Review and Compare Shark Lift Away Vacuum Cleaners
Roombas and Dysons make information technology fun to vacuum, but let's adore something much less exciting and a lot more sensible: the original, lilac-colored Shark Navigator Elevator-Away NV350 Series, a bagless, upright, and—gasp!—plug-in vacuum.
We've written at length about all the things that make this vacuum so not bad. And now that it's been around for more than a decade, the time has come up to recognize the lilac Shark every bit one of the crowning achievements of vacuum design.
Our option
The original Navigator launched in autumn 2010. It wasn't the commencement Shark vacuum cleaner, but this was still a relatively unknown brand. If you'd heard of these vacuums at all, it might take been because you fell asleep in front end of the Goggle box and woke up at three a.yard. in the center of an infomercial.
Why the Shark?
In late 2013, for my start projection at Wirecutter, I tested both the lilac-colored Navigator NV352 and the Dyson Ball, the premier vacuum of the time. And it was obvious then that the Shark was the far better pick for the coin. The NV352 was unusually easy to maneuver, even around my pocket-size apartment, and it was first-class at cleaning difficult-to-reach spaces, cheers to the lift-abroad feature. This vacuum as well seemed to clean nearly besides as much pricier models. And because of the NV352's modular design, it was elementary to clear clogs and to replace individual parts as they broke. Parts were covered nether an uncommonly long 5-year warranty, without having to bring or send the vacuum to a technician in virtually cases.
This fourteen-minute advertizement for the Navigator Elevator-Abroad, from 2011, really comes out swinging confronting the Dyson Ball. The commercial must have been pretty cringe, fifty-fifty at the time ("Allo, this is me fancy new Dyson vacuum … blimey!") But information technology raised valid points. For less than half the price, the Shark delivered nearly of the same features equally the Dyson, likewise every bit some extras—the lift-abroad canister was truly unique, for example. (Plus a free steam mop, if you society now!)
Still, the Shark didn't quite brand the cut equally Wirecutter'south top pick. After interviewing a lot of "vacuum gatekeepers," such every bit shop owners and repair techs, I came away with the conclusion that the best vacuum for most people was actually a $400 upright that used expensive bags and filters and weighed almost twenty pounds. I realized over time that this was a mistake, and I convinced my editors in 2015 that we needed to promote the Shark to our top slot.
A lot has inverse in the years since and so. Cordless vacuums have much more suction and bombardment life now, and robot vacuums are much smarter. But the lilac Shark is still the vacuum we recommend to well-nigh people get-go, and nothing has come very close to knocking it from that pedestal.
The backstory
And so how did a company with so little experience building vacuums come up with this thing? And why has it endured?
If there's some central characteristic or sneaky-smart engineering that makes the Navigator Elevator-Away work so well, Shark wouldn't tell me about it—the company just gave me standard corporate answers about trying to make great products that consumers will love. Even after I watched a couple of videos on how to detach and repair the lilac Navigator, it just does not wait like there'southward anything fancy going on inside this vacuum.
Shark'due south elevator-away feature was a genuine innovation that made the vacuum easier to utilise—sometimes. Simply you could utilise this thing exclusively equally a standard upright vacuum and still think it'south excellent. My guess: It's but a highly optimized version of a basic bagless vacuum cleaner, with great handling and easy maintenance.
There have been enough of new variants of the Navigator Elevator-Away, merely nosotros don't remember whatsoever of them are plainly better than the original. Some new models have useful extras like headlights or anti-tangle combs or a powered castor roll in elevator-away style—all of which tin can exist useful and worth paying extra for if you're interested. But they're just small tweaks to the same base of operations. And some of them just don't suck upwardly as much stuff as the classic model, or they have bulky cleaning heads that are bad-mannered to steer. (Most of the new Navigators are fabricated by a different manufacturer than the original lilac versions were, co-ordinate to publicly bachelor import records, and this might have something to exercise with it.)
Even Shark seems most ambivalent nigh the continued existence of the lilac Navigator. You accept to look really difficult to detect it listed on Shark's website, even though it'southward still one of the acknowledged vacuums at several major retailers. If Shark is hiding this model from the people who come to its website, why is it yet around at all?
"It remains really highly rated, and we hear from consumers all the time that they honey the production," said Julien Levesque, vice president of Global Product Development at SharkNinja. Even as Shark launches new models with updated features, "there's something about having options that are tried and true."
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/shark-navigator-lift-away-vacuum-review/
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