Shark Vertex Cordless Vacuum
Hi, Today we’re going to review the shark vertex cordless vacuum cleaner, and that’s this unit right here now, we’ve got model IZ462H. So what do you get when you buy this model?
Of course you get the Shark Vertex Cordless Vacuum. It comes with the filters there’re two pre-motor and one post motor filter they’re installed when you get the machine and you get these three tools.
This is a crevice tool, gives you about eight inches of reach. This is a dusting brush and the head on this will pivot kind of handy. You also get this pet power brush and we’ll talk about this a little bit later and, of course, there is an owner’s manual which also covers the five-year warranty and how to register your vacuum cleaner.
Lets talk a little bit about these tools, this crevice tool, as mentioned, gives you about eight inches of reach, which is decent, we’ve seen some really short ones before, and this one’s okay, the dusting brush the bristles, are kind of somewhere in between stiff and soft they’re.
About average, now the one thing that we don’t like is that the tools fit onto the vacuum using something called compression fit, which means you notice here they have to be pushed on and pulled off.
It would have been nice if they had a system where they click into place and there’s a release button on top, because that’s a little more secure this kind of thing you never never know how hard to push it on or if it’s going to fall off. When you’re using it’s just not quite as elegant a system now, we’ve also got this pet power brush here now it’s called a power brush, but it doesn’t have a motor.
It’s not a motorized tool, it’s actually a turbo wheel in here and it’s vacuum suction. That spinning that wheel, it’s a little belt drive in here and that in turn, spins this thinned brush roll. Now we did a test to see how effective this finned brush roll is we compared it to another turbo tool with a more traditional bristled brush roll?
This is the turbo tool that comes with the vertex. You can see the turbo wheel here and on the underside. You’ve got this interesting brush roll with yellow rubberized fins, now managed to dig up another turbo tool that came with one of our other shark uprights. You can see the wheel here, but on the underside you have a more traditional bristled brush roll. So what we want to do is do a pickup test on this medium pile carpet.
We’ve put down a bunch of lentils, we’ve got short white pet hair, long black human hair, that we’ve kind of ground in we’re going to run both tools, and we want to see if this bladed brush roll that comes with the vertex does anything particularly special.
So, let’s start with this more traditional brush roll, well that actually ground to a complete halt. I think you can see that I got a lot of hair and stuff jammed in here, not looking particularly good. Now, let’s try the bladed unit. That comes with the shark vertex
Well, it didn’t grind to a halt, doesn’t seem to be anything kind of left over here. So it did manage to pick up most of the debris without too much fanfare seems to be a little bit of stuff tucked in there. That’S now falling out, but overall it did do a better job. We, like the vertex, comes with a 30-foot power cord. We find 30 feet is sufficient to provide respectable cleaning reach.
Sometimes, we’ve noticed when you’ve got a power cord under 30 feet. People complain a bit doesn’t provide the kind of reach they want. They find themselves having to search for that next power outlet and not all shark machines, have that 30-foot power cord, for example. That is the zu 632 here, another good machine in our opinion, but it only has a 25 foot power cord.
The Shark Vertex Cordless Vacuum comes with the popular lift away feature and what that allows you to do is to carry this dust canister motor assembly with one hand, while using the hose handle in a tool or even the hose, handle wand and a tool.
With the other hand, it’s kind of a little bit like some handheld vacuum capabilities and we’ll show you what we mean here. There’s a button right here and it’s labeled power lift away. So we can press that and you’ll see this whole assembly comes out now.
We just weighed this: it weighs about eight pounds, so it’s it’s not light, but it is manageable and let’s take the handle off now. I can put, for example, a crevice tool on the end of the handle here and I can carry this around.
I’ve got a power button on the top here. You can see how handy that is. Actually you could use this even inside of a vehicle interior. Of course you are still uh tethered by your 30-foot power cord. So it’s not like a cordless or anything, but still very handy.
Now, if you wanted extra reach, you can also use the wand. Now, let’s see if I can take that out, let’s try to put it on the end here and I’ll put the crevice tool. The end of the wand here – okay, so you can see that will give you a lot extra reach good for overhead cleaning, for example, the vertex has what is called powered, lift away now powered lift away, actually has a little power outlets here.
In the end of the handle, and that allows you to run a motorized tool and that extends all the way down to the bottom of the wand, so you could also put a motorized tool at the end of the wand. Now it is a little disappointing that in our vertex package we did not get a motorized tool, we got a power tool, but that was a you know spun by vacuum suction.
So it’s not a motorized tool, but there are some other advantages to having power, lift away. Let’s say I’m trying to vacuum under some low furniture. I think you can see with this upright you’ve got this very large piece here and that’s going to restrict your ability to get under low furniture, but with the power lift away feature you can press the button here.
Take away this lift away pod, which is what they call it, and you can see how now I can get way under low furniture, and I have power to that cleaner, head turn. The power on you can see that the brush rolls are spinning in the cleaner head, so that is your powered lift away.
