Shark PowerLite Clean and Empty Pet Review

Design and Features

• Self-empty station
• Very light
• Useful range of tools

The Shark PowerLite Clean & Empty Pet BU3621UKT is similar to the Shark PowerDetect Speed Clean and Empty Pet Pro IA3241UKT, and it ships with the Clean & Empty station that sucks dust out of the vacuum and charges it.

This base station doesn’t have one of Shark’s scent pods in it. It’s not a big deal, although the fresh scent is a nice feature to have, making your home smell clean at the end of a vacuuming session.

There’s a 1.3L bin in the dock, which Shark says can hold up to 30-days’ worth of dust. And, there’s not a bag in sight, with the bin reusable. It’s easy to pull out from the back, and then take it out to your bin outside for emptying.

When in use, the Shark PowerLite Clean & Empty Pet BU3621UKT’s own 0.42L bin is used for dust collection, so it will easily hold enough dust to manage a whole-home clean.

Pop the vacuum on the dock, and the dust gets sucked out, leaving the vacuum ready to go for next time. It’s a nice system and, since I moved to an auto-empty dock, I wouldn’t want to go back to manual emptying.

Should you need to, the Shark PowerLite Clean and Empty Pet BU3621UKT has a replaceable battery.

If you need the dock to be quiet, such as after cleaning at night, there’s a night mode button. Hit this and the dock won’t empty automatically.

With a bagless dock, it does mean that there are two additional washable filters to deal with, but it’s a fair trade off not to have the extra cost of bags.

The vacuum cleaner also has its own filter, which will need to be washed to maintain suction power.

Pull the vacuum out for cleaning, and the basic design is similar to other Shark vacuum cleaners, although the Shark PowerLite Clean & Empty Pet BU3621UKT is a little more basic. Here, there’s a straight wand without the MultiFlex hinge that more expensive models have, allowing them to fold in half to freestand or for cleaning under sofas without having to bend down.

With the Shark PowerLite Clean & Empty Pet BU3621UKT you’ll need to bend to clean under sofas, and lean it carefully when you want to pause cleaning. Two fair trade-offs for the price.

There’s also a more basic floor head, with the FloorFins brushroll lacking the dust Reveal light of the more expensive models. It can detect the floor type it’s on, adjusting the brushbar speed automatically, which is helpful.

And, there’s a more basic range of tools, with a crevice tool and the FurFins Pet Tool in the box.

The latter needs manual agitation to pick up hair, compared to the powered pet tool you get with more expensive cleaners.

Sadly, the dock only has a slot to hold the crevice tool, rather than both of the tools in the box.

Controls are standard. There’s no dust detection, so you have to manually pick between the three power modes. The screen shows the mode you’re in and there’s a basic battery meter, too.

While this vacuum may miss out on some features that its more expensive rivals have, few are as light as this model. At 1.41kg for the handheld unit, it’s really light. Whether you need to clean the tops of your cupboards, vacuum out your car, or just use it with the floor head, this is a super nimble vacuum cleaner.

Performance

• Powerful
• Excellent dust collection
• Battery life is a little short

I measure the suction power of all vacuum cleaners in air watts (AW) at the handheld unit. I measured the standard power at 68AW, which is good for very light jobs. On its standard setting, power jumped to 137AW, which is considerably higher than the 82AW that I measured on the Shark IA3241UKT; however, that vacuum cleaner has a dust sensor, so it adapts its power on the fly, where as the Shark PowerLite Clean & Empty Pet BU3621UKT has to have enough suction for all cleaning tasks.

On Boost, power increased to 216AW, which is a decent amount of power. Lining up some rice grains, I could see that this vacuum could suck up mess from 2cm away, so it’s good for tough jobs, such as picking up dust from crevices in a car, for example.

On to my main tests, I added 20g of flour to my test carpet. Using the standard power mode, a sweep through forwards and backwards left a clean line with sharp lines at the edges of the floor head had passed.

After completing the test on the medium power, I measured that the Shark PowerLite Clean & Empty Pet BU3621UKT had collected an impressive 97.35% of the dust.

Performance in my edge test was very good, too. While there was a thin line of flour left, 91.4% was collected.

On the hard floor, 100% of the rice was collected, without a single grain being flicked around.

I combed cat hair into the carpet, and the Shark PowerLite Clean & Empty Pet BU3621UKT dealt with it all.

The same was true for the human hair test, which was all collected without any wrapping around the brush roll. 

To see how well the FurFins Pet Tool worked, I combed cat hair into the test sofa. The FurFins work well, agitating the hair, but it does require a bit of manual agitation to get the hair off; lucky the vacuum cleaner is so light.

Sound ranges between 69.1dB and 73.7dB, putting this vacuum cleaner in the average range.

For battery life, I measured using the floor head on carpet. Shark says you can expect up to 40 minutes on Eco setting without a motorised tool, but I tested with the motorised floor head in standard and boost modes.

In boost mode, the battery lasted just 5m 50s. In standard mode, which is required for most floor cleaning jobs, I measured the battery at 11m 29s. That’s not much time at all, so this vacuum cleaner is better as a secondary cleaner or for smaller homes.

Should you buy it?