No one likes dirt and dust collecting along their walls or on their carpet.
Cordless vacuums can be an easy way to quickly clean the house without ending up tangled in wires.
Unfortunately, there are a few factors that can make buying cordless vacuums quite expensive.
Why Are Cordless Vacuums So Expensive? (10 Reasons)
While some of the cheaper cordless vacuums start at around $100, some vacuums cost $750 or more.
Cordless vacuums are expensive because of the various costly parts they have, the added price of accessories, the perceived value of being a two-in-one vacuum, and smart technology costs.
Let’s look at these factors in more detail.
1. Lithium-Ion Battery Costs
A lot of cordless vacuums use lithium-ion batteries for power.
These are powerful batteries because they can produce a lot of power in a short amount of time.
While the caveat is that you can only typically vacuum on its highest suction setting for a few minutes, it does deliver strong performance.
Companies are also constantly looking at ways to refine lithium batteries.
Every company knows that one of the problems its customer has is with the short battery life when using the vacuum in its highest setting.
To solve that problem, more and more companies are looking at innovating lithium batteries even further.
That costs money.
Even lithium batteries, themselves, aren’t exactly cheap.
Lithium is quite expensive since it’s expensive and dangerous to mine.
Since supply costs are high, the company has to offset those costs with higher prices on its vacuums.
The more advanced the battery is, the higher the price, too.
That’s partly because companies know that customers are going to be willing to pay more for a cordless vacuum that lasts longer.
It allows them to clean the house more efficiently.
Cordless vacuums are expensive because lithium-ion batteries can be quite expensive to supply, manufacture, and innovate.
2. Lightweight Materials
One of the reasons cordless vacuums are so popular is that they’re lightweight.
It’s extremely easy to lift them and carry them from room to room.
Depending on the vacuum in question, they rarely weigh more than 10 pounds.
This is a stark difference between canister vacuums and other similar types of vacuums.
They tend to be quite heavy.
This makes it extremely difficult to lift and carry the vacuum up and down the stairs.
People with mobility problems or who aren’t in the best shape might struggle to use a canister vacuum.
Cordless vacuums, on the other hand, are light.
It doesn’t require much effort to lift and move them around.
This makes it an ideal vacuum for people with mobility problems.
The problem with being so lightweight, however, is that it usually requires specific materials.
Some companies will invest in high-quality and lightweight materials.
Since they’re high-quality, they tend to be more expensive to source.
Companies that use low-quality materials to make cordless vacuums lightweight tend to have vacuums that don’t last very long.
The materials are cheap and break easily.
Both instances make cordless vacuums expensive.
High-quality materials result in higher prices to offset those higher costs.
Low-quality materials result in frequent breakdowns which means that the consumer has to keep buying new cordless vacuums.
Either way, it makes the vacuum expensive.
Cordless vacuums are expensive because of their use of lightweight materials.
3. Flexible Joint Costs
Another key part of a cordless vacuum is its flexible joints.
Consumers often love how cordless vacuums can bend and twist.
It allows them to get under the couch or in tight areas without having to move the furniture.
This saves them time and effort.
A standard canister vacuum, for example, is pretty rigid.
It doesn’t twist or bend which means the user has to move furniture out of the way to get underneath it.
It’s not as efficient and can easily tire the user out.
Clearly, there’s some perceived value in a vacuum that has flexible joints.
Some customers are willing to pay more for a cordless vacuum because they don’t have to move the furniture around as much.
It makes cleaning the house faster and more enjoyable.
However, manufacturing a vacuum with flexible joints adds some cost to the process.
The joints have to be high-quality. Otherwise, the vacuum might just break.
It’s also important that the flexible joints don’t interfere with the suction power.
That requires both expensive engineering and parts.
To offset those costs, the manufacturer has to put higher prices on the product.
Cordless vacuums are expensive because of their flexible joints.
4. Added Accessory Costs
Here’s the thing with cordless vacuums.
You’re rarely paying for just the cordless vacuum.
Most vacuums also come with an abundance of different accessories.
Most of them are cleaning attachments.
Some cordless vacuums will come with an attachment used to collect pet hair, for example.
It’s a specific type of attachment that does a good job of pulling in pet hair instead of having it fly everywhere.
Other attachments are ideal for cleaning corners or crevices.
You simply attach it to the top of the hose, then use the attachment to squeeze into tight areas to collect dust and dirt hiding in those areas.
Tons of different accessories and attachments typically come with a cordless vacuum.
While the company might advertise that those accessories are free, that isn’t exactly the case.
Those accessories cost money to make.
Instead of listing the accessories separately, the company simply adds the cost of manufacturing and markup prices to the overall price of the vacuum cleaner.
They make the cordless vacuum more expensive.
Cordless vacuums are expensive because of the cost of manufacturing different accessories that come with them.
5. Convenience Factor
There’s no doubt that cordless vacuums are convenient.
They’re smaller, so they’re easier to store.
They’re lighter, so they’re easier to handle.
