Ryobi R18WV-C13P Window Vac Kit

Worst Ryobi Tool – My Karcher window vac died recently and saw this one from Ryobi. I have a number of 18v Ryobi tools and therefore already had the battery. It seemed a good idea to get this Ryobi one. Regretably, it is absolutely terrible. My other Ryobi tools work well and I am happy with them but not the window vac. It leaves streaks and has poor suction on the… Read more

water. You would be better off saving your money and buying a cheap squeegee than using this. I have stopped using the Ryobi vac and will be going and getting another Karcher.

Junker – It leaks, doesn’t suck, heavy with the small battery and sounds lile its about to eat itself up. Tried it 3 times and its Junk compared to the same priiced Karcher. My bad, as I love the 1+ gear, but sadly this is a dud. Show details

Poor suction – Unlike a previous el cheapo window vacuum I had, this one is hopeless. It has insufficient suction to collect the water, which runs to the bottom of the window. I’m going to try and take it back, as it is not fit for purpose. Show details

I think i should of just bought a squeedgy – I used it for the first time yesterday... So I went slow and tried to keep it upright like the instructions say... but when you get to the window sill of splashback countertop you are stuffed. You can't effectively finish off the window and going horizontal leaves streaks. Maybe it willget better with use but I am ffrustrated Show details

Don’t bother buying – Bought one of these from Bunnings a few days ago. Followed instructions correctly, wasn’t happy with having to use a microfibre cloth to wipe the streaks away. Suction not great. Took it back to Bunnings and got a refund. Easier to use a bucket of water and silicone squeezy. Definitely not with $160. Show details

Its a Ryobi – Oh makes cleaning large windows and glass doors so easy, amazing how it sucks up the water Show details

Garbage – You can get right down to the bottom of glass doors and leaves streaks Show details

Very bad vacuum suction – The vacuum has very little suction. Still had to use a microsoft cloth

Excellent – I’ve been using it for work for a couple of years now and it’s fantastic. I’ve seen all the bad reviews and I can tell you why people are having so many problems. They are either not getting the widow wet enough. Your cleaning concentrate ratio is wrong. They aren’t going from top to bottom in one long stoke. Or you’re pressing the vac too hard on… Read more

the window, just press very lightly, keeping the vac on a slight tilt so the waste water goes to wet side. And a handy tip because even the best window vac can leave a tiny bit of moisture every now and again. I recommend having a microfibres glass specific cloth to just wipe away any errors.

Does not work effectively – I agree with all the negative reviews. It's very disappointing. Leaves streaks and i tried all different ways of using it. I had to go over every window with a microfiber cloth Show details

Crap! – I wish I read reviews before wasting my money. It makes more noise than anything else. Leaves a puddle at the bottom of window so does not in fact 'vacuume' anything! Better results with a plain old $2 squeegee. Show details

Total disaster – I have used other brand before and because we have other Ryobi products thought to buy this one. BUT it did not do anything like the other brand. Total failure. DO NOT BUY THIS PRODUCT. If you want a brilliant window cleaner buy Kacher. It is amazing. Show details

Terrible product – I have been building a range of products from the Ryobi One + range, and this has been the first item that I don’t rate. It doesn’t have the vacuum suction to remove the glass cleaning fluid and just leaves smears all over the window. No matter how many times I tried to use it in different ways or speeds the result was worst than a normal $2 squeegee. Don’t rate it at all. Will be seeking a refund tomorrow. Don’t waste your money! Show details

People need to forget SQUEEGEE's and skimping WHEN USING THIS – MY children Borrowed my WINDOW VAC on the weekend and bought it back in a hurry ( fastest they ever returned a boorwed item) SAYING -IT's useless. I went to their house and cleaned the windows and they admitted that when they used it they did by spraying sparingly. AND IT LEFT STREAKS. IT's a VACUUM ........Let it do it's job !! What I did… Read more

differently- SPRAY lots of cleaner on and clean with microfibre cloth/spray tool. ( I mean almost to the point of using 1/2 the bottle). Apply soft even pressure giving the vacuum time to suck up the water on the glass. In one long continous stroke like it says in the manual.

