Shark Rotator Prof. Lift-Away Upright Vacuum

First of all let me start out by saying that I am a perfectionist. My kids will tell you, my husband will tell you and pretty much anyone who knows me will tell you that I when I pay good money for some thing I want it to work well. That with my hope with the shark navigator lift away. I have owned one of these in the past and I don’t remember much about it other than I wasn’t crazy about it Way back then and promised myself I would never buy another one and I didn’t for a long time up until now . I thought with all the Positive reviews and all of the new technology in recent years that the shark would live up to the reviews that it has here on Amazon. I was wrong or at least I think I was wrong. I literally just received the vacuum today. It’s also important to note that I have hardwood floors all throughout the downstairs of my 4500 square-foot home. All of the hardwood is covered with area rugs that are dark colors mainly because we built our house in 2005 and dark colors were in at that time. So, when we adopted two all White Rescue dogs, one of each one of which is very large and very hairy and sheds constantly, I never knew I would be vacuuming two and sometimes three times a day just to get rid of the hair. With that being said I needed a decent vacuum that could pick up pet hair easily and that is how this vacuum advertises itself. I now have three vacuums but most of the ones I bought in the past were disposable. If get a full year out of them that is a lot. I’m not talking about cheap 75 or $85.00 vacuums. I am talking about vacuums that are $175.00 or more. I noticed some that might not think that $ 200 is an expensive vacuum and I guess it isn’t compared to the vacuums like Dyson and the other $1000 plus vacuums but to me $200 is still a decent amount of money and for that price I should get a decent vacuum. My past three vacuums have all been Bissells. I bought my first one about three years ago and was very happy with it so when it konked out I continued to buy that brand. . I still think it’s a good vacuum for the price but they honestly don’t last more than a year at the most and I’m getting tired of doing nothing but buying vacuums every six months so I thought I would try The shark and give it another shot, especially after all of the good reviews it got on Amazon. I jus5 received it today. My husband took it out of the box and put it together in less than 5 minutes. I immediately tried to vacuum up the tons of white long-haired wired fur for that sticks into my area rugs from one of my rescues. In all honesty this brand new vacuum did not work much better than my one year-old Bissell vacuum, which was extremely annoying to me , but the thing that really irked me after opening it ( I did not know this before I bought it and probably would not have bought if had known) is that it doesn’t have a retractable cord. I can’t begin to tell you what a pain in the neck it is t wind up a cord especially one on a $200 vacuum. All of my Bissell’s have had retractable cords. I can’t understand why that is such a problem for shark because I’ve checked out pretty much all their brands and all of them have windable cords at least all the brands that have cords. . Anyway enough about the cord now let me talk to you about the vacuum itself. I think any brand new vacuum is gonna be great at picking up dog hair, after all it’s brand new. This one worked well but it was extremely hard to push on my area rugs. Also, at the end of the rugs where all the dog hair seems to gather, I had to push the vacuum at least three or four times to get up ALL the hair that accumulated there . It was very frustrating especially with how heavy this thing is to push!,, it’s not a Light back in by any means. When I read the reviews on Amazon, one reviewer said that the vacuum glides through their house !!! All I could think of is that they don’t have any rugs they’re vacuums and it’s gliding on hardwood because it definitely does not glide on area rugs !!! In fact I ended up with a backache after I just vacuumed only my kitchen and sunroom. The Bissel was also a hard to push vacuum with but again it’s a less expensive vacuum and It did the job so I never really complained about it. I’m still going to hold onto this vacuum because I do like the idea of being able to lift away the canister and vacuum the stairs which was definitely a pain with the Bissell. To try to lug it up the stairs and back down again when I was done. And I have a lot of stairs!! I will try to update my review After I’ve used the Shark everal more times I will let you know what I think but for now I am not overly impressed . it’s just my opinion . I guess it’s because I have a lot of continual dog hair that impedes itself in my rugs So it is probably a lot more for someone like me to vacuum than someone who doesn’t have any dogs or dogs that do not shed. Oh, yes there is one more thing I do you want to mention .The head on the vacuum is much smaller than the head of the vacuum on my Bissell But I don’t think that’s a bad thing because it does actually get more places that my Bissell could not reach but again as far as ease-of-use it is definitely not easy to use.