Maybe you just have a shit vacuum.

Our cordless, on the highest suction setting, is bordering on unusable. The effort to move it across carpet becomes quite high. Trying to roll it on an area rug tends to cause it to drag the rug around, and if you pick it up while on it will pull the rug up off the floor.

I have done some _very_ scientific testing here, vacuuming a section of carpet on the lowest section (doing lines where each pass half-overlapped the previous so each part of the carpet got touched once in each direction), emptying the vacuum, then going back over doing the same on high. Didn't see anything else come up. Shop vac didn't pull anything else out either that I could see.

I used to be in a similar boat of "these are a stupid class of product", but end of the day even if it takes eight passes my wife was going to use it anyway. The effort for her to set the time aside to drag around the heavier corded vacuum which is a substantial effort for her, etc, would be more than doing eight passes with a cordless. So got a good one and I'm sold on it now--it is quite convenient, and it does work.

Only thing I will say is the battery definitely can't do an entire carpeted house on a charge. We don't have that much carpet, so don't have any problem cleaning all the floors and a couple area and entry-way rugs on a charge.

This is an interesting discussion to me - I have a cordless vacuum that works well and a roborock combo vac/mop that works well. Actually, I'm lying, I have two cordless vacuums because the GGP's observation rings true to me and I got a second one for free and held on to it. :-)

Dyson cordless vac, older (v8 ultimate). Have had to replace battery once and broken trigger. Continues to be a workhorse.

Roborock s5v: I have it run 2x / day on weekdays, once in the morning after breakfast when we're taking the kids to school (vac kitchen only), and once after bedtime (vac + mop entire area). It does a great job of generally keeping things clean. Not perfect, but the overall dirt level stays low.

The cordless manual vac is really useful for "oh bleep, 8yo just spilled MORE stuff on the ground". I keep it next to the dining and kitchen area. It's not super aesthetic having it hanging on the wall in a visible location but I have engineer-itis and I value the convenience over the illusion that we don't own a vacuum. :) I approximately never use the robovac as an on-demand vacuum unless it's to run an extra pass when we're leaving home on a weekend and have left crumbs from a meal.

For us, substantially upping the frequency of vacuuming, even if it's not quite as deep, has made a big difference, and it's basically no extra burden to have the robovac run frequently after programming it.

What model of cordless vacuum do you have?

Well... I have a (1000 dollar!!!) Dyson cordless vacuum, arguable the laser + the histogram for "removed particles of size X", make me clean more thoroughly. The things is pretty heavy and applies a pretty good vacuum, imho.

Bro the vacuum community is audiophile-level picky. I have a Dyson stick vacuum of some sort and I haven’t had any issue with picking up crumbs. I would rather manually bend over and pick up something it doesn’t grab than move around the heavy corded vacuum and plug it in 10 times.

I feel this sub thread can keep going if we introduce the complication of the whole-house vacuum system.

We can also spin off a subthread about pets, and another one about using vacuum cleaners on surfaces other than floor/carpet.