They also come with tons of different attachments which allow you to clean your entire house a lot easier.
Many cordless vacuums also come with a dump tank.
You simply hold the vacuum over the trash and dump the contents directly into it.
You don’t have to worry about changing out bags or even touching the canister.
Since it offers a lot of benefits and is convenient to use, a lot of people are willing to pay more for a cordless vacuum.
It makes their life easier, so they see it as a worthy investment.
Companies know that.
It knows that its customers are looking for a convenient way to clean their houses.
This allows the company to put a higher price tag on it.
No one needs cordless vacuums when there are other effective vacuums out there.
People tend to buy them for their convenience.
As such, the company can put a higher price tag on it.
Cordless vacuums are expensive because the price of convenience tends to be quite high.
6. Two-in-One Vacuum
You might be wondering what it is about cordless vacuums that make them so popular.
Besides their convenience and mobility, a lot of cordless vacuums are actually two vacuums in one.
You have the stick version of the vacuum which acts sort of like a standard vacuum or broomstick.
You have a long handle that you use to push the vacuum along the floor.
However, some cordless vacuums also allow you to remove the head.
It becomes a handheld vacuum instead.
This means you can easily use the vacuum to clean things like your furniture or even go outside and clean the interior of your car.
Handheld vacuums are their own separate product category.
As such, you end up with two products in one.
Each one functions independently of the other.
This makes cordless vacuums expensive because it requires the manufacturer to basically make two different vacuums.
Then the manufacturer has to assemble them.
Since the cost of production is higher, the price is higher.
Two-in-one cordless vacuums also have higher perceived value to consumers.
Since the cost of buying a stick cordless vacuum and a handheld vacuum is usually less expensive when together, it makes sense for them to pay a slightly higher price for the cordless vacuum overall.
It helps them save money in the long run.
Cordless vacuums are expensive because you’re basically buying two vacuums in one.
7. Automatic Power Adjustment
The vacuum industry is quite competitive.
Each major company is constantly looking for new ways to innovate its products.
One innovation that some cordless vacuums offer is the ability to automatically adjust their power level.
This is extremely important in cordless vacuums because it can help preserve their batteries.
When you use a cordless vacuum on a hard surface, for example, it doesn’t require quite as much energy to suck up dirt and debris.
A cordless vacuum that can automatically adjust its power level will reduce its power to conserve the battery.
Without this function, you’d have to remember to do it yourself.
Manufacturing this costs a bit of money.
For one, it needs to make the vacuum smart enough to sense different flooring types.
Once it senses a different flooring type, then it needs to know which adjustment it needs to take.
This means that cordless vacuums have to be a bit more sophisticated.
Since it’s more expensive to make a sophisticated cordless vacuum, it’s going to be more expensive to buy.
Cordless vacuums are expensive because some of them can automatically adjust their power levels.
8. LCD Screens And Dust Detection
One of the biggest players in the cordless vacuum industry is Dyson.
Dyson is constantly bringing new features to cordless vacuums and upping the game.
One of its latest innovations is installing lasers on its vacuums.
The lasers can detect dust that you might have missed cleaning before.
This ensures that every speck of dust ends up in the vacuum.
Some vacuum cleaners also have LCD screens that allow you to monitor your battery life and other information.
All these extra features cost more money to make.
Laser technology, in particular, can be quite expensive to make.
Some people might also be willing to pay more for a Dyson vacuum because it helps them ensure that they’ve cleaned up all the dust in their house.
Cordless vacuums are expensive because some use laser technology for dust detection.
9. Smart Cordless Vacuums
Other advancements to cordless vacuums have come in the way of smart technology.
Along with dust detection, vacuums can make you aware of certain factors about them.
For example, you can have a live reading of its battery level.
It can also show you its power levels and usage.
The more information you have, the better you can fine-tune your cleaning methods.
Smart technology isn’t cheap to manufacture, either.
It requires more hardware and software.
Since the costs of producing smart cordless vacuums are higher, the price is also higher.
Cordless vacuums are expensive because some use expensive smart technology.
10. Replaceable Batteries
A final reason cordless vacuums are expensive is that some of them come with the ability to replace the battery.
Older cordless vacuums allowed you to plug the vacuum in to recharge it.
The problem with this strategy is that it means the user has no choice but to stop cleaning to charge the vacuum.
This can make using the vacuum inconvenient since the user has to wait until it finishes recharging to finish cleaning.
Newer cordless vacuums have replaceable batteries.
You can easily pop one out and have it charge, then pop a fresh battery into the vacuum and continue cleaning.
This makes cordless vacuums expensive for a few reasons.
The first is that the manufacturer has to make the batteries and battery holder safe.
Secondly, it means that the user is likely going to have to buy two or three batteries.
Since batteries decay with age and use, it also requires the user to buy more batteries in the future.
That all leads to higher costs.
Cordless vacuums are expensive because of the cost of manufacturing and buying replaceable batteries.
Leave a Reply