Finally buff the glass.

Leaves glass worse off – I had this for about a week, and have to agree with most reviews here. Seems like Ryobi just produced this product to have something in this space. Not sure they ever tested it. In particular, the claims made on the box are plain wrong. It says "powerful suction" and "Streak-free cleaning" and "3x faster than traditional method". Nonsense to all… Read more

of that.

I got the latest model (H15B), and have tried to clean showers and bathroom mirrors with this product. I would not use it on cars windows, because it will leave you with a worse vision.

Fortunately I bought an open-box product and did not pay full price (probably a return but it was UNUSED before). So at least I got a free battery and charger. But it would have been more efficient and much more economical to buy a $2 plastic squeegee from Ikea.

IMO it is impossible for this product to be "streak free" due to the way it has been designed. It has 2 squeegees, the bottom one in a wave form, the top one straight. And guess what. The wave-form Squeegee leaves lines on the glass according to its wave pattern. Surprise, surprise!!

The vacuum is not ""powerful" and it leaves moisture on the glass. And like other reviewers said, you cannot clean the bottom 30cm of the glass because you hit the ground due to the design.

It is not "3x faster" because you get an inferior finish, and you have to redo it several times -after which it is still not properly clean, and you have to use a different tool to finish the job.

I own many Ryobi tools, but this product is not fit for purpose. Period. I would not recommend it. Can I take a slightly used item back to Bunnings?

How can something so simple be so useless? – Leaves streaks everywhere. Had to use a sponge and a chux to fix up the mess. despite all the noise it has insufficient vacuum. I've never used the karcher version but people rave about that one. Did my money! Show details

Slower and more steaks! – I bought this to do my glass pool fence because it claims to be faster and streak free. After struggling to get a streak free finish and not leaving half the water on the glass, I reached the bottom of the glass. Unfortunately, the design means the vacuum hits the deck long before the squeegee is near the bottom of the glass. I cleaned 3 panels… Read more

(approximately 12sqm) before giving up. I had another 21 panels to go!

I went back to the $3 squeegee I use to clean my showers and it was about 2 to 3 times faster than using the vacuum and gave similar results. Only redeeming feature is the spray bottle / scrubber brush that comes with it. But it's not worth $89.

Terrible, worst Ryobi product I ever purchased – The idea of being able to clean windows easily and remove condensation drew me to this window vac. It would be ok if things like window. Sills didn't exist but the reality is they do. You cant use this machine eight down to the bottom of the window because the body gets in the way. The only way to work around this is to it on its side, but then… Read more

water runs through the motor and ours out the vents and straight onto the floor. I doubt this does the motor any favours either.

I've had a great run out of many other Ryobi products, but the design of this unit is so very very poor. Just seems like padding for the One+ range.

My recommendation, don't waste your money on this one.

The biggest problem with this device is – what it claims to do versus what it does. From Bunnings' Website: "- Faster and more effective than traditional window-cleaning methods - Streak-free cleaning for pristine results The RYOBI 18V ONE+ Window Vac can keep your windows clean and streak-free with less time and effort required. It cleans windows up to three times faster than… Read more

traditional methods."

I read all the reviews I could find before purchasing the skin-only version. (Without the battery.)

The reviews put me off buying it for a while, but I could not stop thinking about the fact that most reviews complained about the claims that you'll get "streak-free" cleaning, and this magical ability seemed to be the bane of most negative reviewers.

I hope this helps others who might fall for the jargon, and also those who genuinely want to know "How well does work, and will it help me?"

My opinion:

The streak-free claims are misleading and total RUBBISH. They should be removed from the packaging and website of ALL WINDOW VACS and MANUAL BLADES. Would you still buy the product without those claims??

Getting streak-free results has nothing to do with this product versus other window cleaning products. Any window cleaning product can get you streak-free results, depending on YOUR SKILL level and patience. It's bad marketing, and isn't doing Ryobi any favours as they're getting unnecessary bad ratings attached to the claims, not the product!

