Review: Lupe Pure Cordless Vacuum

Oh, cleaning. It’s one of those things we have to do to avoid living in filth, but how anyone stays on top of it is beyond me. Dishes pile up quickly and dust settles at an alarming rate. (Where does it all come from?!) My home often feels like a minefield of clutter and debris. 

I’m always looking for gizmos that make cleaning easier, faster, and if possible, more enjoyable. I want to quickly get rid of that rogue cobweb hanging in the corner and the litter that my cats have so graciously tracked out of their box—without having to haul heavy equipment out of the closet. If the same tool can also help me clean every square inch of my apartment, that’d be ideal. That’s how the Lupe Pure Cordless vacuum (pronounced “loop”)  caught my attention. It’s not just cute, resembling Eve from Wall-E, but it makes cleaning almost every crevice a little easier.

After a few weeks of vacuuming my two-bedroom apartment and the local store I work at (more on that later), I can confidently say I'm enamored with the Lupe. It loses a cord but not any of the power of a standard upright vacuum. 

The cleaner head has a standard rotating brush with bristles like you've seen before, and in front of it is a composite roller that's soft, almost like foam. It creates a seal against the ground for really sucking up everything it passes over, including larger debris that other vacuums might push out of the way. The Lupe picked up discarded cat kibble, litter, and my eternally shedding hair (like with most vacs I've tried, hair gets caught in the brush and needs to be untangled every so often). Overall, I've been very impressed with the way it hardly missed anything as I went from hardwood to carpet. 

Photograph: Lupe Technology

There are three power settings, plus the option to turn off the brush roller. On its lowest setting, the battery lasts around an hour. On the middle setting, you should get 30 minutes, and on max suction power, just 15 minutes. I usually left it on the middle setting and never felt like I was going to run out of juice, though this will depend on the size of your space. Charging the battery takes about three and a half hours.

The store I work at is large and sells a lot of vintage furniture that's constantly moving back and forth from the warehouse and storefront. That means there's a never-ending amount of corners for dirt to hide in, and the furniture is often dusty and chipping paint. The Lupe was easy to maneuver around every crevice and it sucked up all the junk, including leaves.

It's important to know that the Lupe Pure isn't a stick vacuum. It has a bigger body where the battery and 1-liter bin sit, which means it can't get underneath tight spaces as well as a stick vac can. That wasn't a problem for me, but consider your furniture before buying. At the store and at home—anywhere I couldn't get the roller head to clean—I just used one of the two attachments.

It comes with crevice and upholstery attachments, which are pretty standard among vacuums. The handle of the vacuum can detach from the body and connect to one of these tools, turning it into an ultra-long handheld vac that can reach the corners of your ceilings. There's a mount for the accessories to sit right on the actual vacuum too—it's nice not having to search a closet for them. That said, the longer crevice tool did usually fall off after a bit of moving around.

Stick vacuums have their pros, the main one being the ability to fit under tight spaces. The other is that they're lighter and aren't attached to an outlet. I think the Lupe Pure Cordless is better than any stick vac I've tried. It's 10 pounds versus the 6.8 pounds of our favorite Dyson, the V15 Detect, but it's way less top-heavy. Stick vacuum bins and batteries sit right at the handle, so it can tire out your arm from holding all of that weight. The Lupe is light up top and the weight is distributed throughout the body, so it doesn't feel much heavier. If you use the handle as a wand to clean high surfaces, it's even lighter, since you aren't lifting up a heavy battery and bin above your head. Plus, it can stand on its own. Stick vacs tend to fall over if you don't position them perfectly against a wall. 

The only thing I really didn't like? The way it sounds. At its highest power, the Lupe is a little grating on the ears. It almost sounds like other vacuums do when something is caught in their brush head and it's no longer spinning. In fact, my husband suggested I look at the brush to make sure something wasn't tangled in there (there wasn't).

Photograph: Lupe Technology

The $600 price is a tall order. However, the Lupe feels durable and is built quite well. I can easily see it lasting a long time. Even if it does break, you can replace nearly every part individually. Most of those parts are cheap too, with the most expensive being an entirely new head with both brushes for $170. The company is also offsetting carbon for each vacuum it sells, and says it's aiming to be carbon negative by 2023.

If your vacuum has reached the end of its life or just isn't working out for you, I think the Lupe Pure Cordless is worth the investment. That's a surprising assessment for me, someone who's generally unwilling to part with more than $50 on something I can't wear.