Eureka PowerSpeed Review

The PowerSpeed comes with several different accessories and is a bagless vacuum, making it even more budget-friendly as you don't need to buy disposable bags.

Performance Comparison

Carpet Cleaning

First and foremost, we began by ranking and scoring how the PowerSpeed did at cleaning carpets, using four different types of messes on both low-pile and medium-pile carpet. We spread out a known amount of mess for each test, then compared the amount of mess left behind and the number of passes it took for each vacuum to clean to determine scores. The PowerSpeed did decently well, earning a score just above average overall.

With rice, the PowerSpeed performed much better on flatter carpet than fluffier carpet. It took about three passes for this vacuum to clean up all of the grains from the low-pile carpet, with only a small amount of dust and a few fragments of rice left behind. However, we had to vacuum a little on the slower side to keep it from flinging rice everywhere. The performance dropped a bit with a medium-pile carpet, with a noticeable amount of rice remaining even after six passes.

This vacuum did just a bit worse with the flour test, delivering lackluster results overall. We gave the PowerSpeed 10 passes on the low-pile carpet and there was still plenty of the ½ cup of flour that we spread out remaining. It was similar with the medium-pile carpet, though we think the PowerSpeed collected slightly more than on the flat carpet.

The PowerSpeed improved with our cereal test, delivering a great performance on low-pile carpet. It picked up the bulk of our Cheerios on the first cleaning pass, then took a subsequent three to collect any of the fragments or other pieces from crushing the Cheerios. However, you again have to vacuum relatively slowly to get the best cleaning performance. With fluffier carpet, the PowerSpeed struggled to extract Cheerios from deep within the piles even after multiple passes.

The PowerSpeed wrapped up this metric with another so-so set of results in our oat cleaning challenge. It eventually cleaned up about 99% of the oats that we spread out on both types of carpet but it took a ton of time to get there — 8-10 passes in total.

Ease of Use

For our ease of use metric, we evaluated and scored the amount of effort it took to switch between different floor cleaning modes, the sound levels and the effective reach of each vacuum, and how well they cleaned along walls, in corners, and under furniture.

The PowerSpeed has a knob on top of the base of the vacuum that you turn to swap between hard and soft floors. We found this to be a bit of a pain whenever we were cleaning a house that had a mix of floors, as it is much more of a hassle to be constantly bending over to turn the knob than the models that have a slide switch right on the handle.

That said, this vacuum does a decent job of cleaning right up along the edges of a room, both when vacuuming along the edge and straight at the wall. It struggled a little bit in corners, leaving some mess behind. This vacuum also isn't the best at cleaning under furniture, only able to reach about 7" under our test sofa. This vacuum also doesn't have the longest reach, only able to clean a maximum of 25' from the outlet, compared to the 35'+ of some of the premium vacuums.

We also found the PowerSpeed to be a bit on the louder side, measuring in at 76 dBa. There were louder vacuums in our lineup, but most were quieter.

Handling

For our handling metric, we scored the PowerSpeed on its maneuverability, how well it cleaned stairs, and how easy it was to push or pull across different types of floor.

While this vacuum cleaner doesn't have a particularly long reach with the hose, we do like how light it is. The PowerSpeed weighs just a tiny bit more than 10 pounds, making it much lighter than the majority of the vacuums we tested — and much easier to haul up or down stairs as well.

Unfortunately, this vacuum also has a bit of a box-shaped brush roll housing and doesn't have any sort of swivel steering, making it less agile than some of its competitors.

Hard Surface Cleaning

We resumed rating and ranking the cleaning performance of each vacuum for this metric, now focusing on hard floors. For this series of tests, we used a section of wood laminate floor with the same four types of messes as our carpet cleaning metric. Regrettably, the PowerSpeed didn't do particularly well here.

This vacuum does a decent job at cleaning up rice from hard floors when the mess was small but it tended to fling rice everywhere if we vacuumed too quickly or encountered a larger pile of the rice. It fared even worse when it came to oats, forcing us to make a plethora of cleaning passes to effectively remove all the mess as it got so spread out.

This vacuum continued its poor performance with our Cheerios test. It tended to crush apart the cereal and leave plenty of dust behind or throw the Cheerios every which way. On a few occasions, we felt that this vacuum made more mess than we originally started with.

The PowerSpeed also didn't do very well with flour. It left behind plenty of streaks of flour even after multiple cleaning passes and never failed to eliminate the thin film across the surface of the boards. It also left behind plenty of flour in the cracks between the planks, especially when vacuuming perpendicular to them.

Pet Hair

Our last set of tests scored the performance in regards to picking up pet hair. To do this, we spread out a measured amount of pet hair on fluffy carpet and worked it into the fibers, then vacuumed and measured the amount successfully collected. The PowerSpeed redeemed itself in this last test, earning one of the better scores of the group and collecting essentially all of the pet hair — around 99%.

Value

Overall, we think the PowerSpeed is a decent value, offering an average performance at a below-average price.

Conclusion