Hoover Telios Extra TX50PET Review

Light and easy to move around, the Hoover Telios Extra TX50PET is a great vacuum cleaner that’s light in the hand. There’s plenty of storage for the main nozzles onboard, but it’s unlikely that you’ll need the three floor heads. In particular, the Carpet Optimax head was hard to push on short pile carpet. Too many heads aside, this is a powerful and flexible cleaner that makes short work of dust and pet hair on any surface.

Bagged cylinder vacuum cleaners aren’t very common today. Given the quality of the Hoover Telios Extra TX50PET that’s a real shame. This vacuum cleaner is very powerful and, with its disposable EPA bags, it’s easy to empty, too.

You get slightly too many accessories to be useful, and the Carpet Optimax head is practically impossible to push on short pile, but these points can be forgiven.

Hoover Telios Extra TX50PET – What you need to know

• General vacuuming – Light and easy to push around, plus lots of storage onboard for the main nozzles.
• Carpet test – Sucks dust right up to the skirting board but it’s super hard to push the Carpet Optimax head on short pile carpet.
• Hard floor test – Makes light work of hard floors, easily picking up larger bits of debris
• Pet hair pick up – Thanks to the pet brush, you can quickly remove fur from your upholstery and pet beds.

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Design and Features – A clever design but an abundance of floor heads

Although not as popular as upright cleaners, cylinder vacuum cleaners are a great choice for many people. With most of the weight in the cylinder, which can be dragged around behind you, it leaves the light wand and accessories to push around for cleaning.

One of the biggest issues is storage, as cylinder cleaners end up with a long hose that you have to put somewhere. This is a problem that has been solved on the Hoover Telios Extra TX50PET with a couple of clever design touches.

First, the vacuum can be stored standing up on its back or laying down on its wheels. In either position, there’s a notch to take a floor head, and then the hose wraps around the main wand, which telescopes down to a smaller size. It makes storing this cleaner much easier than the chunkier Numatic Henry.

To move the cleaner, you can drag it around on its wheels, but there’s a handy carry handle at the top for moving the vacuum upstairs. As the Hoover Telios Extra TX50PET only weighs 5kg, it’s easy enough to lug around.

As is traditional with cylinder cleaners, there’s a power cable that pulls out. Combined with the hose, you get a 10m cleaning radius, which means that you should be able to clean most homes using a couple of power sockets only.

Open the flap on top of the cleaner and you get access to the three main nozzles: the crevice tool, dusting brush and furniture nozzle. That’s great, as these important tools are always where you need them. Also in the box is a pet nozzle, which has a spinning brush powered entirely by suction, which is good for stairs and upholstery.

As well as the 2-in-1 floor head, which lets you pop up a brush for hard floors and retract it for carpet, you get a parquet head, which has a fixed brush, and a Carpet Optimax head, which has a flat base to it.

That’s a lot of extra room for storage and I’m not convinced that the two additional floor heads are worth it. This is particularly true of the Carpet Optimax head on short pile carpet: the vacuum suctioned itself down so much that it was practically impossible to push it forwards. With vacuum cleaners, it’s more about airflow through, rather than how well the heads can suction themselves to the floor.

The old way of dealing with vacuum power was to have an adjustable air vent, but Hoover has gone for a more refined power slider on the front. You can reduce power when you don’t need as much suction, say for cleaning curtains, and whack it up to max for the best cleaning.

You use three-litre bags on the Hoover Telios Extra TX50PET.  Once the bag is full there’s a mechanical indicator that shows up in a window. Just open the front of the cleaner, and pull the bag out to throw it away. This bag is an EPA model, so doesn’t offer the full filtration quality of a HEPA bag, and it doesn’t self close on removal, so you need to carry it careful to dispose of it without making a mess. Official bags cost around £7.50 for four, and one should last you a good month or so.

There are also two washable filters that can be easily removed and washed when performance of the vacuum cleaner degrades.

Performance – Quiet and powerful but choose your heads carefully

Pushed on a regular carpet at maximum power, I measured the Hoover Telios Extra TX50PET at 71.7dB, which is a touch louder than a regular conversation. That’s very quiet for a vacuum cleaner and the muffled noise of the motor makes this one a pleasure to use.

To see how powerful the vacuum cleaner is, I put it through some standard tests. First, I used a water lift gauge and anemometer to measure air watts. On minimum, the vacuum cleaner came in at 117AW, moving up to a powerful 207AW on maximum power. To put that into perspective, this vacuum cleaner is more powerful than any cordless model but it falls behind the leading corded models, such as the Shark AZ950UKT.

Suction performance translates well into real-world applications. I started with the hard floor test, sprinkling a teaspoon of rice grains onto the floor. A single pass through was enough to pick up every grain with no spillage.

Moving to the carpet test, I sprinkled a teaspoon of flour onto the floor right up against the skirting board. I tried to use the Carpet Optimax head, but couldn’t push it on the short pile carpet, so used the standard head in carpet mode instead. This one managed to suck up everything, right up against the floor head, which is impressive.

Finally, I used the pet nozzle on some furniture covered in hair thanks to four cats at work. This made short work of the mess, and turned a hairy sofa into a clean and inviting-looking one.

Should you buy the Hoover Telios Extra TX50PET?

With its comparatively low price, the Hoover Telios Extra TX50PET is great value for a cylinder cleaner. It’s also neater and easier to store than its direct competition, the Numatic Henry. Having a bag makes this cleaner easier to empty, although you only get EPA bags, so those homes with allergy sufferers may be better looking for a cleaner that has HEPA filters and bags.

Hoover provides too many floor heads in the box and most are likely to gather dust, but this can be forgiven thanks to the quality vacuuming performance. If you’re after a neat and compact cylinder cleaner, this one is a great choice.