Streak-free cleaning has to do with your skill at cleaning the window, the dirt on your window to start with, the quality of detergent or cloth you might be using, and how you dry the window. Using traditional methods for external windows, I'd wash off the soapy water first, which you don't really do with the Ryobi, otherwise it WOULD NOT BE THREE TIMES FASTER THAN TRADITIONAL METHODS. The Ryobi comes with a pretty good detergent "sample", and micro-fibre cloth, which is probably better than what I was using.

Fact is that after my first use of the product, I DID get streak-free results. I do NOT attribute this to the window vac, but rather to the care I took in cleaning the window compared to doing it really quickly with regular window cleaner, and perhaps to the detergent supplied. I spent a lot longer using their flimsy, non-extendable microfibre attachment to the spray-bottle. (Press too hard and you'll snap it, and you definitely now need a ladder than you didn't need before!)

I did find it took me LONGER to clean my window--then you should add the time it takes to CLEAN THE VAC after use, which you really should be doing. I found the suction to be okay or maybe not so good. I don't know how good a Karcher is at suction, so it's hard to say if this is below par. Most of the water DID get sucked up, but it gets hard to clean up the last bits--even if you go over and over them--and also to get to the edges of the windows because the appliance is BIG and cumbersome compared with a cheap throwaway SILICONE BLADE WINDOW cleaner. I had to literally turn it upside-down for the windows near the floor. I doubt you'd see that in any promotional video! It could be argued that "traditional methods" are NOT the methods using a silicon bladed cleaner, but rather newspaper or dishcloth, and I suppose in that case the claims are partially valid. But still misleading, because I've used the manual and extendable bladed cleaner for what seems like forever!

Is it worth it? If you like gadgets then maybe. I would NOT use it for exterior windows probably EVER! It's about THREE TIMES SLOWER than the way I currently do it, and you cannot extend the reach like you can with a silicon blade with an extender pole; therefore, you need to get out and move your ladder around. I can't imagine who (there's a review on YouTube of someone doing this with a Karcher) would want to use it daily in their bathroom! Just use a WATERPROOF manual blade to move the water to the floor, which is already wet! Use a rubber broom with blade attachment to sweet the water into your drain. Done 30-seconds.

It takes me about three - twenty times less time to clean a manual bladed stick cleaner! Also, you need to move the window vac quite slowly to suck up all the water, and turn it to all sorts of angles to get into corners. With a regular blade, you just wipe the water to the bottom and it dries up naturally, and this is super fast. But, for indoors, it's a different matter. You don't want water on the carpets and wooden floors (for very long.) Putting a towel along the base and blading the water downwards works fine. But, I thought the window vac did a reasonable to better job of sucking up most of the water, like a "cool trick".

This device does not perform miracles. A new brand of Paracetamol cannot be designed to take pain away specifically from your left pinky, yet you get rubbish marketing claiming so all the time. Please don't buy it for streak-free results, rather complain that this is misleading advertising. Ryobi should change these claims for their own sake as well. Buy it if you have a One+ battery already, which saves you around 50% on the price of the kit. Buy it if you have indoor windows that are EASY TO REACH with carpets directly below them, and this is all you want to use it for. Cleaning mirrors may be easier, unless they are like mine and extend to the ceiling, then forget about it. You're going to struggle getting to all corners of any window so you may find yourself using this plus a manual stick to get the job done to perfection. You're also going to drive yourself crazy tying to get that little corner as perfect as the rest of the window.

Good luck.

Terrible suction – Bought this. Tried it with windows with condensation in the morning. The suction is so poor it just acts like a squeegee and piles up the water to run down onto the window sill. I was unfortunately reminded that Ryobi’s One+ handheld vacuum from years ago had equally poor suction but was hoping for better from this. Very disappointed as many other One+ tools are excellent. Show details

Love it to bits – Just Bought one of these and cleaning widows is no longer a chore that you will hate. I already have alot of ryobi one + tools so I thought why not, its best thing ever and I also done the shower screen.