I really really wanted a Dyson Cinetic Pet vacuum, but hubby refused to budge. He flat out refused to pay over $500 for a vacuum. I still have a vacuum cleaner at home, but I noticed that it is losing suction and it's well over 10 years old. I started my search while I still had my eye on that Dyson.
First, I had to narrow down which Shark to get. The choices seemed endless and the differences between them weren't always clear. I nearly bought one that did not have a hepa filter, but a washable filter. Who wants to wash a filter???? Why would they even make that model?
My needs were a vacuum cleaner that can do stairs easily, that can switch from hardwood to carpet easily, a bagless model and of course, one with a hepa filter.
After much sweating, I decided on
I got free next day shipping and it arrived the next day. I was a little worried when I tried to get the box into the house, because it was HEAVY.
I opened the box and found it on the easy side to put together. There is only one design flaw that I found putting it together. If you have the cord rapped up, you cant use the lift away because the cord is in the way. You have to unwind it to remove the canister.
There seemed to be a lot of parts that I was not using. It came with a huge bag of tools and a piece that makes it a canister vac. It also had a swiffer looking piece that cleans up dust on a wood floor. I will try to use that later.
After about 20 minutes of assembly time (I am not good with assembly and it only took me 20 minutes), I was ready to go. I took the vacuum to my front room. It's a room we dont use very often, but I wanted to test out the carpet thickness.
The first thing I noticed is that if you put the setting for the highest carpet pile, it feels like the vacuum pulls itself away from you. I did not see that it is self propelled, but it felt like it was. I still am not sure if it's self propelled, but that was different.
I vacuumed the front room we rarely use, then decided to have a look in the canister. It was almost full. WOW. My other vac did not get hardly anything up from that floor. I also noted that it was dust and dirt and not carpet fibers. I've had a vac before that pulled my carpet up as I vacuumed and made it wear out fast, so I was happy to see only dirt in the canister.
Next I decided to tackle the stairs. I knew the stairs would be bad because my other vac wasnt really cleaning them and I could see the dirt on them.
I had to empty the canister halfway up. The stairs look new now.
I then went upstairs and vacuumed my daughters room. This was when I found the second design flaw with the machine. My daughter has long hair and she leaves it all over the floor in her room. Our other vac was not picking it up, but boy this one was....but it was also rapping itself around the roller.
I tried several different ways, but there was no easy access to the roller to remove the hair. Hubby walked in and saw me poking a screw driver into the machine and offered to do it for me. He used the screwdriver to remove the hair from the roller and there was more around the roller than in the canister and let me just say that the ball of hair he pulled out was larger than our small dog. I do wish there was an easy way to remove hair from the roller, but this is common with vacuums. The last one we had did not even allow screw driver access. The machine had to be taken apart to clean the roller. At least I could get to it, but in a perfect world, the roller would be right there for me to access.
I am going to end this review before I even get to all the other wonderful tools and I will do a followup. We all know that vacs lose suction over time, and I want to see how well this one does over time. Over the coming week, I will try out the tools and post about how well they work.
I am only one day in and have used this vac only a few hours, but I am in love with it. I cant wait to pull out the attachments and clean under things, and I am also going to try to clean the curtains later this week.
If you have questions, post them below and I will try to answer them.
