However – a heavier vacuum isn’t necessarily a disadvantage – just something to be aware of. A heavier vacuum will naturally push down onto the floor its cleaning more. The more it pushes down the more dirt it will dislodge and, in theory, the cleaner your floor will be. That just shark cordless comes at the cost of having a more heavy unit to move around the house, so really, like so many of these points, it comes down to personal preference and situation rather than a hard and fast recommendation. I was a little skeptical at the time of purchase about it power.
And weighing in at just 3 pounds, this vacuum is super compact, making it ideal for those with arthritis or other mobility issues. All the cordless vacuums we’ve tried have been strong enough to suck up small crumbs and tufts of hair off bare floors, at least when they’re new. But we don’t know which ones will continue to perform well over time. Most models in the range of $150 haven’t been out long enough for us to know one way or the other, and those that have been out for a while don’t have as good of a track record as the Linx did. At the GHI, we put 52 stick vacuums to the test to find the best for tackling pet hair, cars, carpets, hard floors and more.
Helps keep my wooden floors clean when I need to spot vac from messes that come with kids. Corded Shark vacuums usually require manually winding the electrical cord for storage instead of automatically storing it away. While they may not have specialized tools like a pet grooming brush or a ceiling fan tool, they come with a solid selection of tools and brushes to help get the job done. Removes pet hair and long hair from the brushroll—no more hair wrap. ‘There’s a space in the head of the vacuum for you to place the cartridge in, and then you can dial up the intensity to the level you’d like,’ Molly explains.
It was such an instant gratification to see the dust bunnies accumulate inside the clear canister. Just make sure you place the unit inside a plastic bag, so it’s less messy. Turning the unit to handheld is simple and worked nicely as well. I was able to vacuum the entire home (about 1,200 sq. feet) in about 30 min. and the unit was still fully charged. The only negative is that it cannot stand on its own, so it has to lay flat on the floor.
The low point is the awful dustbin, which falls off too easily if you bump it. In our tests, we always struggled to reattach it because it offered no tactile cues for where to line it up and no audible click when it slotted into place. It’s not a trap-door-style bin, either, so you need to pull off the filter by hand to dump it out.
Light and easy to manoeuvre, it scored well as both an upright and a handheld, removing embedded pet hair in a single sweep. The innovations in this vacuum were so impressive that we selected it as a winner in our Good Housekeeping Best Cleaning Product Awards. Figuring out and comparing run times of cordless vacuums is tricky because the times reported by the brands are not under conditions of typical use. Dyson v10 and v11 cordless vacuums reportedly have up to 60 minutes of fade-free run time with a non-motorized attachment . The Shark Rocket Pet Pro and Shark Vertex reportedly have up to 40 minutes and 60 minutes, respectively, of runtime in standard mode measured at the hand vac . So we’re not really comparing apples to apples here between the two brands and neither is telling us how long to expect the vacuum to run when being used as most of us would.
The game-changing new vacuum also boasts Shark’s new Clean Sense IQ technology. Exclusive to the cordless range, it senses the dust you can’t see and automatically adjusts the suction power to remove up to 50 per cent more dirt for visible results. If you don’t want to spend as much on a handheld vacuum as you would on a full-sized one, then you can expect this affordable option from Vax to get the little jobs done very nicely. This is one of the best handheld vacuums you can buy if you’re on a budget.