DUST CANISTERThe dust canister is easy to detach and we found it fairly easy to empty, although there is a large plastic insert in the center of the dust canister (where the metal mesh filter resides). As such, we found that we often had to reach into the canister and pull out dust/debris. We’ve seen this kind of thing with many (but not all) bagless machines. Carpet testWe created debris from a mixture of split green peas, flax seeds, chili flakes and ground cheerios. This is designed to mimic fine-to-medium size debris (approx 56g in total).
But that’s mostly cosmetic, and any bagless vac with a clear cup will have that problem. By comparison, the air-powered brushroll on the Eureka brought the noise level up to 102 decibels — definitely not something you’ll want to use early in the morning. We tested all of the vacuums from the same distance, at ear-height while moving the vacuums as they would be used for cleaning.
Rather than having a separate head for carpet and bare-floor cleaning, Kenmore gives you a convertible system called the “Crossover” head. The bare-floor tool snaps into the carpet head, and it’s easy to lift out with the press of a foot shark canister vacuum lever. The lightweight 9-pound canister is built with Smooth Glide wheels, so it easily glides along as you clean from floor to ceiling. Anti-Allergen Complete Seal traps over 99.9% of dust, dander, and allergens inside the vacuum.
It’s powered by an electric motor so it won’t just stall out the way cheaper versions of this attachment do if you try to use them on your stairs. Different retailers will sell the Lift-Around with different tool lineups. The one we saw had an upholstery brush, a small bare floor brush and a crevice tool. I strive to write unbiased, intelligent vacuum cleaner reviews and I provide a score for each and every vacuum I investigate.
The suction is strong enough in every model that even the cleaning heads with air-powered, turbine-driven brush rolls outperformed many other brands’ electrically driven brush rolls in our tests. The Calima was second best in our debris-pickup test on short-pile carpeting, vacuuming up 84 percent of the sand–and–baking soda mixture. Although our main pick, the Shark Navigator Lift-Away, shark pet hair vacuum picked up nearly all of the debris, we think the difference won’t be noticeable to most people. For cleaning carpet, a spinning brush roller works much better than suction alone by agitating the carpet and sweeping up the dirt and hair as they bounce around. This is a defining trait of most upright vacuums, but you can get a brushroll head for many canister vacuums.