Shark Stratos XL Pet Pro Powered Lift-Away AZ913

Ultra heavy with tiny canister – Plus: Incredible vacuum power. Lifts dog hair easily, very impressed. Hair does not tangle in brush. Good cord length. Minus: The canister is soooo tiny…!!! Very misleading in the pictures, as on a side view it’s only about an inch wide. I can’t vacuum one room without needing to empty it. Yes, I have a dog that sheds. But this is silly. Also,… Read more

it’s heavy beyond belief. I didn’t realise any vacuum on the market could be so heavy!! At least 8kg, empty. Somehow it feels like 20. It’s hard to maneuver, an older person with arthritis would find it almost impossible. My shoulders ache after one room. It also would not vacuum my large (3x2m) washable smooth floor rug.. no matter which setting, the brush refused to spin. Would I purchase again? No. The weight and tiny canister isn’t worth the vacuum power, no matter how impressive.

Great powerful contender in the upright corded vacuum market – I was asked to give the Shark Stratos Pet Pro Powered Lift-Away a test drive for a month and review, and I can say that for a corded bagless vacuum cleaner it's an excellent piece of technology. Simple to put together, had it up and running within 5 minutes after orienting myself with all the different functions. The vacuum comes with a couple of… Read more

heads. The larger one is called the Brushroll Plus with DuoClean tech which allows you to go from carpets to hard floors in a flash. It also sports LED lights. The smaller head is called the Pet Power Brush Plus, perfect for those smaller areas like stairs, lounges, dog beds etc. Both are self cleaning. The usual accessories are included such as crevice tool and multi surface tool. The bagless dust bin connects onto the wand, and slides on and off easily for both mobility or emptying. Lastly there's a removable handle attached to a hose, which in turn connects the wand to the the dust bin. The vacuum also includes an odour neutraliser puk that gives off a nice scent (not too pungent) as you're cleaning. It's a solid unit when put together, and my initial thought was that it's going to be a beast to push around, however concerns were soon put to rest.

The vacuum is a powerhouse. We've a large home and I think this is where this vacuum would shine the most. It has 3 power settings - Hard floors, Carpet Low Pile and Thick Carpet. Downstairs consists of tiles and floor boards, whilst the stairwell and upstairs mostly carpeted. On hard surfaces, the Hard Floor setting is more than ample. The suction is amazing even on this lowest setting and glides across the floor with ease, and even for those carpeted areas the pets don't frequent often, this setting was enough. Sucked up anything it ran over, even dragging hair a couple centimetres off into the head as you push along. For the more pet trafficked areas, the Low Pile setting was plenty strong to get most hair off/out of the carpet, and I only trialled the highest setting a few times but just wasn't needed. The heads are designed to be self cleaning, and there was very minimal hair wrapped around the rollers, especially as we've all got long hair, so pleasantly surprised here.

Maneuverability is great with the swivel head, and although it has some weight to it due to the dust bin sitting lower down, I didn't feel it too cumbersome. Comparing this with say a battery powered upright Dyson, it's a little more heavier to push around however I would say that grip fatigue is less on this compared to keeping the trigger held in place on the Dyson. The only negative I had here was that with the dust bin in place, you couldn't get under places you usually could get with a normal head or a stick vacuum, as the dust bin sits virtually right on top of the head, at the base of the wand. You need to remove the dust bin to do so.

And that brings us to the ironically brilliant thing about this vacuum. The Lift-Away function detaches the dust bin from the wand whilst the vacuum is still in use, so you can carry the bin around whilst going about your cleaning duties. This, coupled with begin able to remove the handle from the wand, or the wand from the head, allows you to get to about wherever you need to go. The power cord is plenty long at about 8 metres and with the bin detached, it's amazing at just how far you can get with it. This is all especially good when cleaning out the car.

On to the dust bin. This is actually quite sizable, and I found I didn't have to empty anywhere as often as our other daily vac, the Dyson Animal, and that's definitely a positive. Press a button and it pops open from the bottom and contents are emptied straight into the bin. It includes a HEPA filter which takes care of most of the smells, plus a couple other filters which are all washable. A note here that post wash you need to leave for 24 hours to fully dry...quite standard these days.

There's a cord wrap to keep cord management in order, however I found that when needing to detach the dust bin, you need to unwind the cord from this. Something to keep in mind. Apart from this, and not being able to get under some of the lower profile furniture, the only other thing I found wanting was a bit more length on the hose.

