Hoover H-Upright 300 Review
Well priced and extremely light, the Hoover H-Upright 300 is a great value upright vacuum cleaner. It isn’t the most powerful model I’ve tested, but it’s capable of good results on all surfaces, although you may need to use a few sweeps to pick up everything. Introduction There’s a tendency for vacuum cleaner manufacturers to […]
Verdict
Well priced and extremely light, the Hoover H-Upright 300 is a great value upright vacuum cleaner. It isn’t the most powerful model I’ve tested, but it’s capable of good results on all surfaces, although you may need to use a few sweeps to pick up everything.
Pros
- Great value
- Lightweight
- Clever controls
Cons
- Wand is fiddly to use
- Not that powerful for a plug-in model
Availability
- UKRRP: £189.99
- USAunavailable
- Canadaunavailable
- Australiaunavailable
Key Features
- TypeThis is a regular upright cleaner, although you can detach the wand and hose and use the provided accessories.
Introduction
There’s a tendency for vacuum cleaner manufacturers to make ever more expensive and complicated cleaners. The Hoover H-Upright 300 offers a tonic to that formula: it’s a cheaper, lighter upright cleaner that gets all of the basics right.
It’s a little less powerful than the competition, although I found using the hard floorhead more than made up for this on short-pile carpet. If you want something cheap but good, then this is a neat option. I have the standard model here, but it’s also available as the H-Upright 300 Pet Edition with a mini-motorised tool. Both versions are available in blue or red.
Design and features
- Extremely light
- Slightly fiddly to convert into wand mode
- Manoeuvrable
This upright vacuum is one of the lightest you can buy at just 4.9kg. While you’ll mostly wheel it from area to area, when you do have to pick it up – say, to go upstairs, you’ll appreciate how light it is. Otherwise, the H-Upright 300 is a regular-sized upright cleaner (1147 x 300 x 320mm).
There’s a power button on top of the dust bin, plus a button next to it that disables the motorised brush bar. That’s good to see, since cleaning hard floors and deep-pile carpet can be difficult with the brush spinning.
On the brush bar is a manual slider: keep it closed for more suction on hard floors; or open to make the cleaner easier to push on carpet.
To use the vacuum, you just tip the head back and move it around. There’s a good amount of rotation in the floor head, so I could quickly nip around chair legs. Given the large 1.5-litre bin, you can’t get the vacuum cleaner under lower furniture such as sofas, as you can with the Shark NZ850UKT, which has a lift-away cylinder. That said, Shark’s vacuum cleaner is a lot more expensive.
For detail cleaning and getting under furniture, you can use the provided accessories: a crevice tool and dusting brush. Both clip to the back of the vacuum cleaner for easy storage.
You can attach each tool to either the lift-out wand or the hose, which unplugs from the motorised brush.
Unplugging the hose is easy, but to use the wand, you have to attach the hose to the back of the handle, adding an extra step. More expensive cleaners usually let you pull the wand straight out and start using it without extra steps.
It isn’t a particularly long wand, although I still had just enough reach to get to the top of the rafters in my test lab.
With the 8.1m power cable, which loops around the storage clips at the rear of the cleaner, there’s plenty of reach for regular cleaning. I’d say that you should be able to clean most homes using two or three power sockets only.
Once you’ve finished cleaning, the bin lifts out of the cleaner, and you can flip open the bottom to empty dirt quite easily. There’s one filter here and a another in the cleaner, both of which should be cleaned with water to maintain maximum suction.
Performance
- Not the most powerful cleaner
- May need a few sweeps to get everything
- Works effectively on all surfaces
To start with, I put the Hoover H-Upright 300 through my raw power tests, measuring its suction in AirWatts. I recorded a score of 185.9AW, which is lower than many other plug-in cleaners, which usually come in around 200+. However, in context, this cleaner is still more powerful than most cordless models on their maximum setting.
Cleaning performance is also determined by the tools included with a cleaner. Lower suction power can often be negated with the use of decent tools that agitate dirt. To test this out, I ran my normal cleaning tests.
First, I started with the carpet test, sprinkling a teaspoon of flour onto the floor. Giving the H-Upright 300 a single sweep through the mess, with the head set to carpet mode, I found that it left a trace of the mess behind.
I closed the vent and put the cleaner in hard floor mode, where it was still easy to push on short-pile carpet. This improved results, and I soon picked up all of the mess.
Quality results were seen in my pet hair test. Here, the H-Upright 300 managed to pick up all of the cat hair that I’d combed into the carpet.
A more difficult test is my carpet tile test, where I sprinkle flour right up to the skirting board. With the H-Upright 300 set to hard floor mode, it left a trace amount of dust behind, as you can see from the images below.
Approaching the mess from different angles and giving the H-Upright 300 a few more sweeps soon collected most of the mess, with just the crevice tool needed for the tiny particles remaining right at the edge.
Finally, I tested the vacuum on hard floor, sprinkling a teaspoon of rice onto the area. Here, a single sweep was all that was needed to pick up the mess, with no grains of rice dropping out.
For noise, I measured the vacuum cleaner at 74.3dB, which is about average for a plug-in model: quite loud in use, but not distressingly so.
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Should you buy it?
If you’re after a well-priced and lightweight vacuum cleaner, this one ticks those boxes. It’s great value and cleans well.
If you want more suction and faster cleaning, with more accessories and flexibility, then you’ll need to spend more money.
Final Thoughts
Spend more on one of my top vacuum cleaners, and you’ll find that you can clean faster, using a single sweep to clear all mess. Here, the H-Upright 300 isn’t quite as powerful, but that doesn’t mean it’s not good. Given the relatively low price and lightweight body, this is a vacuum cleaner that will appeal. Just be aware that you may need a few more sweeps to clean effectively, and that you should try using the hard floor mode in more situations to ensure that maximum suction is applied to the floor.
How we test
We test every vacuum cleaner we review thoroughly over an extended period of time. We use standard tests to compare features properly. We’ll always tell you what we find. We never, ever, accept money to review a product.
Find out more about how we test in our ethics policy.
Used as our main vacuum cleaner for the review period
Tested for at least a week
Tested using tools to measure actual suction performance
Tested with real-world dirt in real-world situations for fair comparisons with other vacuum cleaners
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FAQs
It has a motorised floor head, a crevice tool and a brush. If you get the pet version, you get a mini pet tool, too.
Yes, this pulls out the top and can have the accessories attached to it.
Full specs
Jargon buster
AirWatt
A rating of how powerful a vacuum cleaner is. AirWatts combines suction power with airflow to give one score, where the higher the number is better.
Editorial independence
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
Editorial independence
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
