Pet hair is one of the trickiest things to clean up. If you have a furry, four-legged friend and a home with lots of soft furnishings and carpet, staying on top of the build-up of fuzz can feel like a full-time job.
I recently ran a group test of eight vacuums from leading brands, in a bid to crown the best cordless vacuum on the market. As part of that trial, I ran a bunch of pet hair tests, which involved rubbing pet hair clippings into carpet and cushions and then seeing how efficient each vacuum was at clearing it away.
The model that came out on top, and the vacuum that now holds the #1 spot in my ranking of the best vacuums for pet hair, is the Shark PowerDetect Cordless. This stick vacuum earned a perfect score in all of my pesky pet hair tests, and has some special features that make it an especially good choice for pet owners. Read on to find out more – and learn which models snagged the runner-up spots.
Before I get into exactly why the Shark PowerDetect Cordless is my top recommendation for pet owners, I should let you know that now is a good time to be shopping for a new vacuum. The Black Friday sales are just kicking off, and there are plenty of deals floating around already. There aren’t any big discounts on this specific model yet, but I anticipate some appearing before long.
Why is this vac so good for pet owners?
To test how well my vacuums handled pet hair, I using clippings from my dog’s groomer (who told me my request to take home a bag of fur was “surprisingly common” – which raised a few questions for me). I rubbed handfuls of hair into deep pile carpet, medium-pile carpet, and a velvet cushion. I then assessed how effectively the vacuums cleared the hair, and gave each model a score out of 5 for each part of the test.
The Shark PowerDetect Cordless cleared almost all the hairs from both carpet samples in a single forward pass in Auto mode (this is the middle mode, in which the vacuum will intelligently adjust its suction based on how much dirt or debris it detects on the floor). It was just as impressive on the velvet cushion, removing all visible strands with a single swipe of Shark’s mini motorized upholstery tool.
It was the only vacuum to score a perfect 5/5 across the board in all the pet hair tests. In fact, it was the highest scorer (or joint highest scorer) in all my cleaning tests – it also proved very capable of pulling fine particles from carpet, which bodes well if you’re worried not just about hair but about dander and general dirt from your furry friend.
Aside from its exceptional cleaning, the Shark PowerDetect cordless is a particularly good choice for pet owners because it comes with a compatible auto-empty base. When you dock the vacuum, everything in the small onboard bin will shoot out and into a larger bin in the base, via a closed system. That means you won’t have to spend time pulling wodges of hair from your vacuum’s bin after (or half-way through) every cleaning session.
The runners up…
If the Shark PowerDetect doesn’t look quite right for you, these were the models that earned runner-up scores in my pet hair tests.
The Dyson V11 had no trouble clearing all traces of hair from medium-pile carpet in a single forward pass in Med mode, and only scored slightly lower on deep-pile carpet because it was too sucky to push comfortably in Med mode. It also aced my cushion test using Dyson’s Combi tool (there was no mini cleaner head with my test model).
The Gen5detect earned the same average as the V11 in my pet hair tests. It scored a perfect 5/5 on medium-pile carpet, clearing hair effortlessly in Auto mode (which, like Shark’s vac, intelligently responds to dirt on the floor). It lost a mark for being too sucky on deep-pile carpet – I had to drop to Eco mode in order to be able to push it.