Now some shark machines have the lift away feature, but it is not powered lift away. Now I have an example of that here. This is the nv 360
I’ve got the same setup you can see. I’ve got the lift away pod here in one hand, turn the power on cleaner head. The brush rolls are not moving.
So, in a case like this, you have no power to the end of the handle, no power to the end of the wand. That is non-powered, lift away. This is the underside of the shark vertex cleaner head. You can see the duo clean technology, and that is the one soft brush roll here and this other brush row. So dual clean, meaning two brush rolls now this brush roll here is not a typical brush roll.
As you can see, we’ve got some bristles. These are quite soft, but you’ve also got these blue blades. I think shark calls them power fins, so this is a different kind of setup than you typically see. Now we took the cleaner head off of our older shark nv 752 here, and I think you can see. This is a little bit more of a traditional kind of setup, with a single bristled brush roll.
The surface of this soft brush roll actually has two different kinds of fibers in the black color. Here you can feel these are kind of stiffer bristles and in the blue, it’s a very, very soft fiber. Now this whole unit comes off for easy cleaning and there’s a slider here on the side.
You just push it down and this pops right out very easy and it’s actually pretty easy to put back on as well and it just clips into place. The controls on the vacuum are pretty intuitive and easy to use.
There’s a group of controls down here and, of course you have a group of controls up here. The handle itself has a little push button here that releases it and we’ll show a couple of clips of these two areas. This is the vacuum handle. You can see that the controls are made here to be easily accessible with your thumb. This is the on off power.
Switch here is the floor. Settings and it’s a slider at the bottom is hard floor in the middle is a low pile carpet and at the top here is thick carpet and area. Rugs controls in this area include the powered lift away button. If we push down on that, you can see the whole lift away. Assembly comes up, goes back into place, pretty easy.
The dust cup release button here push that down dust cup comes away and clicks back into place. This is the wand release button or tab. We push that down. One comes out pretty easy and clicks right back into place. So how much does the vertex weigh?
Well, we used to get our figures off of the shark website, but we’ve noticed that the numbers there sometimes seem to go up and down a little bit, so we’ve started to weigh these units yourself. Now. Why have we got these four machines here? Well, they’re. All kind of in the same category as the vertex and that is kind of the upper end of the shark, upright spectrum now at the far end, is the shark apex.
That’S model az1002, that guy weighed in at around 18 pounds so a little heavier than we thought actually beside here is the vertex. We got pounds. This is the shark nv 752. We got 16.4 16.
pounds, something like that and the shark in 632 at 16.2 pounds. So you can see that the vertex is not the lightest of vacuums, but it’s certainly not the heaviest either now over here on our left. Let me bring this across. I think you can see.
This is the shark zu56. Now this is more of an intermediate vacuum, meaning it’s not as expensive as these other four more features: rich shark uprights, and the reason this is here is that I’ve weighed this and it’s 13.2 pounds, so it is substantially lighter than these other units here and, as you can see, shark certainly does have lighter uprights.
I think vacuum movement is pretty good. The head turns well when you twist your wrist. However, the machine isn’t particularly lightweight, and you know it does take a bit of an effort to turn your wrist and to turn the vacuum.
Also it we’ve got these two brush rolls down here, spinning forward, so moving the vacuum forward is not too difficult, but it will fight you a little bit on the pullback making. It feels a little heavier, it’s not too bad, but it is noticeable. Now I’m going to turn the vacuum on and move it around a little bit. It is in low pile carpet mode. You can see that actually turning that head.
It responds really well, but this is a heavy area here, and it does take a little bit of effort on your wrist now moving it forward, pretty easy back fights you a little bit but again, not too bad. Overall, we do feel that the movement is pretty good but um hampered, perhaps somewhat by the weight of the vacuum.
The Shark Vertex Cordless Vacuum is easier to move on a hard floor. We’ve got it on our tile service here and you can see just how easily that head rotates. Its also a lot easier to move it back and forth, much more so than it is on carpet.
The vertex has two pre-motor filters and one post motor filter and we find filter maintenance on this machine to be pretty easy. Now. The first thing we’re going to do to access the filters, is to remove the dust cup and there’s a release dust cup button here, simply press that down comes right off, put it over there. You can see here we have a foam filter and underneath that is a felt filter. Both of these are rinsable in water when they’re dirty and they can be reused.
Of course, you put them in when they’re absolutely dry typically takes 24 hours or more to make sure those are nice and snug. Now the post-motor filter is a hepa filter. There’s a button here called access, hepa filter.
You can just press down on that, and this assembly just comes straight out now, underneath is the actual filter. We press in here a little bit of a click and there’s your filter comes right out.
This too is rinseable in water, and it can be reused now see if we can put this all back together, put that in a little click there slide this assembly forward clicks into place dust canister there. You go shark, also states that this unit has a sealed system.
Now, that’s not something we can easily test, but a sealed system ensures that all of the air entering the vacuum goes through those filters before being exhausted back into your room. It makes sure that you don’t have unfiltered air leaking out through poor seals or cracks in the vacuum body. The dust canister on the vertex is a fair size.
