Shark Cordless PowerDetect Clean and Empty System review – untethered power and flexibility

The Shark Cordless PowerDetect Clean and Empty System is a great product that, for the most part, moves the needle forward from Shark's previous floorcare appliances. One thing that really elevates it amongst its own lineup is the fact that its telescopic tube can fold for easier access under furniture.

Of course, there are other things on offer that make it worthy of consideration among the best cordless vacuums. It comes with powerful suction, especially for a cordless stick, more powerful in fact than the Shark Cordless Detect Pro. It has a stable self-emptying base station with a place for all the attachment tools – I typically have at least one that’s just floating around – not to mention that it houses Shark’s odor neutralizer puck.

I tested the Shark Cordless PowerDetect to find out how well it performs, how useful the features are, and whether it's worth the $500 price point.

Tested and reviewed by

Tested and reviewed by

James Holland

The Shark Cordless PowerDetect Clean and Empty System reviewed here is the company’s newest vacuum addition and one of only a few that the company offers with a self-emptying base station. I tested it over the course a week on carpets and hard floors, trying out the different attachment tools it came with.

Shark Cordless PowerDetect Clean and Empty System: Price

The Shark Cordless PowerDetect Clean and Empty System is priced as high as any of the company’s other products, going for an MSRP of $499.99 directly through Shark, though it’s discounted to $449.99 at the time of writing.

Whether you get it through the company directly or an external retailer won’t make a difference price-wise as Amazon, The Home Depot, and Best Buy all offer it at the same price and with the same 10% discount.

Shark Cordless PowerDetect Clean and Empty System: Specifications

Shark Cordless PowerDetect Clean and Empty System: Unboxing and setup

Setting up the Shark Cordless PowerDetect Clean and Empty System is relatively easy. Like most cordless vacuums, it comes in a handful of pieces that quickly clip together to go from disassembled to assembled.

The box it comes in is fairly tall as the base station comes in one piece, with the exception of a little side stand that provides an extra attachment tool seat – there’s also one on the base station itself (there are two included attachment tools).

The cordless vacuum itself comes in three pieces: the floorhead, the telescopic tube, and the handheld vacuum that houses the dust cup and motor. It takes about a minute to clip these altogether once removed from the box.

Lastly, this unit comes with Shark’s odor neutralizer technology. The puck comes in a sealed package that takes a second to open. There’s a slot in the base station where you insert and twist the puck into place. Note that it does need to be replaced from time to time.

Shark Cordless PowerDetect Clean and Empty System: Design and features

The Shark Cordless PowerDetect Clean and Empty System, which comes in an interesting dark gray, white, purple, and clear colorway, is a stick vacuum with a self-emptying base station, two attachment tools, and an odor-neutralizer puck that slots in the base station.

The base station also acts as a dock for the stick vacuum, charging it when not in use and holding it up so you don’t have to find a place to store it. It even has a place to put one of the attachment tools and an extra base that slips underneath the side to put the other.

Its dustbin, which is supposed to hold about 45 days worth of debris (it all depends on how dirty your place is), pulls out fairly easily from the back and opens at the bottom to drop the contents in the trash. I appreciate that you don’t have to invest in replaceable bags, though some might prefer that since there’s more risk of dirt and debris escaping when being emptied.

The only real issue I have with the base station is the fact that the cradle fits the stick vacuum quite snugly so that, if you don’t gingerly place it back on there, it won’t fit properly and, therefore, won’t start charging back up or self-empty.

Moving on to the stick vacuum, it’s pretty straightforward if you’ve ever used a cordless stick vacuum with just a few twists. The floorhead has two brushrolls – one covered in a felt-type material and anti-hair-tangle-type rubber one with a line of bristles – that only starts turning when not fully upright, meaning it will disengage if you stand it fully up (maybe you have to pick something up off the floor). It also has lights that will illuminate dirt and debris on the floor that you might not see.

The telescopic tube is probably the most unique part of this vacuum since it has a foldable section near the top. You press a lever in the back and it folds back in an L-shape so that you can push the vacuum under furniture.

The handheld section holds the controls, which consists of a power button on top and a trigger button on the handle to switch between modes, and an LED panel that indicates which of the three modes you’re on. There’s an eco mode, auto mode, and max mode. The LED panel will also let you know how much battery is left, but only via four indicators so you won’t know exactly how much battery is left.

Lastly, there are two attachment tools: a crevice tool and a pet-multi tool. They clip easily onto the handheld portion so that, like most stick vacuums, you can use the vacuum to tackle jobs like upholstery, cleaning out a car, or reaching higher places.

Shark Cordless PowerDetect Clean and Empty System: Performance tests

The Shark Cordless PowerDetect is pretty powerful. I’ve reviewed a few other cordless models from Shark and this one seems to have the strongest suction. Just for comparison’s sake, it has 380 watts on hand, which is the amount of power that the vacuum uses during cleaning. The Shark Stratos Cordless Vacuum uses 309, and the Shark Cordless Detect Pro uses 240. I’ve had personal experience with both and found them to do the job well.

As far as cordless vacuums go, it’s hard to ask for more from the Shark Cordless PowerDetect. I tested it on carpets, upholstery, and hard flooring and it had no issues sucking up debris and dust. I even used it to vacuum two rooms that had been untouched for a week, but that seemed clean, and found its 0.74qt dust cup to be a quarter full of pet hair, dust, and dirt.

I also did our go-to test for vacuums with a number of substances lined up on the ground, in this case: cereal, flour, granulated sugar, and breadcrumbs. On forward passes, the Shark Cordless PowerDetect picked everything that it could fit in its floorhead.

