Vax ONEPWR Glide 2 Hard Floor Cleaner review: a game-changing gadget for sparkling clean floors

Price: £350 (often available for £250) | Buy now from Amazon

Overall rating: 4.5/5

What we like

• Effective on fresh and dried-on spillages 

• Floors are almost completely dry straight after use 

• Battery can be used with other Vax floor cleaning products

• Three-year guarantee 

What we don’t like 

• Glides when in use but heavy to move up/down stairs (5.4kg) 

• Quite noisy

• Can only be used on sealed hard floors

Our verdict 

If you hate mopping as much as I do — Soggy floors! Gunky mop heads! A sore back! — a hard floor cleaner is a wise investment, and the Vax ONEPWR Glide 2 has been a very welcome addition to our home, helping to keep floors free from family filth on a weekly basis. 

Simple and effective on wood floors, tiles and laminate flooring, it mops and dries in one fell swoop and takes a three-pronged attack against stains and spillages. First it sucks up loose debris before blitzing dirt using a powerful brush roller and some cleaning solution, and then it finishes up by extracting excess liquid so you’re left with almost touch-dry floors straight after using it. 

It’s a bulky upright unit but it manoeuvres in a way that stays true to its name - it glides across hard floors so it feels more like a cordless vacuum cleaner than a traditional mop. And it’s excellent at getting right into corners and edges thanks to a full-width brush roller. 

It's a pricey buy, but I’ve found it to be a game-changing, time-saving (and no longer back-breaking) way to keep things clean at home and it encourages me to clean my floors more frequently and more thoroughly.

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Key specs 

Weight: 5.4kg | Wet capacity: 1 litre | Dry capacity: 1 litre | Runtime: Up to 20 minutes | Charge time: 2-3 hours | Dimensions: H110 x W29 x D28cm | Suitable for use on: sealed laminate, wood and tile flooring | Guarantee: Three years

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Vax ONEPWR Glide 2 Hard Floor Cleaner: How we tested 

• Tested over four months in a family home

• Used on wood floors, ceramic floor tiles and laminate flooring

• Used for weekly clean ups and on-the-spot stain removal 

The Vax Glide 2 has been used every week for the last four months. Our ground floor living area is made up of different hard floor surfaces (wood floors in the lounge; ceramic floor tiles in the kitchen/dining room) so it’s been put to good use. I used it for all-over weekly floor cleans as well as targeted on-the-spot stain removal. 

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Vax ONEPWR Glide 2 Hard Floor Cleaner: What’s in the box?

• Vax ONEPWR Glide 2 Hard Floor Cleaner

• 4Ah ONEPWR Battery and charger 

• 250ml bottle of Vax Hard Floor Multi-Surface Solution

• Cleaning and storage tray

Vax ONEPWR Glide 2 Hard Floor Cleaner: How easy is it to assemble? 

The cleaner comes in two parts - the handle and the main unit slot together easily without having to use any tools. Once the battery is charged and you’ve filled the clean water tank with water and added the cleaning solution, you’re good to go. The handy markers indicate how much liquid needs to be added to the tank depending on the surface area you’re looking to clean. 

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- Product recommended by Mumsnet user, GetOffTheTableMabel

Vax ONEPWR Glide 2 Hard Floor Cleaner: How does it feel to hold?

It’s a heavy unit (5.4kg) that feels even heavier when filled with water but it feels breezy when in use as most of the weight sits towards the bottom of the cleaner in the floor head and the water tanks. It glides across the floor like a cordless vacuum cleaner so you can push and lunge to extend the cleaner in front of you (while pressing the trigger to release the cleaning solution) and then pull it back (and release the trigger) to dry as you go. 

I found that it took a little while to perfect a slower, steadier movement as I’m used to quickly whizzing round with a cordless vac or aggressively scrubbing with a mop. Once you’ve nailed it, it feels pretty satisfying to use. 

I’d recommend emptying the water tanks before carrying it up and down stairs to lighten the load. 

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Vax ONEPWR Glide 2 Hard Floor Cleaner: What’s it like to use day to day? 

Although I use a vacuum cleaner on a daily basis (we have two small kids at home that scatter crumbs at an alarming rate), I don’t tend to mop floors regularly. When I do, I find that mopped floors take ages to dry so it’s hard to coordinate with said children running around, and the mop head and bucket linger in our kitchen for far too long while drying out. However, since welcoming this hard floor cleaner into our home, I’ve been using it on a weekly basis to clean our downstairs living area. 

It sits neatly in a hall cupboard next to our vacuum cleaner and it’s easy to whip out and crank into action to tackle our kitchen, downstairs loo and lounge in one go. It’s also effective at dealing with smaller muddy areas as and when dirt gets dragged into the house. I find that floors are almost touch-dry a few minutes after use. The runtime of 20 minutes is sufficient for our open-plan living space but it comes with an interchangeable battery that can be used across all Vax floor cleaning products - handy if the battery’s running low towards the end of a clean as you can swap it out while charging a spare. 

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There’s a trigger on the handle that releases the cleaning solution and there’s just one cleaning mode so it’s easy to get to grips with the controls. And when the dirty water tank is full, you’ll see a flashing light to flag that it’s time to empty it. The floor head features LED lights which I found useful when cleaning our windowless downstairs bathroom. 

Some stubborn food stains need a bit of extra attention so it’s a case of rolling the brush head over an area a few times to saturate the floor rather than adopting a traditional scrubbing motion as per a mop. 

There are two tanks that keep clean and dirty water separate so you’re only ever cleaning with fresh water (a revelation after repeatedly dunking a mop into a bucket of dirty water). One of the best features is the self-cleaning function which flushes water though the machine to clean the tanks and brush head, helping to keep things shipshape between cleans.

It’s worth noting that the Vax Glide 2 can only be used on sealed hard floors so it’s not suitable if you have vinyl floor tiles for example. And while it’s effective at general cleaning and blitzing day-to-day floor stains, it’s not powerful or aggressive enough to eliminate dirty grouting. 

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Does the Vax ONEPWR Glide 2 Hard Floor Cleaner offer value for money?

At £350 RRP, it’s a steep initial outlay but if you use it every week, you’re paying less than £7 per clean in the first year, and it comes with a reassuring three-year guarantee.

The Bissell CrossWave Cordless Max is a similar hard floor cleaner that retails at £450 RRP and the Shark HydroVac is similarly priced at £330 RRP. The Swan Dirtmaster Crossover Hard Floor Cleaner is a little cheaper at £250 RRP but the water tanks are considerably smaller so it’s better suited to smaller areas.

I think it’s a good investment considering how often we’ve been using it at home. It’s well worth looking out for special offers as you can often pick this product up for £100 less than the RRP. 

About the author

Rachel Erdos is an Editor at Mumsnet where she commissions, edits and writes content with a focus on product reviews, homeware roundups and family travel.

She’s written buyer’s guides for publications including Expert Reviews and Coach as well as reviews and features for the Guardian, TripSavvy and Visit London.

As a mum of two, she’s always on the lookout for products that make life easier (and cleaning feel like less of a chore) at home and loves putting appliances and gadgets to the test to highlight best buys for families.

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