She’s contributed to Forbes and smart home blogs like Smart Home Solver and TechDigg. Obviously this is what you want from a vacuum, and the Shark delivers. A combination of good suction and a clever brush bars sees to it. The brush bar on the vacuum has 2 parts to it; a traditional brush bar and a fur roller. The bristles of the brush work with the roller to dislodge dirt from both the ground that is being cleaned but also from itself.
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It was given an overall rating of 4 stars for its cleaning effectiveness—meaning, on average, it cleaned up the cereal, popcorn kernels, and strands of hair in just 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.
It did well in most of our carpet-cleaning tests when it was running at maximum battery-draining suction, picking up a similar amount of sand and baking soda as the Dyson V8. However, in real-world testing, it failed to dig up nearly as much embedded hair and dust as the shark cordless V8—particularly on its default, battery-saving suction setting, where it was notably weak. Even when the S11 did grab pet hair off the floor, the hair seemed more likely to get wrapped around the brush or jammed somewhere in the intake than with many other models.
Dyson sent a new complete V11 outsize and so far, this one has been working with no problems. I have owned three Dyson, my first in 2006, which is still running perfectly. Just not getting caught on things and not stepping on cord is worth it.
It comes with a rotating brush floor nozzle and a charging stand with a small footprint that’s easy to tuck out of sight. You can charge it in two pieces side-by-side on the dock or piggyback the handheld section onto the wand. And there’s even a spot to hold the combination crevice/duster tool.