Now, since the cereal (specifically Cheerio's if you’re curious) was larger, not all of it was picked up on the first go. Since Shark advertises this vacuum as being able to vacuum in both forward and backward passes, this represented the perfect chance to see how it does when reversing to finish the job. Unfortunately, backwards pickup, while there, was not as good as when moving in a forward motion with cereal getting stuck behind the vacuum and requiring extra effort or turning around and vacuuming into the cereal to pick it up.

Outside of that though, the performance is quite good for a cordless vacuum. It does well on edges so I only needed to break out the crevice tool for hard-to-reach places and could cover an entire room’s floor in the vacuum’s standard setup.

Plus, with that foldable section in the telescopic tube, it’s much easier to get under furniture than I’ve experienced with any other vacuum. There are other vacuums that can get as deep, but they bend at the floorhead, so you have to adjust your posture to reach under, say, a couch. With this, you just press the lever for it to fold and go on as usual. And once you’re done, you can use a forward motion while holding it to snap it back into its regular orientation.

As far as other uses go, its handheld portion is lightweight enough that using one of the attachments on a wall for cobwebs or on upholstery is easy and not all that taxing. Bear in mind that it’s not as light as corded stick vacuums as they don’t also have a lithium battery that you also have to hold up. Its performance in those tasks were good as well, being able to easily suck up pet hair off a couch cushion, for instance.

Those with vast amounts of carpet will find that this does a good job there as well. I used this vacuum on the carpet in a room where our cat likes to spend most of her time and it pulled up a good amount of hair out of the carpet that I didn’t even see. It’s not going to be as powerful as standard upright vacuums – that’s the case for cordless vacuums in general – but it’s powerful enough.

Regardless of what surface you use the Shark Cordless PowerDetect on, it is on the louder side. The eco mode is the quietest at 68 dB while Max is about 72 dB. That’s not atypical for vacuums, but you’re not going to be able to vacuum with this model in the middle of the night (well, you shouldn’t if you share your household or walls with anyone).

Lastly, the battery life here is listed as 70 minutes. Though the LED display only shows four indicators for battery life, it took me about 15 minutes to go from four indicators lit up to three on the heavy setting. So, if you use the eco mode, you’ll get your 70 minutes (and eco mode still picks up at least most visible debris just as well). But using the more powerful settings will still net a very reasonable 60 minutes of use.

Shark Cordless PowerDetect Clean and Empty System: Maintenance

When it comes to maintenance, the Shark Cordless PowerDetect Clean and Empty System is pretty straightforward, like most modular vacuums. You can easily unclip the floorhead from the telescopic tube from the handheld if something is stuck. The dust cup and the dust bin are easily accessible.

And in the base station, when you remove the dust bin, not only is it easy to open but it sits on filters that can be removed and washed or replaced.

Cleaning out the floorhead is fairly easy as the felt brushroll, which is the one in front has a latch on the side that allows you to remove and clean it. While the other brushroll isn’t removable, it does have plenty of clearance if there’s a blockage or you need to get in there to cut something that’s tangled around it. That said, I have yet to see any hair wrapped in there and have been using this vacuum in a household with two dogs, two women with long hair, and three men, two of which have plenty of facial hair.

How does the Shark Cordless PowerDetect Clean and Empty System compare?

It might be unfair to compare the Shark Cordless PowerDetect Clean and Empty System to the Dyson Gen5detect, a cordless vacuum that is not only twice the price but one of our favorite cordless vacuums available right now. But it is instructive to see how it compares, considering that the Shark does a lot of the same things insofar that it can also get to 70 minutes of battery life, has washable filters, and can illuminate all sorts of dirt on the floor, not to mention be used on multiple surface types. Plus, it adds a twist in that foldable telescopic tube.

However, the Dyson is a little lighter, has much stronger illumination, and offers much more detail on the LED panel, specifically on the particles it picks up. It is the better vacuum, but it’s also twice the price and doesn’t come with a self-emptying base station like the Shark Cordless PowerDetect.

Since many people’s barometers are Dysons, let’s pick another to compare the Shark to: the Dyson V8 Animal cordless vacuum, which is actually cheaper but only when the Shark Cordless PowerDetect is not on sale. In this case, the main benefit of the Dyson is that it’s lighter, comes with four attachments, and has the name Dyson.

It doesn’t have a self-emptying base station, it only has 40 minutes of battery, the dust cup on the vacuum itself is smaller, and the Dyson has issues with hair wrapping around the brushroll. If you need a Dyson, it’s a great vacuum. But, if you’re willing to get away from that name – and Shark as a brand is no slouch, either – the Shark Cordless PowerDetect Clean and Empty System has more to offer in terms of features.

Shark Cordless PowerDetect Clean and Empty System: Verdict

I have gotten my hands on a few different Shark products, most notably the Shark Stratos Cordless Vacuum and the Shark Cordless Detect Pro, and can honestly say that the Shark Cordless PowerDetect Clean and Empty System is the company’s best cordless product to date.

The price tag is a bit high if you’re not the kind of person that’s willing to pay Dyson-type prices. But its $500 cost is worth it when you consider the fact that it can fold to get under furniture, has a long battery life, can transform into various modes the way stick vacuums can, and has a lot of power for a cordless. It’s still not going to match something like the Shark POWERDETECT Upright Vacuum, but again, cordless stick vacuums are typically less powerful than their corded brethren precisely because their functionality is built around convenience.

Outside of price, the only real issues are that it can be tricky to put back in the self-emptying base station’s cradle and the fact that its reverse pickup isn’t as strong as advertised. But, what it has to offer really mitigates those small issues.