The Shark Navigator Lift-Away Professional Upright Review

When it comes to shopping for a new vacuum cleaner, shoppers look for things like great specifications, good customer reviews, and a low price. In this Shark Navigator Lift-Away Professional review, we’ll help you take these factors into account and decide whether it’s a good buy.

Let’s jump right into it.

Shark Navigator Lift-Away Professional

The Vacuum

The Shark Navigator Lift-Away Professional is a multipurpose vacuum cleaner meant for use on hardwood floors, carpets, and bare floors. Although this fairly standard white vacuum looks like any other ordinary vacuum, this model comes with a lift-away function that lets you separate the canister from the head. This comes in handy when cleaning those hard-to-reach places.

This model never loses suction and is built with the newest sealed vacuum technology. In fact, it has advanced cyclonic technology that separates fine dirt from the air. This prevents dirt from clogging the filters and keeping suction power strong over time.

What’s in the box?

The Shark Navigator Lift-Away Professional vacuum comes with an 8 inch Crevice Tool, Dusting Brush, Pet Hair Power Brush, Dust Away Hard Floor Attachment, and 1 Microfiber Pads.

If you are looking for a dependable long lasting vacuum, this is a great choice.

Design

Perhaps one of the key design features is the Lift-away technology. With the press of a button, the canister detaches for portable cleaning. Therefore, this mode is perfect for spot cleaning and areas such as under furniture and behind couches. Other notable design features include swivel steering, which offers excellent control when maneuvering around tight spaces and around furniture.

From the first use to the last room, you never lose cleaning power. In fact, Shark’s Anti-Allergen Complete Seal Technology combined with superior HEPA filtration to capture and hold over 99.9% of dust and allergens inside the vacuum. Therefore, not back into the air you breathe.

An extra large capacity dust cup features lightweight convenience ideal for quickly cleaning stairs, upholstery or accessing small, hard to reach areas around your home and car. In addition, this includes the patented Dust-Away hard floor attachment. This is a one step dry floor cleaning system that uses powerful suction to vacuum up the debris you can see. In addition, there is a microfiber pad that wipes away the tiniest particles you can’t see. Powerful pet hair vacuum attachments quickly and easily lift pet hair and other ground-in dirt from carpeted stairs, upholstery and other surfaces.

Assembly

While the assembly instructions were easy to follow, it took us around 5 steps to assemble the entire vacuum together. In comparison, other similar models like the Rotator took us 4 steps to put them together.

Here’s how to do it:

1. Place the floor nozzle on a level surface. Lower the Lift-Away pod into the floor nozzle until it clicks into place.
2. Attach the end of the extension wand to the tube around the back of the lift away pod and ensure it clicks into place.
3. Slide the accessory holder on the extension wand and ensure the tab are aligned with the groove.
4. Push the handle at the top of the extension wand. It should click into place. Insert the end of the stretch hose into the connector around the back of the Lift-Away pod.
5. Next, attach the crevice tool and dusting brush onto the accessory holder.

Highlights

Performance

The Navigator Lift-Away is an upright vacuum cleaner that can be configured easily into different cleaning modes to keep your surfaces clean. To clarify, it features an upright mode for vacuuming carpets and floors, a lift-away mode for cleaning tight spaces or spots like ceiling fan blades and baseboards. It also has a brushroll capability for a more powerful bare floor and carpet cleaning function.

Superior Deep Carpet Cleaning

Powerful suction picks up all the dirt you can see, plus removes the embedded dirt you can’t. Effectively, this cleans all types of surfaces, from bare floors to area rugs to the thickest of carpets.

During our review, we found out that the brushroll doesn’t spin unless the nozzle is flat against the floor and the handle is tilted backwards. Moreover, due to its strong suction power, you might have to adjust the suction release collar on the handle of the vacuum to reduce the suction. This is especially when cleaning delicate surfaces like blinds or drapes.  You may also notice the vacuum lifting your area rugs and find it is hard to pull and push the unit.

Usability

Many upright vacuums are awkward to push or just bulky on the carpet. However, the Shark Lift-Away Professional is easy to push on any kind of flooring. During our cleaning test, it never got stuck while we were using it, though it was slightly more difficult to push on high pile carpet compared to other types of flooring we tested.

Swivel Steering

Steering around obstacles in your home has never been easier and more fun with this lightweight, go anywhere upright. With its swivel steering and smooth-glide wheels, it is easy to move around and under furniture. In addition, while this is quite impressive, it still falls behind some of the competing models, such as Dyson Ball technology.

Noise

From our test, this model produced 71.4 decibels, which is comparable to the sound levels inside your car while you’re driving. And compared to the Rotator, the Navigator is considerably quieter.

Warranty

It comes with a 5-year limited warranty, which covers the original unit as well as the non-wearable components that are deemed defective by the manufacturer.

Pros and Cons

Pros

• Super maneuverable with its swivel steering, smooth glide wheels and a super stretch hose
• Comes with a large dust canister for extended cleaning periods
• Comes with Anti-Allergen Complete Seal Technology with a HEPA filter for trapping allergens, dust, and dirt inside the vacuum.

Cons:

• It’s lightweight design makes it easier to topple it over
• The cord is shorter compared to other similar upright vacuums

Our Verdict

Overall, we think the Shark Navigator Lift-Away Professional is an excellent upright vacuum for the money. It’s easy to use, lightweight, and comes with a lot of compelling features. The HEPA filtration system with the Anti-Allergen Complete Seal Technology makes this vacuum excellent for people with pets or suffer from allergies. We also liked that its powerful suction had no problem sucking up all kinds of debris on hard floors and carpets. The included accessories are certainly a bonus, which all add on to the cleaning experience.

While the Shark Navigator Lift-Away Professional has some minor cons, you get a lot of value, especially considering the price. For a very small investment, it will help you effectively clean your floors, furniture, and other items or areas of your home.

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