So when blockages happened here, they were a little more difficult to clear. We preferred how the Milwaukee hose entered straight into the canister (but using the Milwaukee vac with the accessory lid closed forces a right turn on the hose anyway). Senior staff writer Tim Heffernan has recently been using the HD1200 and is impressed with its versatility as a compact option for multiple spaces within his Queens co-op apartment. He has highlighted it easily cleans up damp and dry dirt, pumice stones, perlite, wet pine needles, cat litter and any random bike maintenance crud spilled on the balcony.
Compared with the DeWalt vac, the Greenworks vac has a larger capability—3 gallons versus 2 gallons—and stronger suction. But it lacks a corded option, so the 15 minutes of run time is all you have before a recharge. Because this is a smaller vac and really designed for minor messes, we found the 15 minutes to be plenty of time for any single mess we dealt with. The Greenworks vac comes with two nozzles—one for general use and a crevasse tool—which both tuck into an onboard storage compartment. We also like that the hose, when stretched out, becomes translucent, so it’s easy to see where a blockage is. The hose also easily disconnects from the vac, so clearing the blockage is easy too.
The other suction test we did was to fill a bucket with two gallons of water and time how long it took each vac to empty the bucket with the nozzle fully immersed in the water. We would have liked to have used a larger amount of water, but the smallest vac we tested has a 2-gallon capacity, so we stuck with that. For all of the large-size benefits, 12-gallon vacs are still manageable for most people to maneuver around their homes or down a set of basement stairs. (It’s awkward, but doable.) As a vac’s size increases, maneuverability naturally becomes more difficult. This small vac can be used either with a DeWalt 20-volt battery or plugged into an outlet.
Several battery and self-propelled mowers in our ratings offer an impressive run time of 70 or more minutes. (The average run time of battery mowers in our tests is 45 to 50 minutes, a 10-minute improvement over last year.) Some manufacturers are designing new models with multiple battery slots. When one battery is spent, another can take hyper tough battery over, a feature CR’s expert testers consider in determining a model’s true run time. The best battery lawn mowers perform as well as—or better than—the best gas mowers, Consumer Reports’ lawn mower ratings reveal. Ridgid’s largest size, the 16-gallon HD1800, can hold a lot of debris (and it comes with large wheels and a dolly handle).
But if you need a wet/dry vac asap, and it’s easier to get a Shop-Vac than a Ridgid, the Shop-Vac model should be just fine. This vacuum can be powered only by the Greenworks 40-volt battery, but it comes included. Greenworks’ 40-volt platform is large and includes mostly outdoor power equipment like mowers hyper tough tool set and string trimmers. As a bare tool, with no battery or charger, the DeWalt vac usually comes in at a reasonable price. But if you are also buying a battery and charger with it, the price can jump considerably, to one we think is pretty steep if this is the only cordless DeWalt tool you plan to own.
Cleaning up high—like if you’re sucking cobwebs off a garage window—is less of a problem with the DeWalt vac because you can just hold it. Although Ridgid vacs come in other sizes (many of them great), we think the 12-gallon size offers the best balance of capacity and mobility. It’s usually competitive on price, too, both within the Ridgid lineup and against similar models from other brands. At a little over 17 pounds, this vac is more manageable on stairs than some larger, more powerful, also-popular versions. There is a wide dry nozzle, a wet nozzle, and a small crevice nozzle (for corners and detail work). Other models might come with more options, but I’ve found that they just tend to get in the way or lost over time.
This might not sound like a lot, but for the way a wet/dry vac is typically used, we never noticed it as a hindrance. But since the Greenworks vac is more powerful, with the larger hose, we think you could accomplish more with it over hyper tough tool set the course of a single charge. You get the best value from this vac if you already own compatible DeWalt batteries. If you don’t, having to buy a battery and charger makes the investment a little steep for what you’re getting.