It seamlessly cruises around carpet and hard floors, and has a detachable pod for portable cleaning, along with an extender for stairs and shelves. But if you want hands-free cleaning, the Shark AI Ultra Robot is a great option—it’s controlled by an app on your phone and even empties itself. The Navigator Freestyle has a two-speed brushroll, and it comes with a convenient charging stand for docking when it’s not in use. The brand doesn’t list the maximum runtime per charge of this cordless vacuum, but in testing, we were able to clean for 15 minutes without depleting the battery. Overall, we think this lightweight upright vacuum is ideal for small- to medium-sized homes, and you can’t beat its reasonable price point.
The Shark Vertex PowerFins Vacuum features powerful suction on all surfaces, a storage-friendly handle, and generally quiet operation. As we discovered in The Lab, it has the power you need to leave your carpets deeply clean and your hardwood floors sparkling. This model earned a perfect rating for its effectiveness and didn’t cause any debris to scatter in the process. In fact, it cleaned up every material in just a pass or two, regardless of flooring type. We found that the 1.4-quart dust bin empties easily, but given the vacuum’s powerful suction and long-lasting battery, we do wish it had more capacity.
A Shark handheld vacuum is ideal for small cleaning tasks in the house or car, and takes up minimal storage space. This black vacuum has gold accents that give it a more premium look than the cheaper canister on offer from Shark, which has silver accents. It feels sturdy and well made, the floorhead in particular is far better quality than we see on most canister vacuums. The dual brushroll configuration makes it a robust cleaner that’s designed to clean deep into carpets, without damaging hard floors. One accessory that sets apart the most expensive vacuums is a small powered rotary-brush tool, specifically designed for grabbing pet hair that sticks to furniture. Less-expensive vacuums sometimes include an air-powered version that might be worth trying out, but those are ineffective for tougher jobs like cleaning carpeted stairs.
Suction allows the vacuum to lift debris off the ground, and airflow helps push the debris to the vacuum’s dustbin. In general, more suction and airflow translate to better cleaning performance, but brush-roll action is also important, especially on carpeting, because you need agitation to get at the debris embedded in carpet fibers. We rated each vacuum according to its scores and used this data to sort them into categories.
There is a carrying handle to easily move this vacuum from space to space as well as an area in the back of the vacuum for storing on-board tools. There is also a self-adjusting cleaning head that takes the guesswork out of adjusting this canister vac. Shark has a diverse lineup of vacuums, and their naming convention can sometimes be very confusing to parse out. What it lacks in accessories, it makes up for in other standout features.
Most notable is its ability to remove ground in dirt from deep within a carpet pile. Even when vacuuming recently vacuumed rooms, it was able to remove far more dirt from within the carpet than we expected or even realized was there. Likewise, it has a similar effect on a long pile area rug, giving it a deep and thorough clean. All models we tested include a detail brush and a crevice tool to get into furniture cracks.
To test for ease of maintenance, we tried to clog and tangle each machine with shredded copy paper, Cheerios, 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. We sprinkled some baking soda next to corners and baseboards to test how each vacuum tackled those. Some models got everything out of a corner with no effort, because they had air channels built for that purpose, and others left some debris behind or picked it up only after several passes. These traits set the best upright and canister vacuum models apart from the good ones.
It’s still excellent at cleaning carpets in an upright configuration while giving acceptable performance in lift-away mode on bare floors. We also tried out the Big Ball MultiFloor bagless canister vacuum, but it fell short during testing in similar ways to the Ball Animal shark canister vacuum 2. Although it does have two suction levels, they’re both too strong to work on shag carpeting or very light area rugs without choking. 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.
Even still, we gave this Navigator model solid marks for maneuverability and positive notes on the swivel steering. This type of steering will give you easier access to corners, and it makes this pick a bit more pleasurable to use. Shark only has two canister vacuums in its range and the Shark Vertex Bagless Corded Canister Vacuum with DuoClean Powerfins is the top-of-the-range option shark dustbuster and as such it’s the more expensive of the two. But for that you’ll get all of Shark’s best design features bundled into one canister vacuum that offers top-notch performance. The canister feels lightweight to pull along and when vacuuming stairs it’s compact enough to sit on a step. We did experience the hose twisting a couple of times, but a firm tug usually pulls it straight.
Miele reps have told us that the company designs all its products to last 20 years. Brian Driscoll, the Reddit vacuum guy, told us that he has seen 30-year-old Miele canisters. Senior staff writer Tim Heffernan’s 12-year-old Miele “still runs like new and has never had a single issue,” even after he mistakenly vacuumed up a lot of plaster dust without a bag in place. This is the most rigorous set of tests we’ve done on vacuum cleaners at Wirecutter, particularly the cleaning tests. In previous versions of this guide (and in our other vacuum guides), we also did a bunch of testing, but we didn’t measure the results as carefully.