Gtech SW19 Cordless Everyday Power Sweeper

I first came across one of these on holiday where it was provided to keep floors clean during your stay in the cottage. Even my husband was impressed and said we should have one,and he has NO interest in these sort of things.

Its hard to overstate how good this thing actually is. For anyone who equates it to one of those manual, push back and forth brush sweepers,(and is old enough to remember those!) forget it, totally different animal.

My hoover is one of those drag behind you affairs,(small house, so necessary to have small hoover) and it lives under the stairs. In the time it takes me to get it out,get the hose attachment out, attach the two, pull the cable out and plug it in , I could have already done a room with this, with a fraction of the effort.

I have 3 cats and a dog - this picks up hair far better than my hoover. I am allergic to cats, and my partner is asthmatic- this made hoovering a necessity every day. I now use the hoover (just to pick up pollen and dust mites and tiny things that require suction) less than weekly. And as a person who prefers to be bare footed in the house, I have really noticed the reduction in pet hair and general debris loose on the floors.

I have 2 vinyl floors, a carpet and a wood floor with a wool rug downstairs in my house and it does all of them very well. It is carpeted throughout upstairs, and is now much easier to clean, since Its SO much easier to use this upstairs than cart the hoover up there, so it gets cleaned more often.

Cleaning the stairs is so much easier too, This has proved invaluable to my parents in law who are in their 80s. they can keep the floors clean, do the stairs and bedroom without the huge effort it takes for someone of their age to carry a heavy hoover up a flight of stairs.

Dont get me wrong - you still need a hoover (probably, and only if you have carpets) to suck things out of the carpet since this does not have any suction. But I find that I now use it about 1/10th as much as I did before, most of the reason for using a hoover is to pick up surface debris, which this sweeper does, the sucking the carpet bit needs to be done far less often than the removal of hair dust and debris from the surface of your carpets.

In summary:

Positives:

# Better on pet hairs than many hoovers which rely on moving air to move the brushes

# excellent value for money - cheap to run and cheap to buy. It costs about £73 to have dyson serviced by Dyson. You could buy almost 3 of these for that price and save wear and tear on your Dyson!

# no bags to get, easy to empty

# Invaluable for the elderly. being lightweight and yet effective, it saves them so much trouble, and enables them to keep their house cleaner with far less effort, and of course the danger to themselves lifting something up stairs that may weigh as much as they do!

# Equally invaluable to busy mums who have kids who like to throw rice krispies,glitter, sand, soil and innumerable other inconvenient things

#also extremely useful for students, as will keep shared floors clean (sorry , it wont do spilled beer) for little effort and cost.

# you can throw your dust pan and brush away, this is easier and takes up about the same space.

# Your floors will be cleaner - because its easier to use you use it more often.

# Easy to operate -
Someone on the Argos website (one person out of 194) said it was not easy to use - I can only assume they do not manage to put their own underpants on each morning.

Negatives:

- if you have carpets you will still need a hoover. This will now seem like more of a hassle because you are now used to using the Gtech.

- could use a better battery - one purpose made that does not require complete discharge to maintain longevity.

This is fab so much easier that my dustpan and brush because it sucks the dust and fluff into it - as opposed to me chasing fluff around the house! It is very light weight and fun to use so much so that my children actually enjoy helping and tend to argue over who is going to use it first.

Having had the more expensive (SW02) model that I absolutely wore out with continued use - and it finally died just before Christmas - I decided to buy this based on the reviews and the fantastic price on Amazon.

I have not been disappointed - I have two cats and it picks up cat hair and cat litter with no problems at all. It's very quiet, easy to manoevre and is extraordinarily lightweight considering it packs such a punch.

It really is a great cleaner to use in between my 'main' vacuuming that I usually do at the weekend, and it works equally well on laminate floors and carpets - I have both in my flat.

Well done Gtech and thank you fellow Amazon reviewers!