I ditched my regular vacuum to test Shark’s newest (and cheapest) release — it’s a great entry-level Shark vacuum cleaner

As Ideal Home’s Vacuums Expert, I get the exciting job of testing new releases from big-name brands - Shark being one of them. And over the past three weeks, I’ve replaced my regular vacuum with the Shark PowerPro to see whether it can compete with the best Shark vacuum cleaners around.

Not only that, but I wanted to see how it would fare against the other cordless vacuum cleaners I’ve tested in the past. My verdict? It’s a great entry-level (and budget-friendly) Shark vacuum, with a few flaws that prevent it from topping the charts as one of my favourites.

In a nutshell

You probably don’t need me to tell you that Shark is kind of a big deal. The cult floor care brand is constantly releasing new vacuums, and the PowerPro is the latest addition to its long line of products. And as someone who has owned multiple Shark vacuums in the past, I was both impressed and disappointed with this new model.

Upon opening the box, I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the Shark PowerPro Cordless Stick Vacuum (even though the design isn’t to my taste), and using it was incredibly easy, as all Shark vacuums are. And while the auto-adjusting suction power was enough for everyday cleaning on both hard flooring and carpet, it did struggle with larger debris and pet hair.

However, the fact that it’s extremely affordable (one of the cheapest Shark vacuums out there, in fact) and can be folded down for easy storage does have to stand for something. So, as a second vacuum or as a starter Shark vacuum, I do think it hits the mark. If you’re looking for a powerful vacuum for bigger spills or in a busy family home, though, it might fall a little short.

It’s also worth noting that I share my house with a dog, so I tested the Shark PowerPro Pet, which comes with a motorised pet tool included, to see if it could beat the best vacuums for pet hair. If you don’t want the motorised pet tool, you can get exactly the same vacuum with exactly the same specifications by buying the £30 cheaper Shark PowerPro Cordless Stick Vacuum. Because of this, this review applies to both the pet and the non-pet models.

Shark PowerPro Pet Cordless Stick Vacuum product specs

• Weight: 5.68kg
• Max. run time: 50 minutes (in eco mode)
• Bin volume: 0.7L
• Charge time: 3.5 hours
• Modes: Eco, Boost
• Noise level: 85dB
• In the box: Main unit, charger, crevice tool, upholstery tool, motorised pet tool, accessory bag
• RRP: £279.99 (or £249.99 without motorised pet tool)

How I tested

Lauren Bradbury

I'm Lauren, Content Editor and Certified Expert in Training for Vacuums at Ideal Home. I tested the Shark PowerPro Cordless Vacuum Cleaner for three weeks in my three-bedroom house in Kent, which I share with my husband and our dog, Barney.

I swapped it with my regular vacuum (a Dyson Gen5detect) and tested it during carefully controlled tests and against everyday use. And while Shark sent me the PowerPro to test and review, this in no way impacted my fair and impartial review.

Unboxing, setting up and first impressions

One thing I will always give Shark credit for is packing their products in small, compact boxes. In fact, when the Shark PowerPro Pet Cordless Stick Vacuum turned up on my doorstep, I was convinced it was something else, as I couldn’t believe a full-size vacuum would be able to fit in such a small, lightweight box.

As a weakling with very little strength (it’s sad but true), this was great news for me, as I could easily carry the box over the threshold of my house, ready to unwrap the goodies in seconds. And when I did that, I spotted a handy Quick Start guide printed on the inside of the box - a nice touch that many vacuum manufacturers are now including as standard.

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As I test a lot of vacuums but also have a keen love for the environment, I’m always critical when it comes to the packaging of these appliances, especially when it comes to the smaller components inside. But I was pleasantly surprised and impressed to see that all of the components within the Shark box were encased in either cardboard shells or paper. So, the Shark PowerPro had already won me over on the eco front.

With all of the components laid out in front of me, I was able to get my first glimpse of what the Shark PowerPro would look like. And while I will say that all of the components feel extremely well-made, I was a little unsure of the colourway. White and grey for a vacuum? That seemed like a recipe for disaster (and dirty finger marks) in my eyes, but I appreciate that the brand has chosen to do something different and stand out from the crowd.

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It’s a new look (something that seems to be a growing trend for Shark, especially when you look at the Shark NeverChange Air Purifier) and one that I personally am unsure if I like, as it seems very masculine and sporty, but I imagine it will go down well with many others.

I then got to work on assembling this new Shark vacuum, and this took all of two seconds. All you have to do is click the flexology wand onto the floor head and then click the handheld section onto that. In fact, it’s impossible to go wrong during this step.

At this point, I was pretty eager to start vacuuming my home with the Shark PowerPro. But as per the instructions, I popped it on charge first, waiting for the advertised 3.5 hours for it to charge fully. When the time was up, it was time to get cleaning!

