Bissell cuts the cord on upright cleaners, helps you lose weight in the process

If you’re anything like us, you just yearn for your vacuum to cut the cord and let you clean freely, with more sucking power than the model you use. Fortunately, a new product from American brand Bissell could kill both of those birds with the one nicely cleaned stone.

Designed to be stored easily, Bissell’s AirRam is a vacuum cleaner with some very interesting elements.

The appliance is reasonably light weight, easily carried at 3.7 kilograms, and like other vacuums out there, it’s bagless, storing collected dirt and dust in bales, with the AirRam able to press its collection down into pieces of dusty fluff that you can pick up and throw away.

Bissell says it uses 100 watts to pick up as much as a common 2000W cleaner, and it might even pick up more.

Our demo, which was at a restaurant cleaned every night, managed to pick up even more from the ground than staff expected.

“The AirRam is designed quite differently and with its advanced technology, it collects and compresses dirt, dust and fluff into tidy, dust-free bales that are stored 5cm from where it is collected,” said Chris Egan, Managing Director of Bissell in the Oceania region. “The dust-free bales are then simply dropped into the bin with no messy dust cloud.”

Simplicity seems key to the design, and that also seems evident when you see how it’s powered, with the AirRam taking advantage of a lithium ion battery that can be removed, in case you want to charge multiple units. No wall plug keeps this vacuum connected to the wall, and it will only see a power outlet when you decide to charge the battery.

We’re told the battery should last roughly 40 minutes of full power cleaning, with an hour of charging needed to bring back to full capacity.

There’s one other feature that Bissell hasn’t exactly promoted, though, and we must say, we’re intrigued by this.

A USB port on the back of the AirRam battery.

One of the first things we noticed about the AirRam was the USB port on the back of the battery, which we’re told can plug into your computer, and with the aid of software, will tell you how many calories you burned off while using the vacuum cleaner. Unfortunately, this software doesn’t come with the vacuum, but Bissell says it could arrive in Australia soon.

Meanwhile, the AirRam vacuum cleaner will be hitting all major retailers from this week for the recommended retail price of $399.