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 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).
The DeWalt’s hose is only 1¼ inches wide, compared with 2½ inches for the hoses on the Ridgid models and 1⅞ inches for the hose on the cordless Greenworks vac. The DeWalt vac’s smaller hose, along with its overall power, really limits what this vac can suck up. If you’re looking for a smaller vac that’s a lot easier to move around, we like the DeWalt DCV581H 20V 2-Gallon Cordless/Corded Wet/Dry Vac. This vac is substantially lighter and more compact than the Ridgid models we recommend and can be carried like a duffel bag. But considering how this vac is intended to be used, its portability more than makes up for that. This is not a vac to use to clean your entire garage floor or to suck the dirt out of a 1,000-square-foot flooded basement.
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 battery 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.
Therefore, it should be safe to use Ridgid 18V batteries with an adapter on Hyper Tough 20V MAX power tools. But you might consider disassembly your Ridgid 18V battery to ensure that there is an over discharge protection circuit. There are plenty of other wet/dry vacuums available, most notably from Shop-Vac, a company so well known for its wet/dry vacuums that its name has become synonymous with all wet/dry vacs. In most ways, hyper tough battery Shop-Vac models are going to deliver the same thing as the Ridgid vacs. However, on the 12-gallon model, the accessories are bunched at the upper rear of the vac, instead of stored on each caster, and we’ve found they get knocked off much easier this way. The Shop-Vacs models’ availability is also a little more scattered, so you may not be able to get one in an emergency at a place that is as convenient as Home Depot.
Recently, cordless models have appeared that emphasize portability over power. These are more for quick, little messes, like clean-up after a minor repair or home upgrade. hyper tough tools In the cordless category, we prefer the smaller models in the 2- to 3-gallon range. One of these might be the only wet/dry vac you need for a smaller home or an apartment.
Another cordless option we like is the Greenworks 40V 3-Gallon Cordless Wet/Dry Vac. This one is larger and more powerful than the DeWalt vac, but it doesn’t have a cord, so the battery is the only option. So the Greenworks vac can handle things like little blocks of wood and some nails and screws. We also like that when we stretched out the hose, it became translucent, so it was easy to see the location of any clogs. Like the DeWalt vac, the Greenworks vac has two nozzles and smart onboard storage. This model is normally around $200 with the battery and charger, so if you need a vac with those included, it’s considerably less expensive than the DeWalt vac.
This vac makes the most sense if you already have some other tools (and batteries) in the DeWalt 20-volt line up. If you’re just starting out, however, you’ll need the kit that comes with the battery and charger; this raises the cost quite a bit and, we think, really compromises the value of this tool. But the good news is that this vac also works with an outlet, so it’s still an option, even if you may or may not be adding other DeWalt tools in the future.