Shark APEX Vacuum Review 2024

We put it up against 20 other vacuums in the Good Housekeeping Institute Cleaning Lab.

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Let's be honest: vacuums can take up a lot of space. But you may want multiple types of vacs to tackle different messes. Maybe you want a canister vacuum for easy maneuverability up and down the stairs, but an upright vacuum to better handle stains on medium- and high-pile carpets. Thankfully, the Shark APEX is a two-in-one upright and canister vacuum that can get you closer to a one-vacuum household.

In the Good Housekeeping Institute Cleaning Lab, we have tested hundreds of vacuum cleaners over the years, evaluating each one for suction power and performance, maneuverability and general ease of use. After testing the Shark APEX against 20 other models in a total of 320 side-by-side cleaning tests, it currently holds our top pick for the best vacuums you can buy in 2024. That's why we wrote up this in-depth review of the Shark APEX to help you decide if it's the right vac for your needs.

All of the vacuums that come through our Good Housekeeping Institute Cleaning Lab are put through the same rigorous performance and ease of use tests where our experts simulate, as best as we can, all kinds of home cleaning situations across tile, vinyl, hardwood and carpeted floors. The Shark APEX earned high scores in our bare floor and carpet pick-up tests picking up more than 94% of the distributed debris across our test floors. With perfect scores in our Lab’s air suction and sound tests, the APEX proves that a vacuum with strong suction doesn’t have to disturb your peace.

In our Lab’s ease of use tests, it earned good scores for its straightforward controls, comfortable handle and easy-to-empty dust cup. Weighing in at 16 pounds, it was one of the heaviest models we tested, but it was nonetheless easy to push and pull along bare floors.

The powered lift-away feature a you to clean all the areas you may typically tidy up with a canister vacuum, like stairs and under tight furniture without compromising suction power or cleaning range. Plus it's convenient to store and can easily be tucked away in the back of a closet without taking up too much floor space. The APEX has a 30-foot cord — no more finding another outlet to clean the other side of the room — plus three attachments to tackle a variety of cleaning needs: a crevice tool to get into all the nooks and crannies, an upholstery tool for your furniture and a pet brush to take care of the seemingly never-ending stream of hair from your fur babies.

The APEX is a bagless vacuum with a dust cup that one consumer tester says has a “button that is easy to find,” and we agree. All of the buttons on the handle and main body are clearly labeled, and the dust cup has a wide opening that releases all of the debris the vacuum picks up. While bagless options are rarely a favorite allergy sufferers, the APEX might be the exception. The entire vacuum is sealed for total dust retention. With washable foam, felt and HEPA filters, your dust and debris are sure to stay where they belong, in the device, not circulating back into the air. For these reasons, the Shark APEX also tops a second of our expert-picked lists — the best HEPA vacuums.

Rounding out its impressive list of features are a dual bristle brush and a soft brush roll to deep-clean carpets and give bare floors a polished look. Maintaining the brushes is easy with Shark Zero M technology that removes hair wrapped around the bristle brush while you clean.

The Shark APEX has three cleaning modes for hard flooring, low-pile carpet and thick carpets/area rugs. We tested the Shark APEX in the Cleaning Lab on hardwood floors, vinyl and tiled floors and low- and medium-pile carpets. It performed well on all of these floor types, picking up oatmeal, rice and faux pet hair with very little debris left behind. We found that the suction increased significantly when the vacuum was switched to one of the carpet modes, and the brush rolls spun noticeably faster too. The soft brush roll is great at picking up small pieces of debris from hard floors without causing any damage to more delicate floor types like hardwood.

Yes, it did in our Lab test! In the Cleaning Lab, we use rayon fibers that mimic the feel of fluffy pet hair to test each vacuum cleaner's ability to pick up pet hair from carpets and hard flooring. The APEX handled our "pet hair" very well, especially with the pet power brush attachment that suctioned hair that wasn't even in its direct path. It was, however, very loud and we didn't love that some of the hair became stuck to the lint strip and the bottom of the pet power brush instead of being suctioned into the dust cup. Some of the more embedded hair was left behind on the first pass, but the second time around took care of the stragglers.

Note that we didn't test the APEX using longer hairs that often become tangled around the brush rolls of many vacuum cleaners, but this vacuum's brush roll is designed to help minimize those tangles. That said, even with all of our years of experience testing vacuum cleaners, we haven't found a model that totally eliminates this hair-tangling problem.

We found that it was necessary to push with a little extra force when attaching the handle to the main body of the vacuum. Even after hearing the handle seemingly clicked into place, it sometimes detached when we were ready to start our next test. It didn't happen all the time, but the few times it did felt annoying. Make sure it's secure whenever you reattach it.

The APEX is also heavier than many other models we've tested in the Lab so keep this in mind if you have to carry it across long distances or up and down stairs. It also tips over easily. We noticed it most when we used it as an upright and pulled on the hose without detaching the main body from the motorized floor brush. The swivel neck on this vacuum makes it easy to maneuver around corners, but also a bit difficult to keep on a steady, straight path and it required a pretty significant push to get across thicker carpets.

The soft brush roll is great for leaving hard floors spotless, but our experts noted that this vacuum doesn't give you the option to turn off the brush rolls or control the suction power beyond the three floor mode options. Note that the 0n-board storage only holds two of the three included attachments.

If cutting down on the number of cleaning appliances you have at home is your goal, a multitasking vacuum like the Shark APEX Powered Lift-Away Upright Vacuum is a solid option. It has powerful suction, a small footprint so it's easy to store and it's loaded with many of the features we look for in the best vacuums like a HEPA filter, the ability to clean different floor types and attachments to help tackle messes in hard to reach areas in your home.

During her time in the Good Housekeeping Institute Cleaning Lab, Jodhaira Rodriguez tested and wrote about cleaning appliances like robot vacuums, uprights and stick vacs. She also conducted the Lab's first-ever test of wet dry vacuum mops and tested many of the vacuums that were submitted for consideration in our Cleaning and Organizing Awards. For this story, she personally tested the Shark APEX vacuum in the Lab, repeating many of the tests that were originally conducted with this model when it was first tested by our cleaning experts years ago.

From 2021 to 2023, Jodhaira (she/her) was a product reviews analyst in the Good Housekeeping Institute’s Home Care & Cleaning Lab, where she tested and wrote about home appliances, cleaning products and cleaning tips. Prior to joining GH, she graduated from Hofstra University with a bachelor’s degree in forensic science and spent two years as an analyst in an environmental lab in Queens.

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