What do you MEAN it’s a vacuum that mops AT THE SAME TIME?! Our millennial souls get excited by Shark’s newest floor cleaner, because we guess that’s where we get our thrills now!? Emma Clifton’s honest review of her newest toy – here’s our Shark Hydrovac review!
If you had told my younger self that one day I would be entertaining guests at my house by demonstrating how the 2-in-1 function of the Shark HydroVac works, she probably would have… jumped off a cliff?
Well, get back up ON that cliff, I say to a young me, because turns out the sentence “it’s a vacuum cleaner AND a mop in one,” is the middle-age equivalent of “he’s hot AND funny,” because that’s what life is now.
Much like Alice’s wariness of machines that try to do too many things, I am also deeply suspicious of multi-tasking tools (possibly because I only have one skill set? Hard to say).
But the Shark HydroVac is no freaking joke. Our wee house has wooden floors everywhere but the two bedrooms and contains a 16-month-old and recently adopted rescue cat who both love nothing more than eating off the floor. Honestly if your household also has kids/pets/husbands or any other thing that seems to generate mess at the drop of a hat, this will be your new best friend.
And instead of having to drag out the vacuum cleaner AND THEN THE MOP, a two-step job that I rarely did, if I’m honest, I now get the whizzbang HydroVac from its spot in the kitchen and within five minutes, the house is restored to order. Then once it’s returned to its little home, I press the button and it self-cleans. It is an absolute game-changer. I will say that this is for hard-wood floors and rugs only, so if you have a carpet-dominant house, this bad boy might not be for you (I didn’t read the instructions very well on that one – take it from me, fluffy carpet and the Hydrovac do not happy mates make!)
Pros:
It’s so easy, it’s pretty quiet and it sits in our kitchen, waiting to be helpful. If only more things could do this.
My toddler is obsessed with it and our kitten is intimidated by it, which is a perfect combo as frankly that cat needs to fear something.
I can vacuum and clean 75% of our floors in 20 minutes if I’m really going ALL OUT. TWENTY MINUTES?!
I can keep the kitchen floors clean in about one minute.
It cleans itself. IT CLEANS ITSELF.
It gently cleans our precious Persian rug.
I have not used our normal vacuum cleaner since we got this.
Cons:
I respect the Hydrovac so much that I don’t want it to do certain jobs. For instance, we are training our kitten to wee outside, and she weed all over the laundry in protest. My husband said, “Well, that’s what the Hydrovac is for, it’s on the promotional video,” and I said, “No, I don’t want to subject the Hydrovac to that.” So, I got down on my hands and knees instead. Maybe I am ready to be ruled by robots?
Because it is a mop and a vacuum, you have to empty the dirty water bit. This is a bit gross, because it’s basically mop water and vacuum hair-collecting, all combined. On the household grossness factor, it’s pretty low, but it’s there.
Shark HydroVac™ Pro XL Cordless 3-In-1 Cleaner, $499
(Disclaimer: we have a lovely little partnership with Shark Beauty however this review piece is completely editorial with no influence or approval from Shark!)