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A very high-end, very high-tech vacuum that earns its keep.

There is a certain point at which the high price of a product ceases to be a detractor and instead becomes its own draw — an added bit of curiosity. Is a $500 Loro Piana t-shirt really one of the best t-shirts, or is it just an expensive Hanes Beefy Tee? Will a Rolex Submariner make my life different in some way that’d justify the cost?

I do not know the answer to those questions. What I do know, however, is whether or not the LG CordZero All in One Tower Vacuum is worth its hefty $1,000 price tag.

This model from LG isn’t proposing a re-invention of the cordless stick vacuum design so much as it’s trying to outclass its competitors entirely. Their way of doing that? Including five attachments (more on those later), two batteries, extra filters, a tower that acts as storage, a dust & dirt receptacle, and a battery charger.

Those last two points are particularly notable in the category. A common complaint in the category is that emptying the dust tank creates its kind of mess where fine dirt gets mostly in, but also all around your trash can — having a closed system where the vacuum empties itself and does away with the messiness of emptying the dust chamber is a really elegant solution to an annoying problem.

But before you get too far into considering whether you’d want to buy the LG CordZero All in One Tower Vacuum, you should take a moment and look at the measurements. The tower's base is 10.1” wide by 11.7” deep and measures slightly over 3’ in height, meaning it won’t fit just anywhere.

LG’s press images show the CordZero™ All in One Tower Vacuum displayed proudly in what looks like a dining room. A nice gesture to the design team from the marketing department, but not quite where folks will likely put it.

The vacuum looks about as nice as you can make a vacuum look, but at best it belongs near your washer and dryer or in a closet. At worst if you, like me, live in a small enough space where you cannot entirely hide your vacuum, you won’t be embarrassed putting it in a more noticeable part of the home.

It’s tempting to try and answer the question of whether the LG CordZero A9 Kompressor is good at its primary duty of cleaning by pointing to the impressive sounding spec sheet; an Axial Turbo Cyclone system, a 3-step HEPA Filtration System in the tower, and a 370W power unit that fills up the 33.8 oz dust tank. The problem is, of course, very few people know or care what that stuff means.

Instead, I put the vacuum to a series of tests over the month or so I had it to answer the question of whether it’s cleaning power matched the price tag.

I allowed three layers of dirt to accumulate to test out how this vacuum worked on rugs. The first layer was just the result of 6 months without a deep clean. Cat hair, dirt, dust and likely more had accumulated to a point where the color of the rug I’d bought wasn’t as vibrant. Embarrassing but, hey, a nice natural test for the vacuum. The second layer was fine bits of drywall that had fallen on the rug after a home project. The third layer were bits of cardboard from the cat scratcher I set near the rug.

With the primary attachment on, the first couple of layers of finer white drywall dust & cardboard bits got sucked right up. It was really easy to maneuver the vacuum by extending the tube & giving the rug just two passes. To get deeper, I notched things up to the second of the three settings and gave the rug another handful of passes, getting it to a point where the colors felt noticeably brighter.

The LG CordZero comes with an attachment specifically designed to pickup pet hair & fur. Smaller in width compared to the standard attachment, it features a spinning cylinder with rubber fins that help pick up the fur from fabric, allowing it to more readily sucked into the chamber. To test how effective the attachment would be, I allowed a bit of cat hair to build up on my cat, Agnes’ favorite chair & on the my bedspread where she often sleeps. Switching attachments was really easy to do, and getting the cat hair up wasn’t too much of a chore. At least for my circumstances — my particular cat, the particular fabric on my bedspread & chair — I was pleased with how good of a job the vacuum does. While takes between five & seven passes with the setting at 3, the highest speed that drains the battery in just 15 minutes, it does a great job at pulling up all of that hair.

Because this is a $1,000 vacuum, LG includes not one but two attachments for hard-to-reach areas; one with an extendable set of bristles and another with an angled tip and perforated sides.

I used these attachments to get between my desk and the brick wall it sits in front of and between my fridge and the counter. In both instances the attachments did their job well enough. The attachment with bristles was particularly good at getting dust leftover from another apartment-improvement project, while the angled piece helped with more precise cleaning.

I also tried the same attachment I used for my rug on the wood floors in my apartment. The low profile of the main attachment made it easy to get underneath my low bed frame, and it easily pivoted around corners to pick up dust bunnies, dirt tracked in on my shoes & the cat litter Agnes kicks up when hopping out of her litter box. I didn’t ever feel like I needed to crank it to the highest setting, as the first and second did the job well enough.

One of the most notable things about this vacuum is that it is also a mop. Testing the mop function was easy — I filled up the water to the line in the water compartment, and the vacuum automatically switched to mop mode. The attachment allows for three water settings — moderate, low & high — and did a solid job getting up some stuck-on stains on the floor leftover from cooking in my kitchen.

To be frank, there isn’t much bad about this vacuum. It’s very good at cleaning, and the auto-empty function is mighty convenient, and it doesn’t look too shabby but there are some things to be aware of.

This is the most obvious hangup. For many people, this won’t be the right vacuum due to the cost. It is a lot to spend on an appliance.

The best way to think about whether or not this vacuum is worth buying is by running a quick formula; (Total cost of vacuum/square footage)/times used. If you’re working with a space under 1,000 square feet or you don’t really vacuum that much, you should find a cheaper option.

In addition to being a bit loud, using the tower system to empty the vacuum requires you to use LG’s proprietary bags. That means a recurring expense in addition to the cost of needing to buy a new HEPA & exhaust filter. This isn’t terrible as they don’t need to be replaced too often, but it’s an expense of using this already pricey tool that you should be aware of.

The LG CordZero is a very good option if you have a lot of ground to cover and the extra cash to spend. It’s great for tough stuff like animal fur and genuinely innovative in its dustbin-emptying tower while also being effective at getting hard-to-reach spots. The price isn’t undeserved as everything from the design to the vacuum function strives to be the best in class. Ultimately it’s just a question of whether or not you want to pay for all of the extra convenience this offers.