Swiffer Sweeper Vac Review!

In 1999, Proctor & Gamble introduced us to Swiffer. A Swiffer can be best explained like a razor and blade sales strategy. You purchase the razor handle for a great price, and you’ll always have to pick up the refill for that exact handle and pay whatever price the company deems reasonable for as long as you choose to use the razor. A Swiffer follows the same sales strategy.

So, does the Swiffer Sweeper Vac actually work??

Initial Thoughts — Build Quality — Weight / Size -
On the box, they show the sweeper picking up dirt, dust, pet hair and crumbs. They also show the vacuum picking up bigger pieces like cereal, leaves and crumbs.

We always like to test these claims out.

Battery Life
The battery life seems okay I guess — on the box it says the battery lasts long enough to clean up to 4 average sized rooms (10 sq metres). That’s all well and good — but it seems like I would have to charge the Sweeper VAC after I clean my tile and hardwood — just on the main floor of my house..that seems excessive.

Test
So I tossed crackers, cereal, pet hair and dirt on the kitchen floor and decided to give it a whirl. Now I know the dirt on the floor is a little excessive, but we wanted to put it to the test and see how well it would do.

The vacuum’s exhaust is right at the bottom which is a bit of a design flaw, as you can see the vacuum blasts air out and re-distributes that dirt.

Also, it couldn’t quite pick up dirt caught in the grout lines; it just pushed it around. Because the vacuum doesn’t have an open edge at the back (it’s blocked by the Swiffer pad) any dirt caught travelling backward after the forward stroke gets pulled back to square one, it’s kind of awkward and you can see a clear example of this during the action shots.

It could pick up light debris and trapped the pieces of dirt and crackers on the Swiffer pad. For bulkier pieces i.e. cereal, t needed some assistance. We were testing this for about 20 minutes total and the battery ran out of charge, that wasn’t great.

VERDICT:

Does it work? Yes.
Does it work better than a broom? Maybe.
Is it worth it to buy it? Well, that’s debatable

If you live in a small space, or if you just need something to quickly drag around the floor and pick stuff up — then yes, on the surface it seems like a good deal.

On the other hand, it’s $50 to buy the starter kit, another $40 for a year’s supply of refills and filters..and $40 the year after, and $40 the year after that year..

A good broom and dustpan set – $20 — the year after $0 — a good broom can last at least 5 years and save you almost $250 during that time

So, I guess it boils down to whether you want to spend 15 times as much to get something which isn’t quite twice as good..

Finally, there’s the waste factor — and I saved this for last, on purpose. The amount of waste produced by this product is staggering — I figure I would go through about 100 of these over the course of a year — and these end in the garbage, not the recycling bin.

So, it’s up to you — it’s not that this is a bad product — to me, it just seems to be a little unnecessary, and wasteful..I’d more than likely get a low budget vacuum and stick to a broom for my hard floor surfaces.

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