Shark Cordless Pet Vacuum review: A good, cheap option for hard floors, but it lacks the suction and filtration of a true pet vacuum

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I live in a 550-square-foot city apartment with another human and a cat, so my holy grail vacuum is a slim cordless that packs a punch on all floor types and handles hair with ease. For years, that's been my Dyson V8, but after about five years of use and three big moves, it's starting to lose its life. So when our home editor asked me to test out a cordless pet vacuum from Shark, another well-known vacuum brand, I readily said yes.

After living with the Shark Cordless Pet Vacuum for almost a month and putting it through our standardized tests, I have thoughts. Namely, this model excels as a cheap cordless, but not as the best pet vacuum. Read on for my reasons why and who I think should buy it.

What I like

It's super easy to use.

The only instruction included with the Shark was a one-page "getting started" flyer. Fortunately, I didn't need much else. The vacuum is very intuitive to use: the wand, floorhead, and attachments click easily and obviously into place. There are only two buttons: an on/off switch that you press forward once for hard floors and twice for carpets, and a trigger button for on-demand boost cleaning. I like that you don't have to hold down the trigger the entire time you're cleaning, which is something I don't love about my Dyson V8. When you're done, you detach the wand and press a lever to empty the dustbin. I do have a few gripes about the emptying process, but I'll get into those later.

It's got solid suction and a decent cleaner head.

In addition to using this vacuum in my daily cleaning routine, I ran it through our series of standard tests, cleaning up measured amounts of coffee, Cheerios, flour, cat litter, and hair. It was able to pick up nearly 100% of the coffee, litter, and Cheerios on carpet, hardwood, and tile. It also picked up 97% of the flour on hard floors, but struggled a bit more with this powder on carpet (more on that below). I'm generally pleased with its suction, though I had the best results on all floor types when I kept the boost cleaning trigger engaged.

Its floor head has an LED light that illuminates dust and debris in the cleaning path, which is especially helpful for cleaning neglected nooks and under furniture.

I can clean my whole house — twice — on a single charge.

Ok, my apartment is quite small, but I was able to clean every room twice on a full battery and the vacuum still had charge remaining. Shark claims it has 40 minutes of runtime on a single charge, and I'd estimate this is pretty close to accurate if you're primarily cleaning hard floors and not engaging the boost cleaning function. This is a big upgrade over my current stick vacuum, which I'm lucky if I get 10 minutes of runtime out of before needing to charge.

You can store it standing; a rarity for a cordless vac.

Most stick vacuums can't stand up on their own, so you need to mount them to a wall. The Shark is different — its wand has a notch where you can rest the handheld portion when detached. This allows the vacuum to stand upright when not in use. I like this option for renters who don't feel comfortable drilling holes into the wall. It's very compact when broken down like this, more so than my Dyson stick vacuum.

Where it falls short

It's not very good at picking up fine dust on carpet.

When I spread 30 grams of flour over my carpet, the vacuum was only able to pick up about 75% of it, even with the suction boost engaged. I ended up going over the area with my Dyson V8, which was able to suck up the remainder. My carpets are very low-pile, so I imagine the vacuum would have an even harder time on high-pile rugs. I would expect a pet vacuum to be better at this task, since dander and fur are often quite ground into the carpet.

For a pet vacuum, it doesn't have many pet-focused features.

This Shark bills itself specifically as a pet vacuum, but hair of all types seemed to easily get caught around its brush roll. By the end of testing, there was a solid wind of human hair, carpet fibers, and cat hair around the brush that I needed scissors to release. Other pet vacuums we've tried have special tools or features that ensure this doesn't happen.

It also advertises no specific filtration features, which I was surprised about. You can buy a version of this vacuum with a HEPA filter, but the base model that I tried doesn't even tell you the number or types of filters it uses. I couldn't recommend this vacuum to a home with allergy sufferers.

It's top-heavy and difficult to maneuver.

At a little over 6 pounds, the Shark Pet isn't necessarily heavy, but it does feel unbalanced. I had the sensation that the vacuum was leading me, as opposed to the other way around. I think this is because the design is very top-heavy. Other vacuums I've tested have heavier cleaner heads that offer some resistance, which in turn offers some support from the ground to your arm. By contrast, the lightweight Shark cleaner head always felt like it was gliding out from underneath me, overextending my arm and causing me to work hard to pull the unit back to me.

The cleaner head also feels unnecessarily chunky. I had trouble fitting the vacuum into slim spaces my Dyson V8 had no trouble reaching, like around the sides of my toilet and in the gap between my fridge and the wall.

The attachments were pretty useless.

For a vacuum advertised toward pet owners, I was expecting a pretty stellar upholstery tool for picking up pet hair on furniture. I found the Shark Pet's upholstery brush basically useless. It took effort to glide it against my velvet sofa, and there was no noticeable difference in pet hair on my couch before and after cleaning. I might as well not have even vacuumed it at all.

Instead, I recommend pet owners look for vacuums that have motorized upholstery tools. Shark sells one separately for $80, but I think it should be a standard inclusion with any pet vacuum — it's very hard to clean pet hair from furniture without one. You can use the full-size cleaner head as a handheld, which is what I ultimately did, but it's a pretty bulky setup for cleaning furniture.

Also, there's no obvious place to store the attachments when not in use.

The dustbin is lacking.

You can only trigger the dustbin's opening mechanism when the wand is not attached, which feels like an unnecessary step to take every time you want to empty the vacuum. It also has several nooks and crannies that trap dirt and debris; I'd have to reach up with my fingers to get everything out, which defeats the purpose of "hands-free" emptying. Finally, I noticed that the plastic started to fog up, as if it was trapping humidity in my perfectly temperature-regulated apartment. In five years of owning my Dyson, I've never seen that happen, and I worry that it means the Shark dustbin will grow mold or mildew over time.

What are your alternatives?

The best pet vacuum we've tested is also a Shark — the Shark Stratos Cordless Vacuum, which is about $150 more than the Shark Cordless Pet Vacuum. I personally think it's worth the upgrade, especially if you're specifically looking for a vacuum that is stellar on pet hair and dander. The Stratos has a HEPA filter — a great feature for allergy-sensitive pet owners — and automatically adjusts suction based on the amount of debris detected. It's also the top pick in our guides to the best cordless vacuums and best Shark vacuums.

In our guide to the best cheap vacuums, we named the Bissell CleanView Swivel Rewind Pet Vacuum Cleaner as the best for pet hair. It's about the same price as the Shark Cordless Pet Vacuum I tested, but has much stronger suction. However, it's not cordless — you'll need the space for a full upright if you choose this vacuum.

The Levoit LVAC-200 is another good cheap cordless option costing between $150 and $200 depending on whether it's on sale or not. It's remarkably lightweight and has decent suction, but is also not HEPA-rated. Read our Levoit LVAC-200 review.

Finally, for an upgrade, take a look at the best Dyson vacuums. We particularly like the Outsize for pet owners and large homes. However at $500, it's the most expensive vacuum in this list.

The bottom line

The Shark Cordless Pet is a decent starter vacuum, but I'd hesitate to call it a pet vacuum by any stretch of the imagination. If you're looking for a cheap, easy-to-use cordless that works on all floor types, it's a worthy option. But for tackling hair, dander, and upholstery with ease, look elsewhere.