AEG Ergorapido 2in1 3103 review

Battery-powered stick vacuums aren’t supposed to replace a full-size, mains-powered cleaner, but are a more convenient for cleaning up small spills. AEG’s Ergorapido 2-in-1 takes this one step further, with a pull-out hand vac for those tiny jobs, or for cleaning surfaces above the floor. As with the company’s other battery-powered cordless vacuums, this latest model is lightweight (just 3.2kg fully assembled) and easily moved from room to room. The hand-vac weighs even less.

Both pieces clip together for charging, using the supplied floor stand, but you can remove the hand vac with a button press and leave the stick connected to the charger if you only need to clean up a small mess. It takes roughly four hours to fully recharge the vacuum, and you’ll get around 20 minutes of use. Orange LEDs on the front of the vacuum indicate remaining power reserves, but thankfully suction doesn’t drop when you’re nearing empty – the vacuum simply stops when it is out of sufficient charge to maintain suction.

AEG has fitted a row of white LED lights to the brush head, which illuminates the path of the vacuum. It’s supposed to help you spot any missed dust and dirt, but we’re not convinced you really need this. The brush head is also fixed in place, with no replacements or extensions available for out-of-reach jobs. At least the head is articulated, making it easy to steer around on both hard floors and carpets.

Because the bin is built into the hand vac rather than the stick, the Ergorapido has a very small capacity – just 0.35L. That’s barely enough to cover two rooms if you’ve left it a while since your last cleaning session, but it’s fine for occasional spills. It unclips quickly and empties without making any additional mess – which is good, considering how often you have to do it.

AEG’s unique BrushRollClean feature is a welcome one; a foot pedal on the brush head engages a blade that strips any hair or other fibres that get caught in the brush bar, sending it all into the bin and letting the bars spin freely. It’s a lot better than getting out a pair of scissors and cleaning it manually.

The hand vac only has a single power setting, but you can switch between low and high suction when using the stick. On the highest setting, our suction meter measured suction at 6kPa with an empty bin – making it one of the least powerful vacuums we’ve tested. Even then it still managed roughly 5.5kPa. At a rated 79dB(A), it’s almost as loud as some mains-powered vacuums, although subjectively it seemed quieter in use than other models we’ve tested.

Of course, suction means nothing if the brush head isn’t designed in a way that concentrates the airflow and prevents it escaping. Thankfully AEG has done a respectable job, to the point that the Ergorapido copes surprisingly well with soft powder spills on hard floors. It picked up the majority of a spill in a few swipes, while avoiding sending the remainder scattering. However, it struggled to get the powder out of crevices and gaps between tiles, indicating the limit of its suction power.

The spinning brush bars can’t be switched off, which is particularly frustrating with larger debris on hard floors – it sent cat litter scattering around the room, creating more mess when trying to vacuum it up. The wheels also crunched over spills, lifting the brush head and dropping suction; you have to push the vacuum slowly to avoid creating more mess. It fares better with carpets, at least, with the wheels avoiding bedding down and getting stuck, and the brush head creating a reasonable seal. It only took a few swipes to clean the majority of a larger cat litter spill, although it took a few more to get the finer grains.

The hand vac has a wide mouth that makes it handy for cleaning flat surfaces, but next to impossible to get into corners and edges. With limited suction power, it simply can’t clean in certain situations, forcing you to get out a hand duster. At least it works on worktops, desks and coffee tables, sucking up most messes. Heavier dirt and debris can often be a sticking point, as the lack of a good seal hampers suction power a great deal.

The Ergorapido is a fairly innocuous cordless vacuum. Suction potential in either hand vac or stick vacuum modes is basic at best, and while it can cope with powder spills and light dirt, larger spills will either take multiple passes or will scatter detritus across hard floors. There are a few neat features, such as the automatic brush bar cleaner, but equally superfluous ones as well, like the LED ‘headlights’. At £190 it’s less than half the price of a Dyson V6 Absolute, but it has less than half the suction power and is no more convenient.