Top critical review
3.0 out of 5 starsFragile and easy to break - but excellent service!
Reviewed in the United States on August 23, 2023
Edit: called up their service line, which was a little tedious but service fixed the problem quick with a replacement being mailed out. So great service, but there are still there are some drawbacks.
We've had this vacuum for less than a year. It has a nice set of attachments. Suction is pretty decent for a unit of this size. The pet hair/carpet rolling suction attachment is a nice idea but it's not super effective in getting off cat and fine dog hair. It probably would be okay for thicker hair. It's clearly a bit more premium than the cheaper units you can find at Amazon. Build quality generally is okay, and the unit has a nice weight and balance to it.
The worst thing about this vacuum is that it's incredibly fragile. Over repeated inserting and removal of the different attachments the tip shattered. As far as I can tell it's not replaceable. We use this maybe 1x a week, so it's not due to heavy use. Looking at this, once the tip shatters further, it's over, that's the end of the unit because you can't attach anything to it. The cracks are slowly making their way down the side and it's a matter of time (a few months?) before we won't be able to use this unit anymore.
Other things that aren't deal breakers but aren't great either: (1) the cleanout buttons get stuck really easily and it can take a lot of strength to pop open the buttons. My mother for instance can't push hard enough with her hands and has to gets spoon or something to pop it open, and my wife struggles to open it. (2) the lack of an affordable mount is just silly. If you call them up you'll be told it costs like $30 total to get a base you can plug this into. It makes this unit much less aesthetic and inconvenient than other systems that come with a base, or have an affordable base that isn't 3/5 the cost of the vacuum. I wouldn't take any stars off for this though, you should expect it as it's pretty clear there is no base or mount for this thing. Still, c'mon Shark, you're kind of a premium brand compared to other vacuums you can get around here. (3) The suction isn't bad but isn't awesome and has been getting worse over time -- and it's been less than a year as I mentioned. Might be the broken tip, might be fading batteries. Neither are great. (4) as some other reviewers mentioned the suction comes out of a very small tip which makes surface cleaning tedious because you have a small high suction strip or a wide low section bar.