This vacuum cleaner includes a filtration system, ensuring that small dust particles are separated and tissues are clean. It is designed for easy operation and care, and its compact size makes it easy to store in small spaces. Heading out over different carpets and rugs around the home, the Hoover delivered a reasonably good clean, pulling up pet hair and titbits easily. Suction to the floor-head isn’t the strongest, so much of the good cleaning here is due to the effective brush bar and design of the floor-head in concentrating the suction. Either way, the C300 works well as an upright vacuum over the carpet. The name Hoover might be synonymous with vacuum cleaners, but it's fair to wonder how well the brand competes with its rivals. Part of the reason the cleaner is able to stand unaided is its 2.1kg weight; it’s exceptionally light in the hand. That’s great whether you’re cleaning up around the ceiling or just need to move this vacuum cleaner from room to room.

As you might expect with such a compact vacuum cleaner, the cylinder is a bit smaller on the Hoover than the Dyson V8 Animal and the Shark IZ201UK, which means you’ll need to empty it more often. Hoover H-Free 500: out the box With the battery but no tools attached the H-Free weighs in at a featherweight 1.4kg. The low-slung battery position makes it wand-like pointable. Clipping on the tube and main floorhead adds less than 1kg to the total weight, making the H-Free one of the lightest cordless cleaners we have ever tested. Plug in the wand and there are lights on the motorised floor brush, so you can see clearly where you’ve cleaned and where you need to clean. At the rear, there’s a Power Control touch-sensitive button that you tap to run through the Power mode. With non-powered tools, there are three power modes: Low, Medium and Turbo; add a motorised brush and you just get Medium and Turbo modes.The H-Free has two power settings, which are normal and a high-power mode labelled carpet. Unusually, the cleaner defaults to the highest power setting rather than the lower power or remembering the last used setting. That is a bit of a pain when dusting and you want low power, as every time you switch off to move the ornaments, you need to press the carpet switch to reduce the power when you start up again. Still, the correct power is only a button-press away. As we’ve mentioned, the Hoover won’t provide the same suction power as one of the more recent Dyson models. I didn’t find the Hoover H-Free 300 too loud, either, coming in at 67.9dB on Low, 69.5dB on Medium and 74.9 on Turbo. That makes this one of the quietest cordless vacuum cleaners I’ve tested. The controls on the Hoover H-Free 500 are clearly marked Credit: HOOVER Hoover H-Free 500: The verdict

On a single six-hour charge, the Hoover H-Free 500 is rated to last for up to 40 minutes on standard mode. This drops down to 25 minutes if you use the motorised floor brush. In Turbo mode, this drops down to just eight minutes. Given that I had to switch on Turbo mode regularly to clean up bigger spills, this isn’t a vacuum cleaner I could use for my entire house. Instead, I see it as a tool for smaller properties or as an addition to a plug-in vacuum cleaner. For darker areas, there are three LED lights on the front of the floor-head although, strangely, they only come on in carpet mode. With the growing trend for hard floors like laminates, this seems an odd way of setting up the lights, particularly as we find LEDs most useful for spotting pet hair on hard floors. Sadly, the lights are pretty dull so their function is more decorative than useful anyway. For the money you’re spending, we think the Hoover H-Free 500 is a good investment. It’s almost half the price of a Dyson V8 Animal, but it’s certainly not half the vacuum. While the power isn’t a deal-breaker for us, if you’ve got a lot of carpets that need deep cleaning in your house, you might want to opt for a Dyson. Its compact size makes it incredibly easy to use, whether you’re blitzing your whole home or dealing with small spills.

Hoover Spares & Accessories

It’s got a special boost mode for carpets which starts the dust roller at the end of the head whirring round, and we found it worked well. The filter is only basic; it isn’t EPA or HEPA rated. If you any folk in your home who suffer allergies, a vacuum cleaner with better filtration may be required, such as the Dyson Small Ball Allergy. While the Shark IZ201UK has anti-hair wrap technology for this, you’ll have to break out the scissors every couple of weeks with the Hoover to cut free the hair on the roller. Controls are easy to use on this Hoover vacuum cleaner. You squeeze the trigger to turn the vacuum on and squeeze it again to power it off. This kind of design is less tiring to use than models that require you to keep the trigger depressed throughout cleaning. As is standard for Hoover vacuum cleaners, there’s a rubber wiper in the box that can be slid into the floor head for better suction on hard floors. This also makes the vacuum cleaner harder to push. I’d prefer to see a soft roller, of the type included with the Dyson V11.

Sound levels weren’t too bad: I measured the Hoover H-Free 500 at 78.8dB maximum on regular mode and 84.3dB on Turbo mode. This compares well with the competition. Should you buy the Hoover H-Free 500? Coupled with the fact that it doesn’t require your finger to be pressed onto the trigger like a Dyson, we think this is now the best option we’ve tested if you’re looking for a vacuum that can double as a handheld cleaner for your car or upholstery. Grey in colour and complemented with the deep-red Hoover logo on the front, the H-Free C300 looks neat and compact for an upright cleaner. With hard-floor, carpet and Eco modes, it promises comprehensive floor cleaning around the home and a super-long run-time – up to an hour on the Eco setting. Buttons are located conveniently on the front, below the telescopic handle that doubles as an extension tube for extra reach when using the detail tool.You can get cover for your appliance against the surprise costs of accidental damage and breakdown with protection policy. For this, we're proud to work with Domestic & General Insurance PLC who protect, fix and if needed replace the things that keep your home running. By running the powered floorhead and increasing power we expected dramatically decreased run time, but that wasn’t the case. Even in this mode the H-Free ran for a very useful 19 minutes. That is a fabulous result given its decent cleaning abilities in this mode. Performance at the highest power level is solid, with very little vibration from that motor and noise levels that are no worse than, say, a beefy hair dryer at full tilt. Suction power is also really good at the top setting, although it does drop away on those other lower settings. These are handy for delicate areas around ornaments and suchlike, but we got most value from the maximum setting.