Review: Eufy HomeVac H30 – a modular cordless vacuum that doesn’t suck

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Age is a strange and sometimes cruel beast. It changes you gradually, in subtle ways that you don’t immediately notice. I know that because earlier this month I waited by my door in eager anticipation for a vacuum cleaner. The same vacuum that is the subject of this review. God, had I really become so boring?

The Eufy HomeVac H30 arrived on a bland, mid-week September day. Its timing couldn’t have been more fortuitous. Earlier that month, my usual dust-sucking workhorse suffered an untimely plunge from the counter, shattering the plastic housing.

It worked, but only thanks to a liberal application of electrical tape. It would only be a matter of time until I was forced to replace it. Could this take its place?

Design

Eufy is a sub-brand of Anker. You know: the company that makes phone cables and portable battery packs. In recent years, it has developed a pedigree for home electricals, like robot vacuum cleaners and smart doorbells. The HomeVac H30 is, by comparison, a more conventional affair. It sucks up dust and debris from your floor. That’s it.

And there’s nothing wrong with that. Basic is good. I am a little bit cynical of manufacturers that add networked features to products that don’t really need them, as demonstrated by my lukewarm review of Roidmi’s X20s cordless vacuum earlier this year.

When you turn a household item into a computer, you depend on the manufacturer’s long-term support, which is never guaranteed. The Mirai botnet that felled much of the Internet in 2016 was composed of hacked routers and WiFi cameras. Can we expect the next to consist of smart coffee makers and air purifiers?

So, it was a good start. And then I opened the box. The Eufy HomeVac H30 has a modular design, making it well-suited for a variety of tasks. The base unit resembles a standard handheld vacuum cleaner, the kind you’d use to hoover up spilled Skittles from the floor of a family SUV. You can extend its functionality with a series of add-ons. I recieved the Infinity package, which includes all available accessories.

One accessory turns the HomeVac H30 into a proper stick vacuum. There is also a head designed for dredging up pet hair. As the owner of a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel that perpetually molts, this was of particular interest.

This modular design means you can mix and match parts depending on your need. There’s a part for tackling tight nooks, where larger vacuum bases would struggle to reach. There’s the aforementioned pet hair head. And there’s a long tube that extends the reach of the vacuum, allowing you to clean the floor without suffering agonizing back spasms.

The main unit itself is designed to be light and portable, weighing just 1.78lbs (808g), or less than one-fifth the weight of the Shark vacuum it replaced. This contributes to the HomeVac H30’s versatility, but at the expense of a few key metrics.

First, the dust receptacle, which holds up to 250ml of debris, is desperately small. You’ll find yourself repeatedly running to the trash to empty it.

But at least Anker makes it easy. The dust bin sits on a rail. To remove it, you just slide it off. It feels delightfully elegant, and in my experience, I was less liable to spill any of the detritus I’d collected.

Power and performance

Secondly, the device’s small size inevitably means it comes with a smaller battery. Anker claims you get around 20 minutes from a single charge, but this is only the case when using the weaker “eco” mode, which produces 12kPa of suction.

With the device cranked up to “max,” which provides 16kPa of suction, the battery life halves to ten minutes. The base unit comes with a simple switch allowing you to select modes.

For the sake of fairness, this endurance wasn’t far removed from the Shark IF150UK it replaced, although we note the latter offers slightly more suction power in both eco and high-powered modes.

It’s also worth mentioning that the HomeVac H30 Infinity is much quieter than any other cordless vacuum I’ve used previously, to the delight of my two noise-averse dogs. The HomeVac also deserves credit for its user-replaceable batteries.

But how does it perform? Honestly, pretty well. With the pet hair extension in place, it made swift work of my car and carpets. On wooden and laminate surfaces, it handily sucked up spilled crumbs, and even larger messes, like when I accidentally tipped the contents of a tub of flour onto the floor while making homemade macaroni cheese.

Fully recharging the HomeVac H30 from empty takes between 3.5 to 4 hours, according to the maker. In my experience, charge times were on the quicker side of that scale. This uses an inductive mechanism, meaning there are no fiddly plugs to deal with. You simply put it on the base station and forget about it.

You can also mount the base station to the wall, which is great for those wishing to maximize space. As I live in a rental property, I didn’t test this out, and it largely lived on my kitchen table for the duration of the review.

So, is the Eufy HomeVac H30 worth the money?

The Eufy HomeVac H30 starts at $150 for the base model. US pricing for the Infinity package isn’t currently available, although it retails in the UK for £199, putting it neck-and-neck with wall-powered vacuums from Shark and Bissell, not to mention the dizzying array of offerings from newcomer Chinese manufacturers. In many areas, these products best the HomeVac in terms of suction power and dust capacity.

And yet, there is something remarkably compelling about the Eufy HomeVac H30 Infinity. The modular design means you don’t need two separate vacuums for the house and the car. Battery life and suction power are both good enough for daily household maintenance, even if they don’t exactly best the competition.

And it’s delightfully simple. From attaching the HomeVac’s usual accessories, to emptying the drawer, everything just works. It comes with just two buttons: a power switch, and a toggle that allows you to select the “max” and “power” modes. Anker resisted the urge to overcomplicate this product, and it paid off.

Despite its shortcomings, and the compromises made to achieve its lightweight frame, it’s really easy to recommend the HomeVac G30. My excitement was, it seems, entirely justified.

Editors’ Recommendations:

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Just a heads up, if you buy something through our links, we may get a small share of the sale. It’s one of the ways we keep the lights on here. Click here for more.