In this day and age of handy and ready to go appliances, if you don't mind the fact that it's corded, with some trial and error in how to use it's different configurations, the Shark Stratos XL Pet Pro's usability is very much a winner, especially with the detachable head unit and dust bin. It's easy to empty and easy to clean. It's the perfect fit for larger environments or for those that struggle with pet hair, and is truly quite the functional and versatile vacuum cleaner. Recommended.

The new Shark Stratos XL Pet Pro Stick Vacuum is good! Almost horrifyingly good! – The new Shark Stratos XL Pet Pro was very clearly designed with quality, usability and performance as the foremost factors. Everything about it screams ease of use with a quality build. And most importantly the performance is exceptionally good, in fact impossibly so. Words don't express just how good this vacuum is at cleaning, especially when it… Read more

comes to accumulated deep ground in fine dust in carpets.

The suction from the main motor is exceptional, and combined with the 2nd motor in the turbo head you can actually feel it lifting the pile on the carpet as it sucks out more dust than you would believe possible. In fact it took us many days to get our heads around just how much it pulled out of what we thought were clean carpets.

Supplied with a narrow and a very nice brush nozzle (perfect for cleaning bookshelves without damage), as well as an additional small head unit, the fittings are very robust and well made, and all connections fit very positively and securely with no looseness. Even the little things like storing nozzles on the barrel, and the hose retaining clip, are some of the signs of the obviously careful thought that went into the design. The brush and narrow nozzles similarly are well designed and very practical in use.

Manoeuvrability is excellent, allowing a full range of motion and tight angles to quickly get in almost anywhere without issue, and the grip on the handle is very ergonomic. And for those occasions the unit is just too big to get in somewhere, the second smaller head unit provided is perfect for tight spots, furniture, and doing the inside of cars just to name a few use cases.

The deodoriser cartridge is a terrific touch, and that you can alter the strength is a very practical idea. We tried to find out the cost of replacement cartridges, but the Shark website is pretty ordinary to navigate with terrible search functions that don't allow you to sort by price, and trying to select the "spare parts and accessories" link on the XL Pet Pro's page led to a 404 error. Hopefully they last a long time anyway but they really do add a very pleasant and subtle aroma while working, not at all over powering or cloying.

Aside from the astounding performance which is just mind boggling, the fact the brushes didn't get jammed up with pet fur is something we couldn't understand. This has always been a problem for us with any rotating brush, as it usually very quickly get's bound up with pet fur and you need to spend ages trying to pick it all out, only to have it happen again quite soon. After hours of use it had the tiniest amount of fur wrapped around the very ends of the brush, but this was simple and quick to clean. We don't understand how it doesn't get bound up, but with having 3 dogs in the house it was certainly a very welcome feature!

The portability aspect of the Lift Away design is sheer genius, being able to remove the canister from the vacuum and use it with the wand and the nozzles is incredibly useful. It's easy and light to handle in use, allowing you to very easily get in places and at heights that would normally be quite difficult, and re-assembly takes mere seconds. The mains cord is also a very generous length which is great.

One feature that really jumps out is the built in lighting. We would never have thought it, but having the lights automatically turn on and highlight the area immediately in front proved to be invaluable. It's a very simple but absolutely sensational feature that really helps in cleaning carpets.

The vacuum has three surface settings, one for hard floors, one for low pile carpets, and a third for rugs and deep pile carpets. We tried the hard floor and low pile settings on the tiles and carpets, and found the hard floor setting on the carpets really pulled the fibres up well. The carpets were noticeably much more plush after vacuuming a couple of times. Our sons been using it on the plush carpet in his bedroom, and it's brought the pile up like new.

Another thing that quite surprised us was how low the noise levels were, at no time were they overly loud or annoying. Certainly nowhere near as loud as others we've had over the years.

Emptying the canister is straight forward and not at all messy, unless like us you turn the canister over to get a better look at the sheer quantity of dust collected and it falls out the inlet port! Likewise taking the filter out and giving it a few thumps outside to clean it is simple.

We all very rapidly grew to love this vacuum, even the kids for the first time ever are actually taking it to do their bedrooms which is a miracle in itself. The performance is nothing short of magic, and that we don't need to spend copious amounts of time cleaning fur out of the brushes is quite amazing. We really like the deodoriser, it works a treat and is a great idea. And being able to remove the canister and use the vacuum in a portable mode is amazingly useful.

About the only thing we weren't totally keen on was that to tilt the handle back you had to put a foot on the base, I know that's exactly how most stick vacuums operate, but on something this well designed a release button or lever would have been a nice addition. But that's a very minor observation.