Its got a capacity of one quart, so you shouldn’t find yourself having to empty it too frequently. Its also pretty easy to detach from the vacuum to empty and to reattach to detach it. Theres a dust cup release button here. If we press that down, you can see this whole assembly just comes right off. This is your dust canister.
The button on the front opens up the dust, canister door, dust and debris fall out, and then you close it up and then reattach it to the vacuum. Pretty easy.
Now one of the things about this – I guess we don’t like a whole lot – is that the dust canister is pretty narrow and if you look at the size of the dust canister door here, you get an idea just how narrow this is and as a result.
You may sometimes find dust bunnies and hair and stuff getting caught up here and you may have to reach in and pull it out. We’ve seen this kind of thing with uh, you know a number of bag less machines but um. Maybe it’s just a little bit more pronounced with this narrow dust canister.
We performed some noise level tests using this digital noise level meter and we performed it on these four vacuums here now. This is the vertex and we figured if you’re in the market.
For one of these, you might also be in the market for some of these units. Here there are other shark uprights that are maybe similar in some ways to the vertex.
Now we place this three feet in front of the cleaner head of each vacuum cleaner with the brush rolls on, and we calculated peak decibels over about a 10-second period at the far end is the nv752, and that came in at 75.
decibels beside that is The shark apex this unit here this is model az1002. It came in at 76.1 decibels. This is the zu632 77.4 decibels and the shark vertex is 77.
decibels, so these two are very uh, similar in terms of noise level, while the two at the end are the quietest. Just a quick note on the noise level. Well, it would be nice if the vertex was a little quieter. We didn’t really find it prohibitively noisy. Its not something that we would consider a deal breaker in any way.
We’ve performed some hair cleaning tests. Now, all of these machines you see here will do a good job, picking up the hair, but the key really is to keep the hair off the brush roll too much hair on that brush roll may limit the effectiveness of the brush roll and, at some point, you are going to have to clean it, and that can be also a bit of a hassle.
Now at the far end, is the shark nbc752 we’ve put that into the test, because it has a traditional single brush roll and we’ll see how that performs in a hair Test the unit here is the shark apex az1002. It has duo clean technology and 0m technology, and the 0m is essentially a self-cleaning brush roll.
Its designed to limit hair tangle, we’ll see how that performs and, of course, the shark vertex. It too has a duo, clean technology and it also has a brush roll that is designed to limit hair, tangle
Oh, we’ve performed some cleaning tests and in those tests we’ve compared the performance of the vertex to the shark apex model az-1002. It’s another kind of premier shark, upright, if you will, with duo clean technology.
So what we did is we put together our own debris. We use a very fine scale that we have here and we measure a specific amount of split green peas, flax seeds, chili flakes and ground up. Cheerios, we put those in about a five foot, long line.
We run each vacuum over it and approximately a 10 second pass, and then we calculate pickup now, we’ve done that on this low pile carpet and we’ve also done it on a tile floor,when we calculated the percentage pickup by weight, we got 99.5 percent for the vertex and 99.0 percent for the apex.
I think you could see in the test that the vertex left less behind than the apex, but you know, in our opinion, both of these vacuums are pretty good on carpet. I suppose the vertex was perhaps just a little bit better than the apex we’ve seen a lot of uprights that perform well on carpet, but are fairly average on hard flooring. That wasn’t really the case.
With these two vacuums, pickup from both these units was pretty good. On our tile floor, in our opinion, I also think the dual clean technology is helping with this. Now, as the table shows, we got 99.4 pickups for the vertex and 98.8 percent pickups for the apex, and while we feel the performance of both machines was quite good.
Once again, the Shark Vertex Cordless Vacuum was slightly better. We also performed an edge cleaning test between these two units and that really tests the ability of the vacuum to clean right up tight against a wall or an edge, and I think you can see in these next couple of clips that the vertex really did outperform The apex we’ve looked at vacuum features, we’ve discussed specifications and we’ve even run the vertex through a series of vacuum cleaner tests.
In those tests we found that the unit was very good on carpet. Very good on bare floors was good at edge cleaning and it picked up hair. Well, it didn’t leave hair, wrap or tangle in the brush roll or at least very little, and I managed to get the hair up here into the dust canister for easy disposal, which is good now, like any vacuum Cleaner.
The vertex has its pros and cons, and I think we’ve walked through a lot of those already in the video. It would have been nice if the unit was maybe a little bit lighter and a little less noisy.
Neither of those were deal breakers for us.
At any rate, we like the fact that you’ve got the 30-foot power cord, so a decent cleaning reach.
We also like the controls, fairly intuitive and easy to use, and we especially like the powered lift away feature the ability that gives you to get under low furniture and to use it maybe a little like a handheld. All in all, I think the Shark Vertex Cordless Vacuum is worthy of your consideration. 🙂
Read More: Shark Vertex Cordless Vacuum – SHARK’S BEST CORDLESS YET!
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