Kärcher WV 5 Plus N Window Vac

Product Information

I also have a Karcher window vac. It's brilliant for clearing condensation and also for cleaning the windows.” Rated by Mumsnet user Clarice99 Our verdict We select top-selling window vacs from leading UK retailers and put them through a string of tough tests to find out which are the best. Image credit: Future / Jennifer Oksien) Karcher Window Vac WV 6 Premium review: price and availability Suction power is excellent and you get oodles of extras in the box, including a smaller head and microfibre attachment. However, what pushes the Bosch behind the Karcher and Vileda in our list is its failure, reported by some users, to clean quite as well to the very edges of your windows.

Mel uses her Kärcher on 11 panes of glass every morning during the winter months. She says that not only does this save time (as well as her paintwork), it also means that she is not going through tea towels at a rate of knots. “I was getting through three or four tea towels each time, wiping the water up and then wringing them out,” she said. “I fill up the reservoir on the Kärcher twice while doing the windows. It's amazing actually how much water you get. "It saves me hours." Read next: 10 best mould removers that actually work Does the Kärcher WV Classic window vac offer value for money?The battery arrives with just six minutes of power, so I first needed to set the appliance to charge. This took no longer than a few hours, and I could watch the battery indicator count up, minute-by-minute. Once it reached 100 minutes, we were ready to clean up to 300m² on one single charge.

Extendable pole: A few models on our list come with, or are compatible with, telescopic or multi-section poles to help you reach high windows and skylights without wobbling up a ladder. On the downside, a pole can make the vac hard to control, especially if it’s heavy. Mel has been using the Kärcher Window Vac for several years, on a daily basis throughout the winter months, to remove water from single-glazed windows. It is also frequently used on the shower and to vacuum up spillages from the kitchen worktop. About the author

For a streak-free finish

We judge how comfortable each window vac is to hold and empty. We also do this wearing Cambridge Simulation Gloves – a piece of kit that helps replicate the experience of users who suffer with limited hand movement. The Kärcher Window Vac WV 50 Plus was the very first battery-operated window vacuum. Although various other models have been launched since, the WV50 Plus is still on the market as the rebranded WV Classic, with exactly the same specifications as its predecessor, according to manufacturer Kärcher. The WV2 Plus is supplied with the main vac unit, a 11″ (28cm) wide suction blade head, a spray bottle/microfibre cloth cleaning tool, charger plug and a small sample sachet of cleaning solution. Having added the cleaning concentrate to the spray bottle with 150ml of water, my first cleaning job with the Karcher Window Vac WV 6 Premium was the three- window bay in my front room. The spray tool is very easy to use and the vac did a good job of cleaning up the dirty water first time. We only had to re-do a few small areas. We only used washing up liquid in the cleaning bottle but overall the windows looked clean and streak-free when we’d finished. We must mention that there was some stubborn bird poo on the window and we had to redo this area. We feel that if your windows are extremely dirty then some preparation might be needed beforehand to ensure the vac is as efficient as possible.

Interchangeable suction heads: Most window vacs come with a 280mm suction head as standard, but many include an additional smaller head for fiddly jobs such as leaded windows and front door panels. Pivoting suction heads can also help to get into awkward spots. The water tank, which holds 150ml of dirty water, is also easily removed for emptying. Since dirty water takes some time to accumulate, you won't have the hassle of frequent emptying. However, the WV2 does have some minor disadvantages. We found that the spray bottle/cleaning head tool was a little bit fiddly to put together and on the first attempt we did not screw the trigger head on correctly and ended up with a wet floor. Most of the issues seem to be surrounding the water bottle. It has a tiny capacity which may be annoying for extended cleaning periods or if you live in a larger house. Additionally, there are no volume lines to measure out the mixture of cleaning fluid to water. We think that volume lines would be a useful feature as the instructions provided state that you should add 230ml water to the 20ml of cleaning fluid. All said and done we managed perfectly fine in our small window cleaning test and we think we could live with the small problems that we have discovered. Test no.1: Window cleaning

I’ve only had the vacuum for three weeks, so time will tell if it’ll make a difference, but so far so good. Kärcher window vac: Our verdict Log in now or join Which? to see our full results and find out if any Karcher window vacs are good enough to earn our Best Buy recommendation. Reviewer Mel King has had many happy years of use out of her WV50 Plus, which is still going strong, proving that sometimes the original really is the best. Laura started writing Swears By articles for Mumsnet in 2021 and has recently taken over responsibility for laundry content. She writes buyers guides, cleaning articles and tests products, to help Mumsnetters make informed choices when it comes to parting with their pennies. Another good use for the window vac is cleaning up liquid spills from hard floor surfaces, such as laminate, tiles or hardwood flooring. For this test, we simply poured water on the laminate/tile floor surface and the window vac handled this with ease. Again the surface was left clean and streak-free but we were surprised to find that the floor was almost entirely dry to the touch.