Welcome to our Inse N5S review. The airflow was measured at only 26 CFM, and its suction was measured at only 38 in of water lift. These are both well below average results for a cordless vacuum.
Inse Cordless Vacuum (N5s) tests
Flour clog test
The vacuum’s suction will also drop significantly over time because its pre-motor filter clogs easily with fine debris. This is demonstrated in our Flour clog test, in which a large quantity of flour deposits on the Inse’s pre-filter.
Compare this result to that of a vacuum that uses multiple cyclones to filter out fine debris before it can reach and clog up its pre-filter. This Dyson V8 has very little, if any, fine debris deposited on its pre-filter after the same test. The results of this test indicate that the Inse will lose suction much quicker and will require much more filter maintenance than the Dyson.
Carpet cleaning
Over time, suction doesn’t really factor into the vacuum’s performance picking up surface-level debris. In our carpet stress test, the N5S doesn’t get a perfect clean in a single pass but also doesn’t demonstrate having any particular trouble picking up any one type of debris, despite its low suction.
Hard floor cleaning
In our hard floor stress test, the Inse again performed well; it didn’t have any trouble picking up any debris despite low tested suction.
Carpet deep cleaning
Its low tested suction does, however, impact the vacuum’s deep cleaning performance. In our carpet deep clean test, the Inse picked up only 37% of debris after being pushed back and forth three times over an area of carpet embedded with fine debris, a well below average result.
Crevice test
The Inse also performed poorly in our hard floor crevice test; it didn’t pick up any flour from the crevice even after over 20 back and forth passes.
Battery life
We evaluate battery life within the context of performance. The N5S has good battery life; it was tested to run for up to 23 and 1/2 minutes on high power. But it doesn’t offer very good performance even on high power.
Fog test
It performed reasonably well in our stress tests, but these tests were conducted with clean filters. As we showed earlier, the Inse quickly loses suction and doesn’t have much suction to begin with. It also performed poorly in our deep clean tests, even with clean filters. So overall, we can say that the Inse N5S has good battery life, with the caveat that it doesn’t offer the best performance with its good battery life.
Debris containment is another problem area for this vacuum. The manufacturer claims that this vacuum has a HEPA filter, presumably a HEPA post-motor filter. However, this much fog would not exhaust out of the vacuum if that were the case.
Hair tangling
In our long hair pickup tests, the Inse brush roll tangled with 15% of 8-inch long hair and 70% of 14-inch long hair. These are both worse than average results, meaning the Inse tangles more easily with both 8-inch and 14-inch long hair than most other cordless vacuums we’ve tested.
Weight and handling
When it comes to ease of use, the Inse does well. It has a very light body and cleaner head, which gives it excellent handling and makes it very easy to use as a handheld vacuum. The vacuum does have a trigger, but pressing it once will leave the vacuum on; you don’t need to hold the trigger to keep it on. You have two options to adjust suction: you can press the trigger a second time to activate a higher suction mode, or you can press the button on the top of the vacuum to do the same.
Dust bin size
The Inse’s dust bin has a maximum measured capacity of 650 ml, which is above average for a cordless vacuum.
Wall dock
This vacuum does come with a wall dock, but it doesn’t charge the vacuum when it’s docked; you have to plug in the wall charger separately.
Read more: The Best Cordless Vacuum List – 6 Tiers
Pros and cons for Inse Cordless Vacuum (N5s)
Summarizing the pros and cons for this vacuum, the Inse picks up surface-level debris on carpet and hard floors fairly well as long as its filters are clean. It’s also very light and easy to use, and it has a large dust bin.
On the negative side of things, it has below average airflow and suction, and it loses the suction it does have very quickly because its filters clog very easily with fine debris. Even with completely clean filters, the vacuum doesn’t deep clean carpet well and can’t pull flour out of a crevice. It also tangles very easily with longer hair and failed our debris containment test.
Recommendations
When it comes to general recommendations, the Inse N5S is generally not recommended because it failed our two most important tests: it failed our flour clog test, and it failed our debris containment test. So far, we haven’t tested one budget-priced vacuum that passed both tests, but there are models available that pass at least one of these tests. The Eureka Rapid Clean Pro, for example, at least adds cyclonic separation so its filters don’t clog easily. The Kmore Elite CSV Max has an actual HEPA filter, which allowed it to pass our debris containment test.
