Shark Navigator Lift-Away Upright Vacuum NV356E

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Shark Navigator Lift-Away Upright Vacuum NV356E

Shark · NV356E

4.5/5

The detachable canister solves stairs and upholstery better than most cordless machines, and the sealed HEPA system is the real reason to buy it.

Best for

Homes with carpet, pets or an allergy sufferer

Key highlight

Anti-Allergen Complete Seal with a washable HEPA filter

• Suction4.7
• Filtration4.8
• Versatility4.7
• Weight3.8
• Value4.6

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This vacuum has been on sale, in roughly this form, for over ten years. That is unusual in a category that reinvents itself every season, and the reason is that the core idea — an upright that detaches into a canister — solves a real problem better than most cordless machines do.

Lift-Away

Press a button and the dust cup and motor lift off the floor head, leaving you with a lightweight canister you carry by the handle. Stairs, curtains, ceiling corners and car interiors all become straightforward, and you are not fighting a full-size upright up a staircase. Cordless stick vacuums achieve something similar but with a fraction of the runtime and, usually, less suction.

Suction and filtration

Corded means constant full power — no fade at the end of a room, no watching a battery indicator. The Anti-Allergen Complete Seal is the other selling point: the HEPA filter is sealed into the airflow path so the fine dust it captures does not leak back out through the body. Shark quotes 99.9 per cent of dust and allergens trapped. For a house with pets or an allergy sufferer, a sealed system matters more than a headline suction figure.

Floors

A brushroll shutoff switches it between carpet and hard floors. On carpet the brushroll agitates and lifts; on wood you turn it off so it stops flinging grit around. Swivel steering makes it manoeuvrable for its size. The dust cup is 0.87 litres, which is small enough that a whole-house clean means emptying it once or twice.

Where it shows its age

It is corded, so you are unplugging and re-plugging as you move through the house. It is not light — the full upright is a proper machine to carry upstairs, which is what Lift-Away is for. The plastics feel functional rather than premium, and the filters need rinsing under a tap and a full twenty-four hours of air drying, which people forget and then wonder why suction dropped.

Should you buy it?

Buy the NV356E if you have carpet, pets or an allergy sufferer in the house, and you would rather have constant power than cordless convenience. Skip it if you want to grab a vacuum for two minutes without finding a socket, or if your home is all hard floors and small.