Vanlife is messy. And I don’t just mean in a “wow I have trash everywhere” way (which is also true) but I prepare meals on my desk, eat food in my bed, and am constantly tracking the outside inside.

In my workshop I have a large shop-vac that’ll suck the chrome off a bumper, but that doesn’t help me when I’m at a campground and realize I’ve just tracked a ton of dead grass into the van or spilled coffee grounds everywhere.

Oxilam’s 4-in-1 cordless vacuum is a convenient item to have on hand for just such events. It’s about the size of a flashlight (the old ones that took D-cell batteries, not the new tiny ones) and has a 6,000mAh battery inside that offers up to 30 minutes of use. If you need more than 30 minutes of vacuum use, you should probably head to the nearest carwash anyway. It weighs about a pound so it’ll stow away in a glove compartment or under a seat with no problem.

The device’s “four in one” claim refers to four independent features it can perform. Air blows just at hard out the rear as it’s pulled in the front, allowing it to be used to both suck air in and blow it out. Along with being a vacuum (its main purpose) it can also remove the air from those vacuum sealing bags. On the back side, adapters are included that will allow you to inflate things as well as blow air. None of these USB vacuums blow air as strong as cans of compressed air, but they’re reusable and better for the environment so there’s that.

Included in the box are multiple accessories. For the vacuum end there’s an extension wand with soft brush bristles at the end that can be slid up if you prefer the plastic tip to push against carpet, and a larger tip for getting pet hair out of furniture (or, if they don’t mind the noise, directly off of pets). For the other end you get three different air blowing nozzles. You also get a spare filter, a small brush for cleaning, a USB-C charging cable, and a nylon bag to store everything in.

Operating the unit is so simple that I almost left this paragraph out of my review. There’s a button on the side that turns the unit off and on; press it once for low, a second time for high, and a third time to turn it back off. A small screen above the button shows the battery’s status. The USB-C charging port is on the bottom. Oh, and there’s a button that pops the top open so you can dump out all the treasure you’ve collected. That’s about all there is to it.

In regards to “suction power” I’d say the Oxilam cordless vacuum is on par with similar units I’ve tested and owned. I own a different brand’s model with a larger battery and my wife owns a smaller one and as far as I can tell, none of them are any stronger than the others, they just last different amounts of time between charging.

Using Oxilam’s vacuum I was able to pick up most of the loose grass in the floor of my van, but not the ones that were buried deep in the carpet’s fibers. As a test I tried picking up a penny and once I got the vacuum centered of it, it sucked it right up. When I was done with that I started cleaning the other cars in our driveway. While vacuuming out the trunk of my car I noticed it was pushing things around instead of picking them up, which was a sign that the internal container was full. By pressing the button near the lid the top pops open and you can dump the contents into the nearest trash can or, if you’re outside likeI was, your driveway.

I believe most people’s opinion of Oxilam’s 4-in-1 vacuum will be colored by their expectations. When I was a kid everybody complained that the home versions of Pac-Man weren’t as good as the arcade game, but since none of us had an arcade machine in our living rooms, we all played the home versions of Pac-Man and liked it. If you are comparing the Oxilam to a home vacuum cleaner, you may be disappointed. That being said, how often do you drive around with a home vacuum cleaner in the trunk of your car? This thing is perfect for what it’s designed to do which is clean up up spills, dirty floorboards and dusty dashes. You can take it to the beach, inflate your floaties, vacuum all the sand you track back into your van’s floorboards and maybe even blow dry your hair. Now that’s a versatile product.

Link: https://amzn.to/4bzrfgbhttps://amzn.to/4bzrfgb (Amazon)