Gtech Airfox Platinum Review: Budget Build, Not-Quite-Budget Price

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Gtech is a British brand specialising in affordable vacuum cleaners, DIY and garden tech, including lawn mowers, trimmers and tools. We recently reviewed and liked its wet and dry vacuum, the cordless Gtech Orca.

In this review, we’re testing the cordless stick vacuum, the Gtech Airfox Platinum. For all our top vacuum cleaner recommendations, have a look at our round-up of the best vacuum cleaners we’ve tested.

Design and Build

The Airfox Platinum doesn’t impress when unpacking. The quality feels questionable and the components feel very plasticky and fragile. Had it been a budget vacuum cleaner, this would have been understandable, but the Airfox Platinum has a price tag of £299.99 (see it on Amazon), which puts it in the mid-range for stick vacuums.

Fortunately, it comes with a lot of different attachments and even a hose that can replace the extension tube. But the question is whether a shorter extension tube wouldn’t have been more useful, as the hose requires both hands to make use of it.

In any case, assembling the different parts is quick and easy, but the feeling of questionable quality remains, along with a concern about accidentally breaking something during assembly.

When starting up the vacuum cleaner, the negative experience continues. The power button that must be pressed to operate the Airfox Platinum is wedged behind a piece of plastic, making it difficult for my large fingers to reach. Fortunately, it can be locked in the on position, so it doesn’t have to be manually pressed all the time.

The handle is also generally not adapted to large hands. After only a short time of use, my hand starts to cramp a bit from holding it. I guess Gtech’s founder Nick Gray has smaller hands than I do.

Performance and Features

Once up and running, however, the Airfox Platinum proves that it’s not nearly as bad as first feared. On the contrary, it can get into cramped spots and cleans well. At least, it does if you run it in auto mode or max mode. Eco mode is less successful in getting all the dirt, but on the other hand extends the battery life considerably (up to 80 minutes).

If you use the maximum mode, you won’t get more than a quarter of that time, at best. Auto mode is a little better, with up to 45 minutes of use if you’re cleaning lightly soiled surfaces, but in practice it’s more like 30 minutes.

These relatively short usage times wouldn’t be as big a problem if it didn’t take a full five hours to fully recharge the battery. In other words, the Airfox Platinum is not a vacuum cleaner for overly large or heavily soiled homes.

A plus also for the built-in LED lighting that makes it easier to see and access dirt under the furniture (or if you have a poorly lit home in general). And another plus for the fact that the dust container is easy to empty without detaching from the vacuum cleaner and is also easy to clean when you remove it.

Should you buy the Airfox Platinum?

So the Airfox Platinum is easy to use and cleans really well, but unfortunately it also has a few more flaws.

For starters, it’s very loud when running in max mode (or when it goes to max mode when running in auto). And it’s not just that it hums loudly, as many vacuum cleaners do, it also has an annoying high-pitched squeal.

It also can’t stand up on its own. Or rather, you can stand it up, but it’s extremely prone to tipping over, so it’s not something you dare do.

The wall mount is also very plastic and feels cheap.

The Airfox Platinum is a decent vacuum cleaner where performance is concerned, but its flimsy build quality doesn’t justify its cost. If it was more competitively priced and had been safely in the budget class, we’d recommend it. But it’s just too expensive when there are similarly-priced models available like the Halo Capsule X (see it on Amazon or read our review), which is robust, repairable, and genuinely innovative.

For more options, browse our round-up of the best vacuum cleaners we’ve tested.

This article originally appeared on our sister publication M3 and was translated and adapted from Swedish.