Hoover 300 3in1 Cordless Vacuum: agile, dual LED lights and brushless motor, H-FREE 300 HOME HF322HM

Product Information

Although great at picking up pet hairs from carpet and easy to use on hard-floorings, the Hoover C300 offers limited suction and can feel hard to manoeuvre on carpets. The C300 doesn’t really profess to have any specific stair-cleaning abilities, so it was no surprise that it was a tricky job. That’s a seriously long time and clearly not going to see multiple cleaning sessions in the same day.

The first thing to know is that there are three basic modes of operation: temporary, always-on, and carpet/turbo. Differing in style from other cordless vacuums in the H-Free range, especially when it comes to aesthetics and runtime, the C300+ is both powerful and lightweight. It wasn’t clear in the instructions how to recline the wand without pushing your foot lightly on the vacuum head, though, so this tended to be our go-to method. Buttons are located conveniently on the front, below the telescopic handle that doubles as an extension tube for extra reach when using the detail tool.All parts required are also in the box, including three small screws which you’ll need for initial set-up. Engaging the brush bar in Eco mode, cleaning is passable on carpet but run-times are 10 minutes or so less. As you’d hope, there’s a release latch to open the bin, in theory making it easy to quickly empty over the bin. Three LEDs on the front light up the pet hair tumbleweed and dust in these darkened areas, although they’re not very bright compared to those on more affluent cordless uprights.

The Medium and Turbo speeds are similar to the Dyson V11 Outsize’s results on Eco and Medium power settings, and then the Dyson has a Turbo mode that more than doubles the power. Rather, our First Look features are informed previews, providing a basic overview and getting a feel for the products most exciting features. Switch between 90º and 180º cleaning angles with a flick of the wrist to clean around objects and into corners, easily reaching narrow spaces.

We’d have liked to have seen a larger bin capacity and a less bulky vacuum head, but the runtime and lightweight design do well to outweigh any negatives. That second colour is used for a few accents on the handle, but is most notable on the main shaft, which comes entirely in one colour or the other. Unless you’ve got a decent machine, which is why we’ve got a best vacuum cleaner guide to help you find the pick of the bunch. Switch between 90º and 180º cleaning angles with a flick of the wrist, so you can clean around objects, into corners, reaching narrow spaces with ease.

It’s pretty easy to get into this part of the unit to carry out more vigorous cleaning as grime builds up over time. There’s the floor brush, as mentioned, plus a 2-in-1 crevice tool with brush, an upholstery brush that has a clip-on hard brush, and a mini-motorised pet tool, which is great for use on sofas and stairs.

As well as its ability to tackle extensive pet fur tasks, we rated the vacuum on its design, range of attachments and how long the battery lasted in different modes. Our test model came with a red anodized finish on the aluminium main tube, while the colour scheme overall is a blend of red, dark grey and silver, topped with the iconic Hoover logo on the main body.

So, the C300 is ‘okay’ for pet hair, as long as you have carpets and can leverage its effective brush bar. There is a traditional bristle brush bar in the floor-head that rotates quite powerfully on the carpet mode, and is stationary on the hard floor setting.The H-Free 300 is one of several Hoover H-Free stick vacuum models ranging from the 100 through to the 800 and the 300 is designed to slot into the middle ground, which it does nicely. The Hoover wasn’t particularly great at edge cleaning, and even after a few back and forth motions, carpet powder still remained firmly in the dip at the edge of the carpet. Hoover claims that the C300+ holds enough power to tackle an average-sized three-bedroom house more than once and, while we didn’t try this out ourselves, we can certainly believe it. That’s great whether you’re cleaning up around the ceiling or just need to move this vacuum cleaner from room to room. Moving to a hard floor, I sprinkled a teaspoon of rice onto the floor, then ran the cleaner through on Medium mode.