Vactidy Blitz V8 Pro review: A cheap but surprisingly effective cordless stick vacuum cleaner

There are plenty of cordless stick vacuum cleaners to choose from if you’re prepared to spend hundreds of pounds, but the Vactidy Blitz V8 Pro breaks the mould. It looks the part, with the standard handheld, extension wand and floor head combination you’ll see on almost every cordless stick around. The difference with the V8 Pro is that it costs under £100.

It’s a tempting proposition –you could buy one of these vacuum cleaners for every room in a modestly sized house and still not spend as much as you might on a single top-of-the-range Dyson, such as the Dyson Gen5detect.

Comparisons between such devices are a tad unfair – the Dyson is a premium product with a premium price, while the Vactidy is one of the most affordable cordless sticks I’ve ever seen. But is the V8 Pro as attractive as its price makes it appear? Or are you better off spending more money on a more expensive cleaner?

Vactidy Blitz V8 Pro review: What do you get for the money?

I wasn’t expecting to open the box of the Vactidy Blitz V8 Pro and be showered with attachments and add-ons and that proved to be the case. The package contains the basic handheld unit, extension wand and brush roller floor head.

There are also two attachments included: a standard crevice tool and a combi tool, which includes both a dusting brush and an upholstery tool. There’s also a charging cable and a wall mount that can be used for storing both the vacuum and attachments.

You might get a few more bits and bobs if you spend more money but it’s not a terrible haul. In comparison, the standard version of the Hoover HF9 comes with almost identical package contents, but costs around £240.

The vacuum itself is light, weighing only 2.15kg when fully constructed. The handheld unit makes up 1.29kg of that, with the featherweight floor head weighing only 0.54kg. It stands at 24 x 20 x 10.9cm (WDH), though the extension wand is retractable and can reduce the height to 8.5cm or anywhere between its minimum and maximum. The collection bin has a capacity of 0.5l, which is about average for a small cordless stick.

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Vactidy Blitz V8 Pro review: How did it fair in tests?

Its light weight is clearly helped by a relatively small motor and battery combo. Vactidy rates the suction as capable of 30kPa, though I couldn’t replicate that in my tests. At the connection point between the main unit and the extension wand, I measured the suction at 11kPa on full power, and 8kPa on low power.

As you can see from the chart below, the maximum suction is much lower here than on the more expensive Hoover HF9 and Shark IZ202UK. However, at the lower end of the scale, it outperforms the Shark on its lowest setting.

The battery life fares reasonably well though, all things considered. The maximum battery life is only just over a minute less than the Hoover HF9 and outlasts the Shark. On full power it lasts much longer than the HF9, and for another couple of minutes more than the Shark. That’s impressive for a vacuum that’s so much more affordable.

Vactidy Blitz V8 Pro review: What’s it like to use?

If the Vactidy Blitz V8 Pro seemed to be doing well in the previous section of the review, things start to feel more price-appropriate when it comes to actually using it. The construction, for example, is very light. For some that might be a bonus and the ability to reduce the height means it might be a godsend for smaller people who don’t want to lug a heavy vacuum about.

There are further benefits, including the vacuum’s ability to be left balanced in an upright position when not being used. It’s a fairly precarious balance that would only take a nudge to knock over. However, not having to find somewhere to lean it is a useful feature we rarely see on heavier devices.

One area where the lack of heft plays against it is when vacuuming. I found that the floor head would often lose contact with both hard floor and carpet because there isn’t enough weight to keep it down. It meant I had to keep tapping the floor head with my foot to keep it connected to the floor. It’s possible to counter the problem by not pulling the vacuum back as far, so that it doesn’t engage the mechanism that’s designed to keep it upright, but it’s annoying to have to change the way you vacuum to work around the foibles of your cleaner.

