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.
The DeWalt is really a tool meant for small messes, like drywall dust, sawdust, and wood shavings. In our other test, the DeWalt vac sucked out 2 gallons of water in 11 seconds—more than twice as long as it took the next weakest vacuum (the cordless Greenworks vac). That lines up with the DeWalt vac’s given CFM number—indicating suction—of 31, which is half that of the Greenworks vac. This isn’t an extremely high-powered tool, but it really is convenient to use. This wet/dry vac (aka “shop vac”1) has a large capacity and a powerful motor for sucking up debris.
Through the course of testing and using the vacs around the house during a small renovation, this became our go-to vac, even though it does sometimes have a high-pitched whine. The Greenworks vac normally costs around $200, which we think is a fine price, given that it comes with a battery and charger. The HD1200 has enough power to clean up the type of debris that could damage your home vacuum. On our test, it sucked up the entire pile of workshop debris in 15 seconds (the cordless models all took over a minute).
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 hyper tough tool set 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.
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 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.
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).