You should keep in mind when shopping that Shark vacuums offer both powered and non-powered lift-away canisters. When it comes to powered lift-away canisters, you’re able to use the motorized floor head with its spinning brush roll while in lift-away mode. When shopping for a vacuum, the decision between a corded and cordless model depends on your specific needs and priorities. A corded vacuum offers an unlimited runtime and is a good choice for whole-house cleaning. Pay attention to the length of the cord to minimize how often you’ll need to stop and switch outlets, though. For context, our Best Upright pick, the Shark NV360 Navigator Lift-Away Deluxe Upright Vacuum, has a 25-foot cord.
If you need the vacuum for dusting work then you will have to ante up and buy a dusting tool. Fortunately the Canister Pet has been manufactured with a sealed system (Shark calls this an “anti-allergen complete seal”) which is an important feature for quality air filtration. This ensures that the vacuum does not leak unfiltered air back into the room.
There’s no way to turn the brush roll off, either, and it sent large, crunchy debris scattering around the room on our bare-floor tests. It did not glide across floors as easily as the Simplicity or Miele canister vacuums we tested. Dyson plays up its self-righting feature—it can pick itself up when knocked over.
When it is time to empty the dust bin, keep in mind that it’s a little tricky to pull apart. We found that if we didn’t properly place the two pieces together, the vacuum lost suction power once restarted. We also had to pull some hair out of the dust cup from crevices that did not initially empty.
You can turn down the suction to make gliding along easier, but at that point you’re not really vacuuming up much dirt. The Bissell – Zing did manage to pull slightly more dirt out of our test carpet than the other non-powered heads in our test, but it was a very difficult process. Powerful Shark® suction and advanced cleaning technologies, now in a compact canister vacuum. PowerFins™ and the selfcleaning brushroll give you multi-floor cleaning with no hair wrap.
It’s a bit pricey for a compact cleaner, but we suspect lots of them will end up in kitchens or garages for spot cleaning. If you’d like to do the work of choosing yourself, here’s the list of our canister vacuum reviews. While there’s no single shark canister vacuum best vacuum with a canister design, most are good enough to please almost everyone, and the differences are often not noticeable unless you really look for them. There have been comments that the pre-motor filters require frequent cleaning.
While our initial setup experience was a bit confusing because there is not much guidance given on setting up the home base and emptying station, we found the actual programming of the vacuum to be a breeze. The Shark app leads you through a series of programming settings and the robot maps out your home. You can also tweak the map to get it exactly how you want and establish no-go zones and carpeted zones and name different rooms. This part was the most tedious of using this vacuum as you can go into as much or as little detail as you want.
We look forward to testing Miele’s Boost CX1, a bagless canister vacuum designed as a compact option for people living in small spaces. To test for ease of maintenance, we tried to clog and tangle each machine with shredded copy paper, Cheerios, shark dustbuster Lego pieces, and toy dinosaurs. We also took apart a few of the vacuums to see how difficult it would be to unclog them. We found that the cheaper vacuums we tested came apart in fewer places, making it harder to access clogs.
A tank for Shark cleaning solution, which is included in your purchase, is built into its body. The floor head uses replaceable mop pads that include a unique chamber for collecting debris, and it features an easy-release button so you don’t have to touch the dirty pad when your cleaning session is done, too. Nevertheless, once this vacuum was performing well, we found it excelled at picking up all types of debris and no hair was caught in the brush shark canister vacuum roller. The swivel head makes it easy to maneuver under lower pieces of furniture and it’s lightweight enough to easily transcend a flight of steps. Because of the small dust bin size, we think this vacuum is more suited for apartments or townhomes, but it could also serve as a quick mess-cleaning tool in busy households. Lastly, if you’re looking for an inexpensive canister vacuum with only a bare floor head, the Bissell – Zing is our budget pick.