There are only two buttons on the device, one for power, the other to toggle between its two modes. These are bubble-style buttons sealed below the glossy black surface of the back of the handheld unit. While this might superficially look like a screen it’s really just a set of lights. These illuminate different areas of the rear panel to show which power level is selected and light up sections of a battery icon to show how much battery power is left. That would be fine if the lights weren’t so dull as to be barely visible in daylight.

Emptying is relatively unsophisticated, with just a door on the bottom of the collection bin. However, because this is on the side of the vacuum, it can be opened and emptied without removing any other parts, which is always welcome. Gravity does most of the work here but the filter unit takes up a fair bit of space and can catch dirty clumps of fluff. If things don’t fall out it’s relatively easy to dismantle the bin and give it a proper clear out.

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Vactidy Blitz V8 Pro review: How well does it clean?

Given how it operates and that its suction isn’t top tier, I didn’t have high hopes for the cleaning ability of the Vactidy Blitz V8 Pro but it surprised me with its results in my tests. All cordless stick vacuum cleaners we review are pitted against a trio of vacuuming challenges, in the form of Cheerios, flour and pet hair. Measured amounts are dropped onto both short pile carpet and hard floor, and vacuumed up with a single pass to see how much they collect.

I thought I’d start with the toughest challenge for a vacuum without a soft roller – the Cheerios on hard floor. To my surprise, the combination of the suction and the lightness of the floor head meant that the vacuum had no problem getting on top of these larger particles and it actually performed a clean sweep, gathering every Cheerio. More expensive models often falter here, simply pushing the spillage ahead of their heavier floor heads.

Cheerios on carpet are usually easier, but here the V8 Pro fell foul of the tight angle between the extension wand and the collection bin. A blockage occurred after only collecting 50% of the Cheerios from the carpet. Although it looked like more had been collected, they were being held in the wand by the suction, and fell out all over the floor when I switched the vacuum off.

Flour was also surprisingly good on hard floor. The V8 Pro has a brush roller with both long soft bristles and rubber fins, and between the two they collected all but a few specs of flour that fell into the gaps between the tiles on my laminate floor. This mostly came up with the help of the crevice tool to concentrate the suction.

It dropped slightly below average when collecting flour off short pile carpet, though, managing to gather just under 86% of the spillage. Still, it’s not bad for a tricky substance on a tricky surface.

As you can see from the chart below, it fell short of the performance of any of the other affordable vacuums we’ve covered recently. However, it’s worth remembering that it’s cheaper than all these other models, and held its own in these practical tests surprisingly well.

Most cordless sticks do well collecting spilled pet hair. I use sweepings from a groomer’s floor and spread them out on both hard floor and carpet, rubbing them in where possible to provide the optimal challenge.

The Blitz V8 Pro scores below average in this test but not by much. It collected 97% of hair from carpet and 96% from hard floor. In both cases, most of the hair disappeared into the collection bin with little resistance, but there was more caught around the floor head when cleaning hard floor.

Vactidy Blitz V8 Pro review: Should you buy it?

I have to admit that the Vactidy Blitz V8 Pro toyed with my expectations, particularly when it came to its performance in the Expert Reviews vacuuming tests. I wasn’t expecting it to compete with the latest Dyson and, of course, for a fraction of the price, it doesn’t. However, it performed surprisingly well in the tests, often only falling just below average. It’s a very decent performance for a vacuum of this price.

However, you’ll still end up noticing the shortcuts taken when you use it as an everyday cleaner. The barely visible control panel and the floor head that needs coaxing to keep it connected to the floor were the worst offenders. If you really don’t want to spend even £100 on your next vacuum cleaner, then this is probably as good an option as you can hope for, but we’d recommend spending more if you can afford it.

We’ve compared the performance of the V8 Pro to that of the Gtech Hylite 2, as it’s one of its most affordable rivals at around £150. If you need a truly compact vacuum cleaner, this is a good alternative.

A bit further up the price scale is the Shark IZ202UK at around £230, though it’s often discounted at sale times. This is a better all round cleaner, with better performance in our tests, and it comes with an anti-tangle floor head that the V8 Pro lacks.