Lupe Pure Cordless review: Built by ex-Dyson engineers, can they beat their old boss?

When it comes to cordless vacuum cleaners, Dyson is the biggest brand around. The company, founded by entrepreneur James Dyson back in 1991, helped to popularise cordless designs and has become synonymous with the form-factor. However, there are a growing number of companies looking to challenge Sir James’ crown.

One of these new challengers is a plucky start-up called Lupe Technology. This UK firm might be one of the best placed to supersede Dyson because it’s founded and steered by a pair of ex-Dyson engineers, Lucas Horne and Pablo Montero.

So, does this new kid-on-the-block manage to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Dyson’s best-selling cordless vacuum cleaners? Express.co.uk took delivery of a Lupe Pure Cordless – the first, and as it stands only, vacuum cleaner available from Lupe Technology – to find out whether it’s as good as its founders say…

Lupe Pure Cordless review

Lupe Technology, which is headquartered in Chipping Sodbury in South Gloucestershire, was founded in 2015 by a former research manager and engineer from Dyson’s Malmesbury base in Wiltshire. Lupe Pure Cordless is the first vacuum cleaner to launch from the new start-up.

Thankfully, there’s little about the Lupe Pure Cordless that betrays that this is a first-generation consumer product. It arrives nicely packaged and bundled with all of the accessories that you’d expect with a high-end vacuum, including a detachable wand and upholstery accessories to delve into harder-to-reach places around the home.

At £569, the Lupe Pure Cordless isn’t cheap.

The ex-Dyson team haven’t shied away from the sort of price tag that you’d expect from their previous employer. To justify that cost, the Lupe Pure Cordless has to be a bloody good vacuum cleaner. But more than that, it has to seem like a good investment.

To assuage any fears about the latter, Lupe Technology has launched a dedicated online store for spare parts – so you don’t need to worry about misplacing mislaid or broken parts. Vacuum cleaners endure plenty of abuse throughout their life, but you don’t want to be faced with another £569 bill if something goes wrong.

Thankfully, that’s not going to be the case. With replacement brush bars selling for £9.99, HEPA filters costing £18.99, and a replacement battery pack on the way soon… there’s no reason this cleaner won’t look as good as new years after you bought it. And all without splashing out a fortune either.

Coupled with a two-year guarantee for the vacuum, that’s the longevity sorted.

So, what is the Lupe Pure Cordless like to use? In short, pretty great.

Most manufacturers, including Dyson, design their cordless cleaners around a handheld unit. This can be used to vacuum carpets and hard floors, while still being light enough to use to clean hard-to-reach places like stairs, car seats, and behind the back of sofa cushions. The only issue with this design is that all the gubbins – battery pack, motor, dust bin – are in your hand at all times. That can make the vacuum feel heavy to handle, or, in models with lighter batteries, reduce the amount of cleaning you can get done between recharges.

To solve this, the Lupe Pure Cordless opts for an upright design. From a distance, the Pure Cordless looks closer to its corded predecessors than rival cordless handheld gadgets. It also means the vacuum takes more room to store than the baton-like Dyson cleaners. If you’re living in a small flat where space is at a premium… that might be a reason to swerve the Lupe Pure Cordless.

Aesthetically, the upright design doesn’t look quite as futuristic as some of its rivals. That’s not a huge issue – it’s designed to clean, not to bring together the décor in your living room, but it’s worth mentioning as it will put some buyers off.

Thankfully, there are also some serious advantages to this upright design. First of all, you don’t need to drill a hole for a specially designed holster to support and recharge your cordless vacuum. As the Lupe Pure Cordless stands upright on its own, it can be stashed in any cupboard or corner. It will also stand if you need to dash to answer the door or the phone mid-vacuuming – something that isn’t true for the Dyson, which needs to be carefully laid on the floor, or (for those who like to live dangerously) propped against the wall.

The single biggest advantage of this upright design is that – since you don’t need to support the weight of all of the most important components in your hand at all times – the ex-Dyson engineers have managed to find room for a one-litre dust bin. That means you won’t have to keep dashing back to the bin to eject your grim mid-clean. For comparison, the £599 Dyson V11 Absolute packs a 0.7 litre dust bin. And in our time with the Lupe Pure Cordless, this is the biggest advantage. This clever cleaner can just keep going, and going, and going.

Meanwhile, counterparts from Dyson often need to be cleaned-out before any vacuuming can take place. It’s not a huge issue, but it is a frustration that Lupe owners won’t come across anywhere near as often.

Of course, the upright design of the Pure Cordless also allows for a bigger battery, which Lupe says will keep vacuuming for 60 minutes between recharges. In our testing, Lupe is spot-on with its battery life estimates. Since there’s no charging holster à la Dyson, the Lupe Pure Cordless isn’t always charging when it’s back in the cupboard. As such, it’s great that it can handle multiple cleans around the home before you need to dig out the charger.

It also managed to blitz through our home from top-to-bottom without running out of juice… something that isn’t guaranteed with some of the Lupe Pure Cordless’ handheld rivals. And trust us, that isn’t a brag about the size of our two-bed flat, it’s merely a comment on the terrible battery life of some of the cordless cleaners on the market right now.

Clearly learning from their time at Dyson, the team at Lupe Technology hasn’t skimped on suction power to achieve that impressive battery life either. According to the British firm, its new vacuum can provide “up to 10x” more useful suction compared to rival designs.

It’s a little difficult to quantify the exact amount of suction in the real-world, but we’ve got no complaints with the amount of oomph available from the Lupe Pure Cordless. Like a Dyson, this vacuum has the ability to somehow fill its dust bin to the brim when passing over a carpet that looks spotless to the naked eye (or has already been cleaned with a budget vacuum). When it comes to suction, the Lupe Pure Cordless is incredibly powerful and stands toe-to-toe with rivals in its price bracket.

The Pure Cordless also packs a HEPA filter, which Lupe says captures 99.99 percent of fine dust and allergens in your home as you clean. If you’re struggling with hay fever, that’s a great little bonus. Helpfully, you won’t need to replace that filter either, since it can be washed with cold water and popped back into the vacuum between cleans. Again, it’s a nice little touch from Lupe Technology – while it comes with a pretty hefty initial outlay, it shouldn’t become a monthly expenditure with replacement filters, dust bags, etc.

Lupe Pure Cordless review: Final Verdict

• Pros: Incredible suction performance, 1-litre dust bin saves trips to empty the vacuum during deep-cleans, two-year warranty, cordless means you never have to worry about tripping over a power cable again
• Cons: Upright design is bulky compared to handheld models, not quite the variety of attachments available from competitors, a few more colour options would be nice

The team at Lupe Technology have ingeniously picked the best attributes of both corded and cordless vacuum cleaners. The result is an upright vacuum cleaner that doesn’t need to be plugged in, but doesn’t sacrifice battery life, performance, or capacity.

In particular, the one-litre dust bin and battery life are incredibly generous – guaranteeing you can clean every room in the house without interruption.

However, it’s not a perfect formula from the ex-Dyson engineers. The upright design does mean the Lupe Pure Cordless occupies a lot more space in the cupboard than a handheld Dyson, for example. The white plastic used throughout the design looks sleek and futuristic in photos, but doesn’t have the same gleam in the flesh.

With a two-year warranty, affordable spare parts on-sale, and re-usable HEPA filter included, the Lupe Pure Cordless is designed to last for years to come. That should help allay any concerns about the high price tag. While Lupe Pure Cordless might be the first vacuum to launch from the British start-up, the years of experience behind this project are clear as soon as you switch this dust-buster on. We can’t wait to see what comes next.