LG CordZero All-in-One A9 review: Almost too powerful

Best Prices Today: LG All-in-One Cordless Stick Vacuum (A949KTMS)

Loaded with features, LG’s new top-of-the-line CordZero stick vac wants to be your all-in-one cleaning agent. Adept at both vacuuming and floor-mopping duties, the CordZero comes with a free-standing storage and charging tower, and it’s fitted with swappable accessories and an uncommon, resizable extension pipe. The CordZero also proactively cleans up after itself (as well as your house), while the companion ThinQ app warns when maintenance is due. 

On several accounts, this pricey ($999.99) new bundle upgrades on the similar looking, tower-mounted CordZero All-In-One that I tested in March 2022. Suction power on the new relation is much better–almost too good in some cases. Nozzle end designs have been efficiently refined, especially the Dual Floor Max Nozzle for carpeted and bare surfaces. Larger, higher capacity lithium-ion batteries–one on board, one charging in reserve–aim to keep the vac cranking longer.  

The LG CordZero A9 All-in-One Tower is a perfect match for power cleaners, although some may find it overkill.

Floor washing functionality is better too, with an upgraded dual-spinning mop head dubbed the “Power Mop Pro.” You can now control the gush of water washing onto the floor with a dedicated “squirt” button, and the liquid can now be enhanced with a capful or two of specialty floor detergent. The prior model only lets you put H2O in the tank. 

While I admire this new CordZero a lot, I must note that its loftier ambitions are not fully met on a couple fronts. The ThinQ app for this cordless stick vac has proven a challenge to install and use, while the mop head is still lacking a vacuuming-up-afterwards, floor-drying element.  

This review is part of TechHive’s in-depth coverage of the best robot vacuums.

Loaded for combat, this CordZero tips the scales at seven pounds, a pound more than the Dyson V8 and V15 in my arsenal. I didn’t really notice the weight gain in the combo nozzle (nine ounces heavier than its predecessor) when pushing the stick vac around on the floor, as the newbie runs smoother on four wheels instead of three. But when the motorized core is split off for use as a handheld vac, lifting and maneuvering becomes more difficult because of the balance-shifting half-pound extra of battery weight, not to mention the deeper-set handle.  

Design and internals 

Kick-starting the show is a revved-up version of LG’s cyclonic motor, now cranking 265 air watts of suction power (up from 210 watts in prior top-of-the-line LG models) and working in tandem with a new, compact, direct-drive (not belt-driven) double-roller power head. The bare floor-tackling fluffy roller is positioned tight against the front cover for superior under cabinet (“kick toe”) coverage.  

Behind and slightly recessed upwards is a scruffy (bristled) brush to comb through carpeted zones. The front of the head boasts a horizontal strip of 12 LEDs, which expose dust and prove especially helpful when vacuuming in dark corners and under furniture. And thanks to the double-roller design, there’s no need to repeatedly stop the machine to swap out dedicated bare floor and carpet heads. 

Even without turbo mode engaged, the suction/extraction power going on here is intense–a good argument for trashing your much heftier but no more powerful upright or cannister vac. Medium speed is the turn-on default setting, but I mostly stepped down to “low,” and I honestly wish there was an even lower setting.

More than once, I accidentally swept the CordZero inwards from the edge of a very light throw rug and watched the machine eat a hunk. (The vac shuts down automatically whenever something gets caught in the rollers, but some tugging is required to free the hostage.) And as I’ve also noted with my most powerful of Dyson vacs (a V15), the CordZero may pull up a few fibers in a loose woven rug. I wish LG offered a setting that totally powered down the spinning heads, thus allowing the vacuum to rely strictly on air extraction.  

On the bright side, the new CordZero A9 does an excellent job of lifting out fine, deeply embedded grit, including nasty little moth eggs that pass for black dirt and eat wool rugs like nobody’s business. Superior suction power also reduces the need to swipe over zones repeatedly.  

Bundled accessories include a convertible brush/crevice tool and the motorized, rubber-bladed Pet Nozzle (which quickly de-furred our test sofa.)  

Rollers and brush heads

Close inspection of the Dual Floor Max Nozzle shows the fluffy roller sits a few millimeters lower than the scruffy head, so–in theory–only the fluffy swirler (plus two small and two large wheels) come into contact with bare flooring. The brush head looms higher, but LG cautions users to keep the brush head free of entangled debris, which might then rub the flooring the wrong way. 

Also, keep that fluffy head dry. Don’t confuse which head you’ve got on, nor should you task it with mopping up wet spills, or some of the absorbed moisture might then rub off onto the next rug in the nozzle’s path, or screw up the vac’s innards.  

The mop head is totally isolated from the extension pipe, meaning that nothing it attacks gets sucked into the product body, the three-stage filters, or the motor. 

Self-emptying tower

LG shortens any smelly dry material contamination in this high-end vac with the dirt-offloading skills of its companion All-in-One Tower storage and recharging station. As soon as you seat the vac on this stand, it automatically wakes up, opens the vac’s bay door, and sucks out the cannister contents with a seriously “wooshing” motorized extraction process that funnels dirt through a two-stage filter and into a self-sealing paper vac bag hiding in the tower’s bottom. Allergy sufferers will love this nose-off, hands-off dirt-transfer approach. 

