We look forward to testing Miele’s Boost CX1, a bagless canister vacuum designed as a compact option for people living in small spaces. To test for ease of maintenance, we tried to clog and tangle each machine with shredded copy paper, Cheerios, Lego pieces, and toy dinosaurs. We also took apart a few of the vacuums to see how difficult it would be to unclog them. We found that the cheaper vacuums we tested came apart in fewer places, making it harder to access clogs.
In our own emissions test, we also found that the Navigator Lift-Away released less than 2,000 particles sized 0.5 micron or larger per cubic foot. If you’re sensitive to dust and other allergens, you may want to consider a high-end bagged vacuum cleaner. This is the most rigorous set of tests we’ve done on vacuum cleaners at Wirecutter, particularly the cleaning tests. In previous versions of this guide (and in our other vacuum guides), we also did a bunch of testing, but we didn’t measure the results as carefully.
While our initial setup experience was a bit confusing because there is not much guidance given on setting up the home base and emptying station, we found the actual programming of the vacuum to be a breeze. The Shark app leads you through a series of programming settings and the robot maps out your home. You can also tweak the map to get it exactly how you want and establish no-go zones and carpeted zones and name different rooms. This part was the most tedious of using this vacuum as you can go into as much or as little detail as you want.
If you need the vacuum for dusting work then you will have to ante up and buy a dusting tool. Fortunately the Canister Pet has been manufactured with a sealed system (Shark calls this an “anti-allergen complete seal”) which is an important feature for quality air filtration. This ensures that the vacuum does not leak unfiltered air back into the room.
It’s a high-quality vacuum just by itself, but Kenmore also gives you excellent filtration. We were also impressed by the performance of other sealed systems like the Shark in our pet hair vacuum tests, but the Kenmore was about 20% better at capturing fine dust. The Crossover head shark pet hair vacuum is a very good carpet head, with an easy-to-adjust height control and a heavy hardwood agitator brushroll that will help you get dirt out of your carpet. This head is easier to steer on carpet than the less expensive Kenmore design, though not quite as refined as the Shark.
In addition, they are good at picking up larger debris, cleaning right up to the front of the cleaner head, and removing stuck-on dust from hard flooring. Since the cleaning head is relatively narrow and the body is shark robotic vacuums top-heavy, this machine does fall over more easily than some other vacuum cleaners do. If you find tipping to be a constant problem, you can lift away the main assembly and set it on the floor for a sturdier base.
When it is time to empty the dust bin, keep in mind that it’s a little tricky to pull apart. We found that if we didn’t properly place the two pieces together, the vacuum lost suction power once restarted. We also had to pull some hair out of the dust cup from crevices that did not initially empty.
That makes it easy to get into the cleaning head, the wand, or the hose to knock any obstructions loose. Note that among Shark models, only the more expensive “powered lift-away” models like the Apex can run the brushroll motor when the base is detached. We’ve tested the value-oriented Navigator in our best upright vacuum review and best pet hair vacuum review, but we only compared the more versatile Apex against canister vacuums. It’s still excellent at cleaning carpets in an upright configuration while giving acceptable performance in lift-away mode on bare floors.
It cleaned well in our tests, it’s comfortable to use, and it comes with a good set of tools. But like with other cheap vacuum cleaners, the cost of replacement filters ($20 per year) makes it a bad deal. Even if you skip those, we read many reviews about it wearing down (or just breaking) after about a year. Though Dyson announced in 2018 that it would stop developing new plug-in vacuum cleaners in order to focus on cordless models, the company appears to have reversed course. We plan to test it, but since it is almost identical in weight and appearance, we suspect we’ll run into similar problems as with the Ball 2.
Owners also generally think that the Navigator Lift-Away is relatively quiet compared with other vacuum cleaners. With the brush roller turned on (its loudest setting), we measured the vacuum’s volume at about 76 decibels. That’s actually pretty loud compared with the best high-end vacuums, but it’s quieter than other cheap vacs we’ve tested, which regularly exceeded 80 decibels. And it operates at more of a midrange hum than a high-pitched whine, so it’s not as grating to listen to over time. Newer Shark models with the anti-wrap brush roll that we tested sounded like a dirt bike with a card pinned to the wheel. Canisters often come only with air-turbine-powered brushroll tools, though, which means that the flow of air spins a turbine that powers the brushroll.