Using the Shark PowerPro Pet Cordless Stick Vacuum

To preface this next section, I should tell you a little about the layout and flooring types in my house. I live in a three-bedroom terraced home with my husband and our fluffy cocker spaniel (so we have hair all over the place), and we have a mixture of hard flooring and carpet. The downstairs is made up of laminate, kitchen tiles, and bathroom tiles, and we have a couple of large area rugs in our living room and dining room. Upstairs, it is fully carpeted.

As I assembled and charged the Shark PowerPro downstairs, I decided to start there first. And one thing I do always appreciate is when a vacuum cleaner doesn’t require a floorhead change between hard flooring and carpet. This meant that I could clean the entirety of my dining room in one hit, without having to change heads when I wanted to vacuum the rug.

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It was while I was vacuuming this particular room that I first felt the full effects of the brand’s FloorDetect Technology, which senses your floor type and then automatically adjusts the suction power and brush-roll speed for optimised cleaning. In fact, you can see the change on the floorhead, too; the light on the floorhead changes from blue (hard floor) to purple (carpet or rugs).

For general cleaning, the Shark seemed impressive enough. The model is incredibly lightweight and easy to manoeuvre as a result, and the suction power seemed powerful enough for light dust and debris on my floors. However, we take how test vacuum cleaners at Ideal Home very seriously, so I wanted to put this model through its paces.

To conduct these tests, I put various types and sizes of debris on my laminate floor, including a mixture of flour and sugar to see how well the Shark PowerPro could pick up small, grain-like debris, giant cous cous to see how it fared against larger debris, and ground coffee to see how it coped against odours.

While the cordless vacuum managed to clean all of the debris up with just a few passes, some of the debris proved easier to clean than the others. The cous cous was sucked up in just one pass, and while it seemed as though the flour and sugar and the coffee grounds were removed in the same pass, the vacuum actually just pushed them around for a little bit before eventually sucking them up.

I repeated this process on a carpet sample, too, and the results were the other way around. While the flour, sugar and coffee were sucked up instantly (aside from a slight brown tinge to the carpet), the vacuum struggled with the cous cous and pushed it around instead. This was an interesting turn of events, and one that you should consider when debating which type of vacuum cleaner you should buy.

As the Shark PowerPro Pet is designed with pet owners in mind, I also had to consider how we test pet vacuum cleaners at Ideal Home. So, I sprinkled some of my dog’s fluff on both my laminate flooring and the carpet sample and vacuumed it up.

Vacuuming the pet hair on the laminate was fairly easy peasy, and you can see from the video that the suction power was enough to actually pull the hair towards it before the floorhead touched it. However, there were some stragglers left behind and pushed around a little bit.

On the carpet, it was roughly the same, but perhaps slightly worse. As my sample was a short-pile carpet, the pet hair was only really lying on the top surface, so vacuuming pet hair should have been easy. And while it left some satisfying vacuum lines, it also left wheel lines and a fair bit of pet hair in its wake. So, I decided to head upstairs to see how the Shark PowerPro would fare on my natural wool carpet, where much of the pet hair is ingrained within the fibres.

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When I got upstairs, I found the Shark PowerPro picked up surface-level dirt, dust, and debris extremely quickly and efficiently, and I did enjoy using it. But when I looked a bit closer, I could see that the vacuum hadn’t quite picked up every speck of hair or debris, especially within the loop piles of the carpet. However, it is worth noting that my wool carpets are especially deep, so you may not have this same problem if you have cut-pile carpet.

And while I could pull the toggle for maximum suction power, this made only a slight difference to the carpet pick-up, and I wouldn’t want to use it in max mode for the entire cleaning process, as it would reduce the battery life dramatically.

I found these results to be fairly consistent throughout my three-week testing time, too. While I did think the Shark PowerPro excelled on hard flooring and for surface-level dirt on carpets and rugs, I did think it struggled with tougher cleaning jobs or more ingrained dirt.

One thing I did really like, however, was the Flexology technology, which allows you to bend the wand under furniture. This is a nice touch you often see with Shark vacuums, and I do think it’s a great addition to the brand and makes this vacuum even better for all-around, everyday cleaning.

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I also found the run time to be true to the claims. When you just want to vacuum in Eco mode, you get up to 50 minutes of run time. Of course, this goes down when you use max power and want to use the tools (more on that in a bit), but I think this run time is still very generous for a cordless vacuum.

The noise levels of the Shark PowerPro were also fairly true to the 85dB claims. In fact, the decibel meter app on my phone found the noise levels to fluctuate between 77dB and 83dB, depending on the mode - quietest for Eco mode and loudest for Boost mode.

Using the attachments

I always say that it’s important to know which vacuum tool is right for each job, and while Shark does provide three tools with the Shark PowerPro Pet (Crevice tool, Upholstery tool and Motorised pet tool), I do think this is a little stingy on Shark’s part. Especially as one of the main selling points of this vacuum is the fact that it can easily be transformed into a handheld for those smaller cleaning jobs.

This is especially true when you consider the non-pet-specific model, which only offers the Crevice Tool and Upholstery Tool. But I was still willing to give them the benefit of the doubt.

