I’m a huge fan of Shark’s no hair wrap self-cleaning Zero-M feature on this brushroll. Our corded Shark Apex vac we’ve had for 5 months has this feature and I haven’t had to remove a single strand of hair from those brushrolls. I’ve cleaned our entire house with this Rocket cordless stick vac (required several recharges) and all of the hair made it to the dust cup, nothing wrapped around the brushroll. Prior to these Shark vacs I used my pocketknife to cut my wife’s hair out of various vacuum brushrolls every month for the last 25 years. Now I know better and won’t ever buy another vac without this feature.
The charging port is on the battery and it can be charged while attached or detached from the vac. The battery is replaceable, and it doesn’t require a special battery charger, just an easily replaceable AC adapter with a barrel plug. Win, Win. I’m not a fan of planned obsolescence.
The Rocket has circuitry that will shut down the vac or delay charging if the battery gets too warm. After a full charge I used the Rocket around my house until the LEDs indicated the charge was low. I kept cleaning on Boost Mode until the vac shut itself off. When I attempted to charge the battery, it indicated the battery was not at optimal temperature to charge (outer LEDs flashing). The manual states charging is only paused, leave the battery plugged in, charging will resume once the battery cools. The battery was barely warm, so charging resumed soon. That is a great feature that should help extend the life of the battery.
The three LED lights on the front of the floor nozzle help you see debris and the pivot point where it connects to the wand helps you steer in tight places. There are no lights on the vac itself, only lights on the floor nozzle.
The two pre-motor filters and one post-motor HEPA filter are all easy to remove and clean with just water. I like the use of quarter-turn fasteners to access the brushroll instead of regular screws. They made the Rocket easy to maintain.
The Rocket is great on hard floors. We have several furry children that eat off the floor and the Rocket makes quick work of cleaning up their crumbs. It also does a great job cleaning up litter that gets tracked outside their box in the bathroom. I’m used to bending over with a hand vac for quick cleanups and the Rocket has been much nicer to use. The Rocket works well on carpet, but I’d rather plug in one of our corded vacs to clean our carpeted upstairs. Our corded Shark Apex does a better job on our carpeted stairs, but the cordless Rocket is more convenient.
Cons:
There is no on-board tool storage, just like our other Shark vac. Why not design spots along the wand that can hold the crevice and multi-tool? It sure would make the vac easier to use. A $300-dollar vacuum should include a way to hold the tools. I’m using a toilet paper tube taped to the wand to hold the crevice tool. It worked so well I decided to make one for the brush. I made that one using a paper towel tube I cut and taped back together.
There’s no bracket or easy way to hang or store the vac unless you have the MultiFLEX wand instead of the standard wand. The Rocket with standard wand can’t stand on its own for storage but it can be leaned against a wall and the floor nozzle sticks out 12 to 13 inches. This works best on carpet. If the vacuum is propped this way on a hard floor, the floor nozzle can roll away from the wall and fall if you aren’t careful.
Hair can catch on the dustbin lid while emptying. A gentle shake and tap on the bin usually make it fall free but there have been several times it was easier to grab the hair and pull it out. There are some tight spaces inside the dust bin along the back side that tend to hold fuzzies. Eventually other debris knocks them loose.
The tools snap securely onto the wand or vac but there is no way to rotate the crevice tool or the pet multi-tool. Also, the neck of the multi-tool doesn’t swivel like ones included with most vacuums we have owned like our other Shark vac. This makes it a challenge if not impossible to use in tight places like our cat furniture.
I rotate the tools on our corded shark vac 45 degrees. This lets me tilt the vacuum slightly sideways making it easier to maneuver the vac in tight spaces. It also helps to “steer” the brush around corners in these tight spaces. Sometimes I rotate the multi-tool 90 or even 180 degrees to vacuum vertical surfaces like the back of our couch, carpeted stairs and cat furniture. You can’t do this with the Rocket vac.
If you use the multi-tool attached directly to the Rocket vac and you are reaching 12 inches back under/into something, you need 13 inches of height for handle clearance. If you want to reach in/under with the entire vac, about 18 inches deep, ideally you will need 15 inches of height to clear. Either way, if you lower the vac handle beyond 12 inches, the dust-bin bottoms out forcing the muli-tool to pivot off the surface and break contact/suction. If they allowed the tool or its neck to rotate, like most brush/multi-tools, you could use the vac in more places. I used the Rocket in my truck interior and several times it would have been useful to rotate the crevice and brush tools 90 degrees, but I managed to get the job done.