Samantha Schoech is a writer focusing on gifts. She spends her time finding things that combine quality, beauty, usefulness, and delight.
I am lucky enough to be the guardian of the feline George Clooney: My long-hair Siamese mix, Atlas, was born a poor stray under a warehouse, and he has grown into an impossibly handsome, regal cat. Seriously, he’s crazy good-looking.
My other cat, Francis, has a cleft lip, a perpetually runny eye, and a great personality.
Both of them—but especially the beautiful Atlas—have thick, luxurious coats and demand lots and lots of petting, provided that it coincides with their schedules, moods, and locations.
What this means is that we live among drifts of cat hair. It collects between our fingers when we’re petting, it floats in the air like pollen, and it mats on furniture, throw blankets, clothing, and bedspreads.
I know, kind of gross. Except that at some point somebody (I forget now who that angel was) told me about the ChomChom Pet Hair Remover, and it changed everything.
Although Wirecutter hasn’t done any side-by-side testing of the ChomChom tool and another favorite, the Black+Decker Pet Hair Remover, the two devices share design features—including an easy-empty dustbin to corral the hair. And both are tools that we swear by for the unending task of managing pet fur.
This handheld cleaner’s back-and-forth rolling generates an electrostatic charge that effectively clears even the most hair-matted upholstery. It holds up for years and doesn’t require refills.
It’s a one-swipe wonder
I love the ChomChom tool for lots of reasons, but chief among them is that it simply works much better than anything I’ve ever used—including lint rollers of all kinds, mini vacs, and metal combs. You simply roll this plastic contraption back and forth over the offending hairy mess, and through some magic combination of a rubber lip, a rolling fur-grabbing brush, and static electricity, this tool collects all of the fur and neatly deposits everything into a chamber. Bonus: It collects any dust, lint, or random fibers that may be settling on your surfaces while it’s at it.
When the chamber is full, you press a button on the handle, the cover pops open, and you dump the contents. It’s that simple. There is nothing to rinse or replace. I’ve had two of these devices—one downstairs and one upstairs—for about four years, and I’ve never done any maintenance or cleaning of either one. They are so much easier to use, and I’ve found them just as effective at picking up unsightly fur as vacuuming my furniture. I’m not kidding—this ChomChom tool leaves upholstery utterly hairless. Feel free to sit down in black pants.
Two tiny flaws that had to be dragged out of me
It’s hard to think of anything I don’t appreciate about this little tool, especially for $25. But if you twist my arm, I will say that the latch holding the door of the hair-collection chamber closed has popped open on its own a few times. But because you can simply roll back over any spillage, that hardly matters.
Also, if pushed, I might say that this tool isn’t the absolute best at removing cat fur from clothing I’m wearing; it works on firmer straightaways, such as the quad area, but has some trouble navigating the squishier middle (pulling the fabric taut takes care of that pretty well). I keep a lint roller in my car (Wirecutter’s favorite is from Scotch-Brite) for on-the-go touch-ups because the fur battle requires an arsenal.
This article was edited by Alexander Aciman and Catherine Kast.
Meet your guide
Samantha Schoech
Except for the time she gave a boyfriend her mother’s old toaster for Christmas, staff writer Samantha Schoech has a reputation as an excellent gift giver. She lives in San Francisco with two teens, two cats, a geriatric betta fish, and a bookseller husband. Her first book of short stories, My Mother’s Boyfriends, is coming out in 2024.