Bosch Serie 2 Readyy'y ProClean Review

The Bosch Serie 2 Readyy'y ProClean is the latest in Borsch's cordless vacuum range. Like other Bosch vacuums in the range the Readyy'y ProClean offers excellent battery life (a whopping 44 minutes - see below for how it did in our tests), good suction and great value for money.

We've spent some time putting the vacuum through its paces. We've tested it on hard wood floors, hard textured tile floors, and short and high pile carpets, all in a house with a dog that malts a lot. It's the perfect test for any vacuum, and you can see how the Series 2 Readyy'y ProClean did below.

One thing to note before we begin... the name. It's not a typo, it really is called the Readyy'y ProClean. That's a lot of 'y'.

Let's start with the performance. We'll break this down into the floor types we tried it on as it did do differently depending on the floor it was cleaning.

Overall performance was good when compared to any cordless, however it did faulter slightly on the high pile carpets. That said, it did clean them, and the high power brush head did help here. For the size, weight and price of this vacuum it outperformed my expectations.

Hard wood floor

The easiest of all the floors is the hard wood floor. This is a wood block floor with no gaps or grooves to content with. The Serie 2 Readyy'y ProClean did very well here, as you would expect it to. To give you some context on how we do this text, we effectively empty a bunch of items onto the floor, ranging from dust to a dried leaf and small plastic wrappers. It was all picked up in a single pass with no issues, so top marks there.

Textured tile floor

This floor is a little tricker for the cordless vacuum to contend with, and one a lot of vacuums struggle with. The floor is a porous white stone, with deep grout between each tile. It traps dirt very easily, and because of the textured nature of the tiles you need a lot of suction to remove dirt from the tiles.

Well, here's the good news, the Serie 2 cordless did a great job. It has 2 power levels, the second of which was required to get most of the dirt up. The powered brush head really helped here, if you didn't have that then I think this vacuum might have struggled as often the dirt can become quite stubborn on a floor like this.

Low-pile carpet clean

The standard carpet floor, a low-pile carpet. This is what most people have in their houses and arguably the most important test.

Similarly to the hard wood floor, we try a mixture of dust, dirt, dried mud, small plastic wrappers and a dried leaf on the carpet.

The Bosch Serie 2 Readyy'y ProClean performed well. It got up all of the dust and dirt without an issue, and disposed of the plastic wrappers without a problem. The mud needed the higher power setting to get up, but only took a couple of passes to get it all, which is a test that many cordless vacuums fail on. The leaf did pose a bit of a problem as the powered brush head broke it up into lots of little pieces which then got embedded in the carpet. A few passes with the vacuum on the higher powered mode got all of them up though. All-in-all a good job from the low cost cordless.

High pile carpet

This isn't actually a carpet test but a rug. It's a long fibred rug which can be tricky to clean.

Unfortunately the Serie 2 ProClean didn't do well here. The powered brush heard sucked in the long fibres of the rug, which eventually got tangled in the head itself causing it to stop spinning. We did manage to clean part of the rug before this happened, but it was inevitable.

There is no easy way to disable the brush head from spinning. The spinning rod can be removed from the motor head but the vacuum should never be used with this removed, so that was a non-starter unfortunately. All things considered this is the section that let the vacuum down.

When considering this purchase we recommend looking around your home for items like this, as a vacuum that allows you to turn off the spinning head would be recommended if you have any long pile rugs to clean. It's rare, and for most households this just isn't an issue.

The ProClean from Bosch has a number of nice features. Let's run through them below.

Power Levels

There are 2 power levels available on the Bosch cordless vacuum. The first/default power level is ample for most uses and is the most efficient. It's this mode that offers the '44 minutes' of advertised battery run time. It does suffice for most tasks, but as mentioned in the Performance section above we did need to enter the higher power mode a number of times.

The second mode, which is often dubbed 'Turbo mode' or 'High power mode' consumes a lot more battery but greatly increases suction. This mode isn't as powerful as we've seen from more expensive models from the likes of Dyson, but it did what it needed to in our tests.

Bag/dust bin

The dust bin is a little on the small side at just 0.4 litres. Compared to previous models of the Bosch line, which generally come with a 0.6 litre dust bin, this will lead you to emptying your vacuum more frequently. Something to bear in mind, but obviously depends on both the size of your home and the frequency in which you vacuum.

We have a dog that malts a lot, so we had to empty the vacuum 3 times in order to clean the whole house.

Handheld Mode

The vacuum can be split off into a handheld mode, which makes it easy to carry round and get into hard to reach places. There are a number of tools that come with it to make this easier. It's a definite plus point of the Bosch range.

When not in handheld mode the vacuum can stand upright on its own. This is a big benefit for us, as most cordless vacuums need to be put on the floor or wall mounted, which is a big pain for storage.

This is where the Bosch Serie 2 Readyy'y ProClean comes into its own. The full device only weighs 2.5kg, which for the suction and battery life of this vacuum is nothing at all. That makes it easy to lug round, easy to store and easy to use. A big plus point.

The vacuum has 2 main modes; upright mode and handheld mode. This is a little different to a lot of cordless vacuums - even those with these 2 modes - as for other vacuums its just a case of replacing the tool on the end which makes them 'upright' or handheld. However, the Serie 2 range is very different.

By default in upright mode the vacuum looks like a traditional upright. It stands up on its own, and it a fixed unit. This has big advantages for storage and for those who don't want to hold the weight of the vacuum like you would with a traditional cordless.

The slight (and it really is slight) cost of this is maneuverability of the vacuum when in this mode. Because it is a rigid framed upright you don't get the same level of ease of movement. That said, the head does move on all axis, so it's barely noticeable, and for benefits of a rigid body quite often outweight it.

The other mode is handheld mode, which removes the rigid body and allows you to carry the motor and dust bin around, which a number of tools that attach to it to get to the hard-to-reach places around the home.

One of the main selling points of the Bosch Serie 2 Readyy'y ProClean is the battery life. According to Bosch you can expect a maximum of 44 minutes run time from the ProClean when running in 'normal' (efficient) mode.

We tested this. After using the vacuum a few times we put it on charge, and once at 100% we used the vacuum non-stop until the battery was completely empty. We have both good and bad news... The bad news; it didn't last 44 minutes. The good news; it wasn't far off, and lasted 39 minutes. That's pretty good going.

In our tests we were using the vacuum, but didn't use boost mode at any point. Best guess for the loss of run time is due to the extra load put on the electric motorised brush head. I suspect that if we only used the vacuum on a hard floor with very little to pick up that we would likely have seen closer to the advertised 44 minutes.

Charge time is around 5 hours, which isn't too bad, and perfectly manageable, especially with such a long run time.