If you can’t find our pick or you just want a more powerful option, we also like the Ridgid 14-Gallon NXT Wet/Dry Vac HD1400. This vacuum has more capacity and a more powerful motor than the 12-gallon HD1200, but the identical hose should suck up the same debris. User reviews for this model, like those for our pick, are extremely positive.
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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 hyper tough tools 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.
And extra filters, hoses, and nozzles are easy to get in an emergency, as long as you have a Home Depot nearby. The 12-gallon Ridgid is the vac I saw most on job sites and used the most often throughout a 10-year construction career, and it’s the one I’ve owned at home for years. Ridgid gives the vac minor upgrades and tweaks every few years, so the models have changed, but the core positives of the vac have always remained constant.
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 hyper tough battery 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.
Several top self-propelled battery mowers, made by Greenworks, Ryobi, and Ego, score higher than the top-rated gas model, also a Honda. Several other highly rated self-propelled battery mowers—so named because the battery, not the user, powers the wheels—perform on a par with comparably rated self-propelled hyper tough tools gas models. The good news is that the vac’s slowness is compensated by its extended run time. On a fully charged 5Ah 20-volt battery, we got about 36 minutes of run time; this is staggering compared with run times of some other cordless vacs we tested—one of which only lasted 9 minutes.
If you’re looking for something smaller and more portable, we like the DeWalt DCV581H 20V 2-Gallon Cordless/Corded Wet/Dry Vac. This is a much smaller vacuum than the Ridgid models, and it doesn’t match their capabilities on larger messes. But it’s a real champ with cleaning up little projects around the garage, in the house, or in the basement. Because there’s also a cordless option and this vac is so light, you won’t have a problem using it in a crawl space, a tight attic, or an outbuilding that needs a little tidying, like a potting shed. While the 36-minute run time was impressive, the capabilities of the DeWalt are limited by the small motor and hose diameter. We had no problem sucking up wood shavings, drywall dust, and little bits of this and that, but this vac had problems with anything heavier, like a nail or a screw.
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.