This is what Which? had to say about vacuum cleaners this month.
Miele Cat & Dog TT 5000
Price: £189
Score: 74%
Type: Cylinder
This Miele is the specialist pet hair cleaner within the range. Not only does it make light work of ridding rooms of pet hair with its turbobrush, it's outstanding on wooden floors and good on other surfaces, too.
Features include a full sized and mini-turbobrush nozzle which helps this vac produce excellent results at picking up pet hairs off carpet and dust from floorboards.
Miele S4211
Price: £140
Score: 74%
Type: Cylinder
Excellent cleaning results across the board make this bagged cylinder from Miele a Best Buy.
It's a great choice for any floor surface. This Best Buy comes from Miele?s compact range, making it ideal if storage space is short. The pretty pale yellow S4211 is excellent value, offering first class cleaning ability on all surfaces.
Miele S4511 Premium Line
Price: £187
Score: 73%
Type: Cylinder
The attractive polar white S4511 Best Buy cylinder cleaner comes from the same family as the Miele S4211 and shares its siblings excellent cleaning results.
This version is equipped with some handy extras. You get a turbo brush, for example which gives extra oomph if cleaning stubborn dirt: in our tests, though, the standard floor nozzle ? the same as the S4211?s ? proved more effective. The vac also has a long hose, handy when cleaning stairs.
Miele S4210
Price: £115
Score: 72%
Type: Cylinder
The Best Buy S4210 is a lightweight, easy-to-use cleaner that's great on most surfaces.
As a basic model, it doesn't have lots of extra features, but it's quiet, effective and reliable.
This is the entry-level model in the S4 range ? it lacks the dusting brush accessory and comes with a standard, not a turbo, brush head. It's no slouch though: leaving laminate and wooden floors speck free and doing a decent job on carpets, too.
Miele S380
Price: £100
Score: 70%
Type: Cylinder
This is Miele's self-declared most basic cylinder vac but, with fantastic cleaning results across the board, it has all the brand's classic hallmarks.
With its bright 'corn yellow' colouring, the Miele S380 is certainly less subtly shaded and lacks the stylish revamped look of its brandmates, but that shouldn't detract from the fact that it gives excellent results on laminate and wooden floors and doesn't disappoint on carpet, either.
Miele S5210
Price: £140
Score: 69%
Type: Cylinder
The S5210 lacks fancy extras but still offers excellent all-round cleaning capabilities and is particularly good for allergy sufferers.
It's especially proficient on wooden and laminate floors but also great on carpet. As it's the most basic model in Miele's S5 series, it doesn't have fancy extras such as a turbo brush, but, nevertheless, it still does an ok job with pet hair.
Miele Parquet and Co
Price: £170
Score: 67%
Type: Cylinder
Although this easy-to-use Best Buy cylinder vac is designed for wooden floors, it's great on carpet, too, and copes fine with pet hair so is far more versatile than its name implies.
Another great cleaning performance from a reliable brand.
Bosch BSG71810 Formula
Price: £100
Score: 66%
Type: Cylinder
This Best Buy cylinder model from Bosch is stronger on hard floors than carpet, but puts in an excellent cleaning performance and is good value for money.
It's a real star on wooden floors ? laminates and floorboards alike ? where it leaves virtually no dust behind. It retains dust well and, for a cylinder, it deals effectively with errant pet hair. However, its impressive performance on hard surfaces isn't matched on carpet ? it's just ok.
Dyson DC14 All Floors
Price: £259
Score: 65%
Type: Upright
This cleaner shows what a good upright can achieve and, as its name suggests, is excellent on most surfaces.
Despite Dyson's poor reliability record it's a Best Buy because of their unprecedented five year guarantee on parts and labour.
Dyson DC14 Origin
Price: £230
Score: 65%
Type: Upright
Dyson?s impressive DC14 range sets the standard for uprights and the Origin model is a strong Best Buy.
This cleaner did outstandingly well in our tests, leaving carpet, laminate and wooden floors spotless. What?s more, this vac?s a great choice for pet owners, gobbling up the pet hair in a storming 21 seconds.
Bosch BSG71800 Formula
Price: £100
Score: 64%
Type: Cylinder
A mid-range Bosch cylinder that's a great choice if you've just invested in a new property kitted out with hard floors instead of carpet.
It's fantastic on laminate and floorboards, and outstanding at retaining cat and dog allergens. However, the lack of a turbobrush means it's poor at sucking up pet hair and performance on carpet is far from the best.
Sebo Felix 1 Premium
Price: £229
Score: 64%
Type: Upright
The main strengths of this Best Buy Sebo vac are cleaning laminate floors and dealing with pet hair.
It's quirky looking, but ignore its unusual exterior as this upright vac's internal workings are pretty impressive.
Dyson DC15 The Ball All Floors
Price: £285
Score: 62%
Type: Upright
The Ball All Floors is another strong performer from Dyson. Its main strength is on laminate floors but it also does a good job on carpet and is a real star at sucking up pet hair. Only its cleaning of floorboards is disappointing.
This interesting looking vac sits on a ball. This is designed to improve manoeuvrability and it isn't bad although it doesn't score a top rating, either. Like most uprights, it struggles to negotiate stairs. This model is also poor at retaining allergens.
Which? 'Don't Buys'
The Hoover Purepower U3485, Morphy Richards 73362 Pets, Numatic Henry HVR200 and Vax V-008U Performance were all very poor at cleaning carpets and at retaining allergens.
The Hoover and Vax models are slightly redeemed by the decent results they produced cleaning wooden and laminate floors, but overall they have too many failings to be worth buying; the Dirt Devil DD9900's only satisfactory result was on laminates.
The Electrolux Z4703BZ Vitesse Pet Lover can pick up dust, but its filtration is abysmal.