Weighing in at only 9lbs, you won’t have any issues carrying this lightweight bagless backpack vacuum cleaner! This intuitively designed backpack vacuum reduces strain and increases productivity! It doesn’t matter if you’re tall or short, this vacuum will work for you! The height-adjustable telescopic wand ensures that all of our customers will be able to easily use this vacuum.
There’s no LED display to tell you how much power you have left, but the LED lamps on the brush are powerful, working like floodlights to show where the dirt is. However, the real amazement for us came from the nozzle foot release. Tap gently on it with your foot and the nozzle detaches from the brush, so you can clean corners or ceilings. Not only do you never have to bend down to clean hard-to-reach places, you don’t have to stretch or struggle with any hose adjustment ever again.
The V15 Detect was able to remove 88% in the same challenge, as well as 95% from low-pile carpet. Whether vacuuming across hardwood floors or low-pile or midpile carpeting, the V15 barely left a tuft in its wake. There are plenty of options on the market, and we’ve spent countless hours testing the top models from brands like Shark, Bissell, Dyson, Tineco, Eureka, and Samsung at the CNET product testing lab in Louisville, Kentucky. In our vacuum cleaner evaluations, we run a rigorous slate of tests to determine each cleaner’s capabilities when it comes to picking up a variety of messes on various floor types. However, the cleaner head works extremely well on hard floors, and its self-cleaning brushroll won’t get tangled with pet hair.
Households with pets will need a vacuum that can handle pet hair and if you want to use it to clean more than just floors, you’ll need one that converts to a handheld cleaner and comes with plenty of useful attachments. If you’ve got a bigger home, a larger dust canister is a necessity if you want to ensure your floor cleaning session isn’t interrupted, and thankfully the Dyson V11 outsize offers just this. At 1.9-liters it can hold 150% more debris than the Dyson V15 Detect Absolute (above), and the wider-than-usual cleaning head, means you’ll be able to vacuum your floors quicker than ever too. We also found that the wand can be cumbersome when cleaning overhead and, unlike some other Shark vacuum cleaners, the brushroll can’t be switched off. We found that pick-up and manoeuvrability was good on hard and carpeted floors, and equally as impressive reaching overhead and on upholstery. The 1.9-quart / 1.6litre dust cup capacity is a large size which we feel will suit large homes or indeed, homes with pets, very well.
For those who prefer a more traditional stick vac configuration with an easy-to-grab handheld vacuum that piggybacks on board, this Electrolux WellQ7 is a great choice. Plus, it’s slim, streamlined and stands up on its own (which I love!). The battery offered just under 30 minutes of run time on the lowest power setting with the power nozzle attached, which is less than others in our test.
Instead of a brush roll, the Hizero has a soft polymer roller that’s supposed to mimic the way a dog licks things off the floor. It’s pretty cool technology but it wasn’t great at cleaning my textured kitchen floor (to be fair, the product description does state that it performs best on “leveled” floors). If you have the benefit of perfectly flat floors this could work—especially if you’re in an apartment and worry about noise. But if your floors have seen smoother days or you have an old house with kids and pets, you’re probably better off with something that actually sucks (in the good way).
While the Shark is mostly comparable to the Tineco iFloor 3, it’s pricier (at most retailers) yet it felt a little less sturdy, it was a little louder, and it left my floor a little wetter. When we test stick vacuums, we assess how well they pick up debris from bare floors and pet hair from carpets. We check the weight, battery run time and how easy they are to use, store and convert to a handheld vacuum to clean your car, upholstery and stairs.
Although we don’t think the Shark is ugly, it’s definitely more of an acquired taste than the super slick and modern Dyson. But the Dyson has the edge on weight, being around 1.5kg lighter than the Shark. I personally didn’t mind the extra weight as it feels more stable as you navigate around a room, but if you’re keen on a lighter option, go for the Dyson.
The Sharks both have a typical on/off toggle switch that you don’t need to hold down. As well as using them as handhelds what I found is that all four have very good suction powder and they all got the job done. However, the power fins that both Sharks have on their rotating shark stick vacuum floor vacuum elements give them a leg up over the Dyson Animals on vacuuming larger items like dry dog food and Cheerios. As with run time, the power of Dysons is reported in a different way than Sharks making it impossible to compare the two brands with specs alone.