top of the compartment snaps the cannister away from the rest of the vacuum with ease, and another button at the bottom of the bin opens the chamber so you can empty it easily into the garbage without coming into contact with any debris.

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The Air Cordless lasts longer than a stick vacuum as well. It comes with two LithiumLife batteries that are good for a total of 50 minutes of power, which Hoover estimates is enough to clean a 2,500-square foot home. Again, that’s more than double the battery life on the Motorhead, which is important if you’re looking to vacuum a large space in one fell swoop. The only downside is that you’ll need to swap the battery out halfway through the cleaning process if you’re cleaning for more than 25 minutes. To charge the batteries, you need to place them in a charging cradle that clearly shows when they have reached a full charge. It’s only big enough to charge one battery at a time, though. The batteries themselves also have an LED-based charge level indicator, which is very helpful.

Attachments and Features
Perhaps my favorite feature about the Air Cordless is also one of its simplest. As soon as you turn it on, an LED headlight at the bottom of the vacuum lights the path in front of you. This almost makes it possible to vacuum in the dark (but why would you?), and more importantly it helps give you a better idea of the area you’re covering. During testing, it also helped illuminate some hair on the floor I wasn’t able to see with the normal overhead light.

The vacuum comes with a couple of attachments, including a pivoting dusting tool and a two-in-one dusting and crevice tool. Given the nearly 180-degree swivel abilities of the vacuum itself, this should be just about everything you need to get into most corners of your home.

Hoover also sells an additional accessories kit for $59.99 that includes an upholstery tool, a rubberized hair-lifter, and a dual-edge lint-lifter, among other attachments. These are nice additions for the most discerning clean freaks, but I found the standard accessories to be just fine for my needs.

Performance and Conclusions
The Air Cordless uses Hoover’s WindTunnel 3 technology to clean, which you’ll also find in a number of other upright vacuums from Hoover. It basically means the vacuum uses three distinct air channels to lift and remove deep-down, embedded dirt. 

I tested the Air Cordless against the Dyson DC59 Animal ($539.00 at Amazon)(Opens in a new window) , which is slightly less powerful than the Dyson Motorhead. On a low-pile carpet I created three separate lines of baking soda, cat litter, and Cheerios, then passed each vacuum over the lines to see how they fared. Both exhibited nearly identical cleaning power: The Air Cordless picked up more litter on the first pass, while the Animal captured more baking soda. On the second pass both vacuums were able to suck up just about everything.

Neither vacuum was able to pick up all the cereal at once, but not due to lack of suction power. Rather, some of the Cheerios on the periphery of the vacuum head were pushed out to the side, requiring me to make a separate pass to get them all.

While the Air Cordless has a bigger dustbin than the Motorhead, it was easier to get clogged. The bin itself never got full, but the narrow entrance from the hose did. This required me to remove the dustbin and nudge the Cheerios and other debris in by hand, which was unpleasant. This also caused a number of Cheerios to get trapped in the hose and spill out when I turned the vacuum off. On the positive side, that only happened during this particular test. Unless you vacuum cups of cereal on a regular basis, this is far less likely to occur in your average spin around the house.

The vacuum comes with a hard floor brushroll and a multi-floor brushroll. The hard floor brushroll is specifically for high gloss and/or exceptionally fragile floors, so I primarily tested using the multi-floor brushroll. There’s a button to turn it on or off across from the Power button, though I found the vacuum did its best work with the brushroll kept on while cleaning most surfaces.

The Hoover Air Cordless Series 3.0 is an extremely versatile vacuum cleaner. You get all the benefits of an upright vacuum—namely plenty of power and a large dustbin—along with most of the benefits of a stick vacuum, like a lightweight, cordless design. It’s still not as easy to push around the house as one of Dyson’s premium stick vacuums, like the Editors’ Choice DC59 Motorhead, but the Air Cordless cleans twice as much for twice as long. It’s a bit pricey compared with corded options, but it offers a nice blend of power and performance for anyone looking for a cordless cleaner that can handle a whole house.