In short, this is a robust, very well designed and built vacuum, with features that just work, while being amazingly effective. Well worth every cent and more in our opinion, it's certainly changed our perception of what a true cleaning is!

Would we recommend it, absolutely, in fact we already have to several friends and family members!

Not yet available will also be a "Home and Car Detail Kit" which will be a great addition to extend the usefulness of this vacuum.

Some further thoughts and pics on the effectiveness of this amazing vacuum:

I thought we knew all there is to know about vacuums, given my wife has succeeded in destroying many reputable brands of them over the years, and with me using industrial and domestic vacs and extractors for decades, but we recently learnt something new with this Shark Pet Pro.

It is amazingly, and a little horrifyingly, effective! It really quite stunned us at just how quickly the chamber filled up with fine dust and fur, and lots of it! I'm talking an amount that looks physically impossible to have been embedded in a small area of carpet!

As mentioned earlier, my wife for reasons unknown has a super power that renders her unintentionally deadly to nearly all electric items, with vacuums being a particularly expensive area that she seems to excel in. After a multi-year unbridled rampage of destruction, she was forced to temporarily use my industrial dust extractor, and not only found it very effective, but surprisingly also seemingly immune to her powers.

That was about 13 years ago, and as most of our house is carpeted, the vac has been used without issue, dutifully cleaning the carpets and doing an excellent job of it, or so we thought!

While initially playing around with the Shark I did a very small area on our cream coloured carpet in the bedroom, which I'll add is spotless to the eye and gets a regular thorough cleaning, but the chamber filled up in about 5-10 minutes. This completely baffled us as it just seemed impossible. We thought maybe it's a tiny bit of dust all puffed in the chamber, so I emptied it, and it was indeed a small bags worth of dust!

Honestly we simply couldn't believe our eyes. I mean this thing must be sucking dust through from a parallel dimension, as we thought there's just no way it could have pulled so much out of such a small area that was already clean!

So after emptying it, we went back to the bedroom carpet and ran it over the same area again, and it filled a second time!

Over the same area it did just before!

By now the entire family was in attendance, with the appropriate exclamations of amazement while beholding this wizardry!

I can't stress this enough, the carpet was clean and regularly vacuumed, it was light cream coloured so any dirt would immediately show, and yet this Shark Pro filled the chamber to the brim twice on a small area! It should have been physically impossible to pull that much, but it did, and it did it easily and quickly. The effectiveness of this vacuum is really astounding, and the marketing claims that it avoids becoming entangled with hair and fur really are true. We don't understand how it doesn't get tangled, but after each use the rollers are clean except for possibly a tiny amount at the very end of the rollers which is easy to clean.

Some of the attached pics show the incredibly fine dust it sucked out of the carpets in very short time. In one of the pics you can also see the filters that are simple to remove and clean. Of particular note is the pic of the brush rollers, this vacuum has had a few weeks of intensive use and we have never cleaned the rollers, but as seen apart from a tiny tuft of fur on the very ends of the roller, they are spotless! The way it cleans the fur off is just amazing!

12 Month update!

After having used this cleaner for a year or so, it has become such an integral part of the cleaning that if this unit died, we would go out and buy the exact same one the next day, it really is that amazingly good! We're still on the original filter set, which we have washed only once, and the power of this unit still amazes everyone. We really couldn't recommend this high enough, it's an amazing performer! We've never had a vacuum as reliable, or effective as the Shark Pet Pro!

Excellent suction and pet hair cleaner although a little heavy and difficult to maneuver – With the words 'Pet Pro' in its name, I was keen to see how this vacuum would handle my dogs constantly shedding hair and how it would perform across different types of flooring. After a number of weeks use throughout my home, I have weighed up its pros and cons as follows: PROS: SUCTION: Very powerful and it collected every skerrick of dust and… Read more

debris in its path.

MAIN FLOOR HEAD: Did an outstanding job at picking up pet hair from difficult surfaces such as carpet and rugs. Some vacuums take many swipes with a roller brush head and still fail to pick up all hair. The aptly named Pet Pro picked up all hair and with fewer strokes of the vacuum. I was most impressed with this feature.

SELF CLEANING: I was amazed at the roller heads' ability to self clean. With all previous roller brush head vacuums that I have used, I have always had to manually clean them by pulling or cutting tangled hair out of the brushes. After many times picking up long hair from my dog that is constantly shedding, the brush head remains clean and free of tangles.

ACCESSORIES: The small hair brush similarly does a great job at automatically detangling hair. The soft bristle brush is well designed and great for window sills.

DETACHABLE CANISTER: Handy for use in areas that the main body won't reach. For instance, on top of cupboards, window sills, in cars etc.