If you can handle a little exposure to dust, it’s also possible to open the vac’s cannister over a trash bag and dump the accumulation there, with a little help from LG’s levered tank dirt compression and sweeping mechanism, called Kompressor. Doing so cuts way down on branded vac bag replacement (the bags cost almost $6 a pop). And when the CordZero goes back on the stand, the automated system only needs to suck some finer particles out of the vacuum, helping maintain its pristine, peak suction power. Take note, however, that you are still expected to wash the three filters in this vac, plus the two in the stand (once a month is suggested).  

Battery life

Besides recharging the vac’s on-board battery, the tower stand also maintains a second, equal-strength battery in a dedicated compartment. LG quotes an eye-opening run time of up to 100 minutes for each lithium-Ion battery pack (up from a rating of 60 minutes, tops, on prior CordZeros), but that “100” number is clocked without a motorized nozzle attached.  

In the real world, I’ve scored 27 minutes of continuous use with the carpet/bare floor rollers and intake motor running at their lowest speed–still a good run. If left at the default medium speed, the battery power endures for 15 minutes. On turbo, it’s just seven. With the motorized wash head installed and spinning at its single speed, I’ve managed 12-15 minutes of steady use before needing to swap out the battery. I’d also recommend a cool-down break for the motor, at that point. One battery suffices to swab my kitchen floor twice plus a couple bathrooms. 

Floor-washing performance

I’m less enthralled with the floor-washing side of the LG CordZero A9 system. Yes, the Power Mop Pro head has likewise been upgraded with illuminating LED headlamps and that newfound squirt power with soapy water. (Be careful where you’re aiming that thing, or you’ll also be wetting down the bottoms of cabinet doors and wall trim and then need to hand-wipe them.) 

Suitable for use on grouted ceramic tile, stone floors, linoleum, or well-sealed wooden floors, the Power Mop Pro head does its duty with a side-by-side pair of round swirling fabric pads that attach with hook-and-loop fasteners to the head’s spinning metal plates. The mechanism agitates surface dirt well, and the pads also absorb a fair amount of moisture. But there’s no active extraction of the liquid that’s left on the floor, as you’ll find in the new, ultra-pricey Dyson V15s Detect Submarine and also in the bargain Eureka New400 Wet Dry Vac that I recently reviewed.  

So, what to do? With the CordZero, I swabbed the floor, then pulled off, rinsed, and wrung out the pads, then returned them to the mop head and went over the floor again–this time without any squirting–to just soak up as much overt wetness and lingering dirt as I could. (If you’re too rushed to wash and rinse the mop pads, just switch to the second pair LG includes in the package.)

Five minutes later, any remaining film of water had pretty much evaporated from my ceramic tile floor, and it certainly looked cleaner. The only disappointment is that without dirty moisture extraction, the recessed dark grout between the tiles (originally gray/green when the floor was first installed) didn’t lighten up at all, as I’ve seen happen after the Eureka New400 worked its synchronized wash-and-vac routine.  

Not incidentally, when LG first announced an upgrade of the Cord Zero and its Power Mop head at CES 2023, the latter’s feature set included a sanitizing steam function that might have done a better job of loosening and lifting deeply embedded dirt from tile and grout. Alas, that steaming option has still not appeared on the newest CordZeros sold on these shores, though I have spotted it in a model available in South Korea, Singapore, and New Zealand for the equivalent of $1,200.  

The arrival of an upgraded Power Mop head in the States is “something we are considering for the future as we see the expansion of wet and dry cleaning tools in the U.S. market,” an LG rep told me.  

App control

The CordZero offers smart home efficiencies through its connected ThinQ app, which is capable of tracking your usage, informing you when the batteries are fully recharged, and running on-demand diagnostics. The app also packs a guide to cleaning the on-board filters, plus a complete replica of the owners’ manual.  

Unfortunately, communication between the cordless vac, the All-in-One Tower, and the cloud via 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi connections hasn’t proven very reliable in my home tests, even after several hours of interacting with tech support. That’s a far cry from the easy setup and functionality I’ve experienced with AC-powered ThinQ products (more on that in a future piece.)   

So why haven’t I downgraded the CordZero more severely? Truth is, I don’t find its ThinQ features all that compelling to start with. I don’t really need the app to track time spent cleaning my house, which happens to be the least reliable ThinQ feature. And I’m certain I’m gaining extra battery run time for the vac by just leaving the Wi-Fi connectivity off.  

For its part, the reliably app-connected and AC-powered tower component does gather and feed some ThinQ data consistently to the app when the vac is seated in the station. The tower tells me when on-board batteries have been fully recharged, and it can run a Smart Diagnosis of the vac to determine why basic performance might not be right. 

Should you buy the LG CordZero A9 Cordless Stick Vacuum?

The LG CordZero All-in-One A9 seems a perfect match for power cleaners, including homeowners and commercial users who want their cleaning tools ever at the ready, sitting out and fully charged for daily combat with grime.

Others may find the CordZero overkill, or at least overpriced.  

Best Prices Today: LG All-in-One Cordless Stick Vacuum (A949KTMS)