The Shark Cordless Vertex Pro Powered Lift-Away is a cordless upright vacuum. The Shark ION P50 has been discontinued and its replacement arrived on the market. It provides similar features as the previous model but with a redesigned ‘Lift-Away’ design that allows you to clean hard-to-reach areas without taking apart the whole unit.
The vacuum delivers fantastic performance on bare floors and does an excellent job dealing with debris on high-pile carpets. It has somewhat fragile parts that require regular cleaning, which is often difficult to do.
We’ve been reviewing this vacuum for a few weeks. Here are our thoughts on how the brand has performed over those weeks.
Pros
- + Powerful suction power on hard floors and carpets
- + Powered Lift-Away motor and accessories offer flexible cleaning options for cleaning stairs, under furniture, and tight corners
- + Stylish rose gold trim
- + Ample dust-bin capacity (1 qt)
- + Hair doesn’t get caught in the self-cleaning brush roll
- + HEPA filter
Cons
- – Heavy to operate
- – Fumbled with attachments that didn’t want to pop out
- – Motor emits a lot of airflows, that feel warm and cause the paper to blow in its wake
- – 2 out of the 3 included accessories stores are on board and are easily knocked off
Key Specifications
- Maximum power: 1344 watts
- Dust capacity: 1 qt.
- Cord length: 30ft.
- Hose length: 5.5ft.
- Cleaning path width: 12in.
- Dimensions: 12″ L X 15.09″ W X 46.25″ H
- Weight: 16.38lb.
- Filter: Washable HEPA + Foam and Felt Filters
- Warranty: 5 years
- Attachments: pet crevice tool, dusting brush, self-cleaning power brush
Design and Build
The Shark Vertex is a decently well-built vacuum cleaner. It does not rely on lots of cheap and flimsy plastic like the older upright but is mostly hard durable materials. The Shark Vertex is due to its highly reconfigurable design and a high number of detachable parts.
It isn’t quite as sturdy-feeling as a more conventional upright, with a slight amount of flex in its structure while sweeping back and forth. It’s easy to take apart, and it’ll be very easy to put back together.
Performance
Cleaning
We began our testing process for a wide variety of vacuum cleaners by ranking and scoring their effectiveness at cleaning different types of carpets. For this metric, we compared the performance of the Vertex in both low and medium-pile carpeting. The results show the dust collection unit did well, earning high marks.
The Vertex did remarkably well when it came to cleaning up all the rice from a carpet. The machine passed two times and even managed to find a few grains of rice that had escaped from underneath the carpet when looking into the threads.
This upright vacuum was designed to be easy for you to use. It never leaves a mess on the carpet and does an excellent job at collecting all the Cheerios from low and high-pile carpets. It only took one pass for the dual-brush technology to collect clean cereal. The large-pile carpet collected the largest amount of oats, followed by the flat carpet. The medium-pile carpet collected a few tiny fragments.
Our tests of the Vertex proved the company to have excellent performance in cleaning carpets — a notable feat, given how much other vacuum companies struggle with this challenge. It took this vacuum six passes to clean up the flours on both types of carpet, but there was hardly any left over. It then is the best model and all other models should aspire to be like it.
Our second-to-last metric tested how well the Vertex cleaned hard and medium floor surfaces. We tested four types of dirty materials, including rice, flour, cereal, and oatmeal. The Vertex did extremely well by cleaning a carpet before and after photos to see how the Vertex fared against actual cleans.
The Vertex vacuum quickly cleaned up all of the rice, oats, and Cheerios. It didn’t use up as much power on this wood floor as it did on hard floors. The impressive performance of the robot during cleanup challenges the normal models like cleaning up flour.
This vacuum cleaned all the dirt in just two passes. The majority of the dirt was caught by vacuum between the boards. The vacuum left a tiny amount of debris if we vacuumed perpendicularly through the gaps. It performed incredibly compared with the other test group.
Related: SunJoe SPX3000 Review
Ease of Use
We worked to figure out how the different vacuums in our lineup cleaned along edges and corners, how far they could clean under furniture, the reach of each vacuum, noise levels, and how easy it was to transition from cleaning hard floors to carpet or vice-versa. This vacuum has interchangeable brush heads and a slide switch on the handle. It is perfect for houses with many different flooring surfaces.
It can clean up under most pieces of furniture. It can reach an incredible 11 inches under a simulated sofa with a 5.5-inch gap and it can go up to 44.5 inches when the Lift-Away mode is activated.
The Shark Navigator does a good job cleaning along the edges of a room, and it has an excellent reach with its 29.5-foot cord. It also isn’t overly loud compared to the other models we tested. Our dBa meter registered between 74-76, which is on par for a high-performance upright vacuum. We appreciate that there weren’t any particularly grating whines or other tones during our testing.
Managing
We evaluated how easy the vacuum is to push and pull, as well as how versatile it is when attempting to clean the more difficult areas of your home. The Vertex continued to dominate most other models, again earning one of the better performances in its class.
Quick and easy to use, this vacuum is light enough to carry yet powerful enough to get between eight and nine stairs in most cases. People who want a more lightweight option should look at alternatives while still getting some really good suction.
The Lift-Away mode allows you to carry the vacuum cleaner just like a canister, making it easy to get into the corners of rooms and clean longer sets of stairs. This vacuum also uses a swivel design, is quite agile, and doesn’t put up too much resistance while it’s pushed or pulled on most types of floors. Eventually, we noticed the difference in resistance when we tried to vacuum the carpet. It was significant compared to how easy or hard it was to vacuum on different surfaces.
Pet Hair
The final metric of our study was the mitigation of hairy situations. For this experiment, we spread out a measured amount of pet hair on a medium-pile carpet and rolled it into the carpet piling.
Afterward, based scores were given as a percentage of the collected pet hair. We were surprised by how well this Shark vacuum cleaned, given that its design changed with the release of a new flap.
This vacuum cleaned up to 99.8% with its strong suction. Our tests showed that it had no problem removing more than the hairs we threw at it!
Final Verdict
If you are looking for the best carpet cleaning experience, then the Shark Vertex is probably the perfect option for you. It offers a bit more performance in terms of the brush head and canister size and overall performance. You’ll be very satisfied with the appearance and quality of the Shark Vertex. You’ll never think twice about it!
