For cleaning carpet, a spinning brush roller works much better than suction alone by agitating the carpet and sweeping up the dirt and hair as they bounce around. This is a defining trait of most upright vacuums, but you can get a brushroll head for many canister vacuums. The suction is strong enough in every model that even the cleaning heads with air-powered, turbine-driven brush rolls outperformed many other brands’ electrically driven brush rolls in our tests. The Calima was second best in our debris-pickup test on short-pile carpeting, vacuuming up 84 percent of the sand–and–baking soda mixture. Although our main pick, the Shark Navigator Lift-Away, picked up nearly all of the debris, we think the difference won’t be noticeable to most people. If you’re willing to upgrade to a vacuum that can clean the heck out of your home and last for decades, buy a Miele C3 canister vacuum cleaner.
Some of the experts we talked to said that if they could recommend just one vacuum, they’d recommend a Miele canister vacuum cleaner. We ran this test at least two times for each vacuum to ensure that our results were consistent, on medium-pile and high-pile carpeting. Praised by nearly everyone as excellent, this nimble canister vacuum works on any kind of flooring, runs quiet, and should last for decades. This model is great for those with asthma and allergies, but it requires bags.
Against the tougher competition of bagged canister vacuums, the Apex let more fine dust into the air than Kenmore’s top-of-the-line sealed bag system did. The difference is only about 20%, and the Shark captured more large dust particles, so we’re happy with this performance considering the other advantages of the system. We tested the top-of-the-line Shark Apex and found it to be a good vacuum, but probably not worth the extra cost over the Navigator.
Although the vacuum cleaner is relatively lightweight and easy to steer, we did find that the handle was prone to standing itself back into an upright position while we were pushing the vacuum across bare floors. Canister-style vacuums are less common than uprights shark robotic vacuums in the US and Canada, but are popular in Europe. It can feel weird to use one at first, since you’re pulling a little pod around behind you with a long hose. Canisters usually feel lighter to steer because most of the weight is on the ground, not in your hand.
The Miele Classic C1 is a full-size canister vacuum with an extra long hose, various on-board attachments, bagged debris, and powerful suction. This guide is going to highlight the absolute best canister vacuum cleaners for 2023. While some vacuums have filters that need regular replacement, a washable filter is both easy to maintain and minimizes the recurring expense of buying new filters. By regularly cleaning a Shark vacuum’s filter, you can keep your vacuum operating at peak levels of suction and particle capture. This feature is very handy for any household, but particularly one that’s conscious of their environmental impact or sticking to a budget.
We docked a point from its overall rating for its cleaning effectiveness, but it can still get the job done—on average, it cleaned up the cereal, popcorn kernels, and strands of hair in just shark robotic vacuums three to five passes. At 3.5 quarts, the dust bin of this upright vacuum is larger than most, too. Our testing team loved this feature and found the dust bin to be super easy to empty.