So, first, I tested the upholstery tool, which I always test on the velvet sofa bed in my home office, where my dog sleeps during the day. Because of this, it’s covered in pet hair, dried mud, and pet dander and is impossible to clean due to the velvet material. However, the upholstery tool made light work of this and even left some very satisfying vacuum lines on it.

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The crevice tool was effective at cleaning down the nooks and crannies of my sofa and the tops of my doorframe, but I did notice a serious drop in suction power when using this particular tool. And while it picked up some crumbs and larger debris, I didn’t find it as effective as I’d like, even when I pulled the toggle for max power.

Last up, I tested the motorised pet tool, which I typically like to use on my carpeted stairs and my dog’s bed. This was impressive, and I did think that it picked up the ingrained pet hair that the main vacuum itself hadn’t been able to pick up. So, I do think this would come in handy for pet owners who struggle to get pet hair out of carpet.

All in all, though, I did find myself missing a few other tools as I'm used to testing vacuums that can often come with up to 6 accessories. So, the fact that there are just two for the non-pet model and three for the pet model does seem a little frugal.

Cleaning and maintenance

The Shark PowerPro’s 0.7L dust bin capacity is pretty average for cordless vacuums, and I found that I could vacuum my whole house, both downstairs and upstairs, before having to empty it. And one thing I will always praise Shark for is how easy it is to empty their vacuum cleaners, as I find that everything is clearly marked and quick to do.

This was also the case for this particular model, and all I had to do was hold it over a bin or rubbish bag, slide down the blue lid release tab and wait for the contents to fall out. As I regularly vacuumed up a lot of pet hair (and human hair!) I did find that hair would often get stuck in the dust bin, and I’d have to get my hands in there to pull it out, but this didn’t happen all the time.

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As expected, when cleaning a Shark vacuum cleaner, the brand also recommends that you rinse out the dust canister regularly with water and allow it to air dry for 24 hours before using it again. They also recommend cleaning the pre-motor filter once a month and the post-motor filter once a year. Again, this is just with water, and they should be left to dry for 24 hours. If you notice they get dirty before that, you can simply tap off the loose dirt in between washes.

In terms of charging time and storage, I found the charging time to be true to Shark’s claims at around 3.5 hours, and storage was no problem. As the Shark PowerPro folds down, it’s hands-down one of the smallest vacuums I’ve had to store, which is a major plus in my home with limited storage.

How does it rate online?

At the time of writing, the Shark PowerPro Pet Cordless Stick Vacuum has 66 reviews on the Shark website, with an average rating of 4.7 stars out of 5. Customers praise the model for its flexibility, ease of use, and suction power, especially for everyday cleaning. They also love the long run-time, and some customers have even gone as far as to say that it’s the best Shark vacuum for battery life so far.

On the other hand, those who have scored the vacuum cleaner poorly have criticised the model for struggling on different flooring types and stated that the suction power isn’t enough for larger dust and debris.

How does it compare to similar models?

The best way to compare the Shark PowerPro to similar models is to first stay within the Shark brand. And our top-rated Shark vacuum that we’ve tested so far is the Shark PowerDetect Clean & Empty Cordless Vacuum Cleaner.

This model is significantly more expensive at £549.99, but it does offer a lot more than the PowerPro. The PowerDetect offers DuoClean Detect, which utilises two brush rolls and multiple sensors to react and adapt to your floors. And while this isn’t too dissimilar to the PowerPro, the PowerDetect also offers Reverse Clean and DirectionDetect technology, which results in an even better clean.

Alongside this, the Shark PowerDetect Clean & Empty also comes with an auto-empty base, which means the vacuum automatically empties itself into the docking station before charging itself. This is a significant improvement on the PowerPro, even though the PowerPro is a newer model.

However, when you look outside of Shark and look at other brands, the PowerPro does have a lot to offer. When compared to the Worx WX038 20v PowerShare Cordless Vacuum, this Shark has a slightly longer run-time, a significantly larger dust canister, and folds down into a more compact vacuum for storage. So, it ultimately depends on what you want from your next vacuum.

Verdict: Should you buy the Shark PowerPro?

As someone who has owned and reviewed a fair few Shark vacuums, I have to be honest and say that the Shark PowerPro Pet Cordless Stick Vacuum isn’t the most impressive Shark vacuum I’ve ever used. I think the suction power could be better, and those with pets or complex flooring types (like my wool carpets) may not get what they want or need from this vacuum cleaner.

However, if you’re looking for a great all-rounder vacuum and live in a house with predictable spills and debris, the Shark PowerPro should offer everything you need. The suction is powerful enough for surface-level debris and truly excels on hard flooring, and the handheld functionalities are a great alternative to the best handheld vacuum cleaners.

The fact that it’s so easy to use and offers the flexible wand also makes it perfect for quick whip-arounds and everyday cleaning. Because of this, I do think it would cater to those living solo, a family with older or relatively un-messy children, or those looking for an affordable second vacuum.