I tested a load of cordless vacuums to find the best option for hard floor – here's the vac that came out on top

You'd think that choosing a vacuum for a hard floor would be easy. Partly, you'd be right – cleaning hard flooring is much easier than cleaning carpet, because all the dirt is right there on the surface. Nothing needs to be excavated from deep within the depths of the fibers.

But if you want the best vacuum for hard floor, there are other things to consider. You want a vacuum that won't ping debris around, or cause it to pool up around the floorhead rather than clearing it. If you have a more delicate floor, you might want an entirely soft floorhead that'll buff your floors without risking scratches. And to make sure you don't miss any mess, you might want a vacuum that's kitted out with dirt-illuminating headlamps.

I recently ran a big group test of eight different cordless vacuums from leading brands. As part of that, I tested their cleaning abilities on vinyl and on laminate wooden flooring.

The model that scored highest in my hard floor tests was the Shark PowerDetect Cordless (in fact, it scored highest in my carpet and pet hair tests too, earning it the crown of best cordless vacuum for cleaning performance). Read on for a closer look at why this vacuum is such a great choice for hard floors – and the runners up that are also worth considering.

A quick note before we start – now's an especially good time to be shopping for a new vacuum. There are tons of Black Friday floorcare deals about, and this year's offers are especially good.

Why is this vacuum so good for hard floor?

To test how well each vacuum performed on hard floor, I sprinkled dry tea (to represent fine particles) and a dry rice and lentil mix (to represent chunky particles) onto vinyl flooring. I ran over it with the vacuum in medium or automatic suction mode, and gauged how effectively it cleared the spillage, looking especially at how much pinging and pooling of particles there was, approaching forwards as well as backwards. I repeated the tests on a wood laminate floor to see if the results were any different.

The PowerDetect Cordless earned a 4/5 in my rice/lentil test, and a 5/5 for tea. It has ample suction to handle picking up particles of any size, and offers automatic suction adjustment that means it will intelligently increase or lower suction when it moves from carpet to hard floor (as well as when it detects a particularly dirty area). But the main reason it stood out from the competition was because of its suction-in-reverse skills.

Shark has added an extra flap to the back of the floorhead, which lifts automatically when the machine is pulled backwards. That means it can pick up particles on the reverse stroke, rather than causing them to pool up behind the floorhead – which is what happened to greater or lesser extent with every other vacuum in my group test.

It also has an edge-detect feature that increases suction on the relevant side of the floorhead when the vacuum approaches the edge of a room, where dirt can collect.

Its cleaning power won it the crown, but the PowerDetect Cordless is weaker than some alternatives in other hard floor-focused areas. While there are white lights on the floorhead, they're not especially bright – they're more for illuminating dingy areas than helping you find hidden particles.

Speaking of the floorhead – there's only one, all-purpose option included here, and no hard floor-specific head. However, the provided floorhead does have a soft roller at the front that's especially good at buffing hard flooring.

The runners up...

If the Shark PowerDetect doesn't look quite right for you, these were the models that earned runner-up scores in my hard floor tests.