QUALITY: Every part feels strong and sturdy and the reassuring weight suggests the build quality has not been skimped on.

LED LIGHTS: The lights on the floor head are great for dimly lit spaces such as closets and hallways.

CONS: MANEUVERABILITY: When not turned on, it is quite easy to maneuver as the floor head tilts back and the large wheels carry the weight easily. In use on hard floors, pushing it is also not a problem. However, when using the vacuum on carpet, due to the strong suction it is a little harder to push around. Coming from a barrel vacuum with a slim wand and floor head, I am used to being able to wind in and out of table legs, furniture and under beds. With the Shark, the biggest drawback I found was that it was unable to reach under beds and it was difficult to navigate around or between furniture such as chairs and tables due to the upright vacuum design with canister in front.

WEIGHT: I have mats on my verandah that I wanted to vacuum. However there is a step down from inside to out therefore requiring me to lift the vacuum. Whilst I could manage it, the vacuum is rather hefty. The suction hose is also surprisingly hefty and feels at least twice the weight of the hose on my barrel vacuum.

SUCTION HOSE TOO SHORT: I noticed this when detaching the canister to use for window sills and cleaning the interior of my car. This means that you have to hold the canister in one hand and the hose handle in the other, leaving no hand free. With the already weighty hose and the canister in my other hand, my arm did get a little sore after extended periods. If the hose was a little longer it would enable the detached canister to sit on a floor or table so that you don’t have to hold it.

NOISE: The machine is significantly noisier than my current barrel vacuum and more so than any vacuum I have used. Family members have remarked that it sounded like there were renovations happening with power tools when I was vacuuming. I agree that it sounded like a floor sander.

ELECTRICAL CORD: The power cord is a couple of metres too short. I had to unplug and replug the vacuum into a power point a number of times more than I normally would. I was unable to reach some areas of rooms when using a powerpoint central to two adjoining rooms. The cord also lacks an earth plug and slight tension on the cord results in the cord falling out of the wall outlet and shutting the vacuum down. Additionally, the cord gets in the way when pulling the vacuum back towards you. I found I had to hold the cord in one hand and the vacuum in the other to prevent running over the cord with the vacuum.

Whilst my concerns centered around the weight and its maneuverability around furniture, if you believe you can live with the aforementioned drawbacks, this vacuum is worth investing in. The suction is amazing and my floors have never felt or looked cleaner! In terms of cleaning power, I liken the Shark Pet Pro to washing a car. You can just wash your car or you can wash, polish and detail it. The Shark has the finished product of the latter - my carpets and floors are left looking like they have been deep cleaned and polished! Apart from the elderly or people with strength and mobility issues, I would gladly recommend anyone take a look at the Shark when searching for their next vacuum - especially if they have pets.

It is really good but not perfect – The vacuum is super simple to set up and use without having to read instructions although I know you should. The buttons all have clear labels. This vacuum's suction is comparable to that of my Mile corded vacuum and my Dyson cordless. You don't have to go over the same location repeatedly because the suction is strong. I like how simple it is… Read more

to switch from carpet to hard floors. I really like the choice for thick carpet because my current carpet is shaggy and past vacuums didn't like it. I could vacuum over the same area five times and still not be able to collect, let's say, tiny pieces of paper. On the first try, the Shark picked up everything on the shaggy carpet. My floors are mostly tiles, and cleaning them was simple.

I have a dog and 3 kids so my house gets pretty messy pretty quickly and this vacuum does a great job.

I really like the odour neutraliser because some of my older vacuums had dreadful odours when they were switched on.

I really like the clear tank so you can see everything you've picked up, and cleaning it up was quite simple. The 1.3 Litre dust cup has a large capacity and won't need to be emptied after every usage.

It's clever that you can disassemble the vacuum and clean stairwells and couches. I did try vacuuming under the couch without removing the canister, but despite drawing the vacuum all the way back, it won't fit under furniture due to its size.

I did not rate it 5 stars as it is heavy. It didn't bother me but my 10 year old who can easily vacuum with the Dyson struggled with this. It is easy to manoeuvre however I can see that for some people it wouldn't be due to its weight.

It was tricky to vacuum rugs and was heavy to pick up when it got stuck.

It has a short chord. Without unplugging and replugging, I was unable to vacuum my hallway. You'll need an extension cord if you wish to vacuum a large area. I'm not sure why the cord was placed on the right side either, as it does get tangled in the vacuum.

Due to it’s size it takes up a lot of room to store the vacuum.

Though not quite 5 stars, it comes close.