Henry or Shark?

[Awakeforhours]

I’m in the market for a new vacuum cleaner.

I already own a shark which has been ok but despite cleaning the filters doesn’t clean like it used to and I find it’s a bit top heavy. I have a disability so I already find vacuuming hard work.

I have a cleaner to help things along for once a month and she uses a Henry. That seems to leave the carpet looking cleaner but I wonder how you manage to clean the stairs with it? I’m never here when she comes so I can’t see.

Does it get right in the corners? It will need to be good on pet hair and how does it work on stairs? Is it bulky and annoying and am I going to find it a struggle to pull around?
Do you have to buy bags for it?

all pros and cons gladly received!

Loved my Shark but it did stop working too often and working out how to get it going again was very time consuming and irritating. I'm not a fan of our Henry but husband loves it, and the handful of people I know who are cleaners swear by a Henry.

I have a Henry and it's great at cleaning, but heavy and cumbersome and does get stuck in doorways. I'm in a split level bungalow so only 5 stairs which is ok as I can use the normal floor attachment but I don't think I'd fancy doing a whole flight. I'm fit, although I have back problems, and I am now looking at stick type vacs because I'm fed up with lugging the beast around.

My friend who is a cleaner says her favourite is Shark though she didn't say which one. She detests Henrys because everyone who lives in a townhouse (2 long flights of stairs) seems to have one.

Might be worth looking at Henry Quick, they are meant to be almost as powerful as and much less heavy than normal Henry but I don't have one so don't know how good the batteries are. They are quite pricey too.

I need to find a vacuum showroom so I can have a go on lots of them.

I have a Henry and I can clean all the way up the stairs from the bottom, BUT he is heavy to carry. So although actually cleaning the stairs is fine, you might struggle carrying him up and down to use on different floors. My parents used to live in a 3-storey Victorian house and had an upstairs hoover and a downstairs hoover though, so that might work!

My sister has the Henry cordless , it takes pods so no filters to clean but obviously an ongoing cost which other cordless vacs don’t have . She says it’s the best cordless she’s ever had and she has had them all from top of the range Dyson , g tech ,Bosch and shark .

We're on our second Henry - mainly due to cost. It sucks up very well including our cat hair and the bag rarely needs changing.
The only minus is that it's VERY heavy and cumbersome to haul around the house. I'm forever shouting and swearing at it as it gets caught in doorways and the top of the stairs etc. Saying that I only hoover once a week so it's tolerable.

We use Henry’s at work, worst hoover ever!
Always having to replace them

I have had both a Henry and Shark (liftaway). At my last house I used Henry downstairs and kept the Shark upstairs. Henry is no use for the stairs, especially if you have a disability, which I also do. Henry is extremely heavy which is another reason not to use on stairs.

My Henry actually fell downstairs several times when I was doing the stairs as he was too wide to sit on a stair unless I held onto him. He survived the falls, just got a bit scuffed. That was why I bought the Shark. Using it in liftaway mode was really easy on the stairs and the cord was long enough to do the whole flight. Faffing with Henry's bags was a pain. As far as good vacuuming goes I found they were equally good. I moved to a very small bungalow 2 years ago and rehomed Henry. The Shark fits in my cupboard whereas fat Henry wouldn't.
I like the Shark's easy empty bin and the lift away feature for vacuuming hard to reach nooks and crannies too. I used it in Liftaway mode to vacuum out my extractor fan recently too.

I have both, I hate the Henry with a passion.
He gets stuck on every single doorway, rug edge and obstacle.
Loathe his smug face peeking round the corner mocking me.
Tools fall off the damn thing if you even look at it the wrong way.
It’s cumbersome and heavy to take upstairs, also the top falls off with annoying regularity.
He’s also really unwieldy and difficult to store, takes up loads of space.

Have a Shark lift away and it is so much easier. The bin is quite small so I empty it every time I use it, really simple and quick to do, it sucks well and is easy to move up and down the stairs. The attachments are easy to change and it came with a storage bag that is easy to store.

Henry. Had mine for years. The Shark at work keeps breaking.

I sold our shark and went back to a Henry! It is a bit more cumbersome to pull around a corded hoover, but we found the shark rubbish!

Ooh that's good to know! I was looking at them last night..

I love my henry, he's AMAZING on hard floors, car, garage etc and as others have said indestructible. But not the biggest fan for carpets, I'm wanting a stick hoover for upstairs

Also had a shark and sold it after a few months. It was a big plug in one though and although the suction was amazing, it just made it too hard to push around my small house without nearly sucking the carpet off the floor

I'm so curious as to where you work and how the fluff you and your colleagues have managed to break multiple Henry's.

I thought this was a post about choosing a name for a baby. Shark. Brilliant name

Henry is very robust (although the new models don't feel as well made as the older ones) but I found the metal tubes really annoying in that they just push fit together rather than having a proper click mechanism. They either get wedged together, or if you regularly pull them apart they start to loosen and pull out whilst vacuuming. I find it the normal model rubbish on carpet, I tried the Xtra model which came with a brush bar head, but it felt badly made and was deafening loud.
Henry's are heavy and cumbersome, get stuck on everything, tip over and I find the bag starts to smell after a while as it's a large capacity and doesn't need changing often.

I had an upright Shark which I returned. The suction was good and I liked the headlights, but it felt cheaply made and it was almost impossible to use on carpets. The suction was so strong it wouldn't push properly and sort of bounced over the floor, I couldn't get it to easily turn direction either. Just awful.

I personally have never had a problem with Dysons, I find them very easy to manoeuvre and use. They do block easily but you can usually pull them apart pretty easily to dislodge whatever it is.

I have a Hetty!! (Pink girl version of Henry and she’s adorable) I have OCD so I like doing a job and it’s done PROPERLY and with Hetty, I get that first time every time. The Henry range have bought out a cordless one now, so I’m wandering if the performance is still there but with the ease of a lighter, easier to manage system.

I have a Miele and it's great. I bought it to replace a Shark which was fucking shit.

Henry works well but it's so heavy and cumbersome - I had a cleaning job when I was at uni 20 years ago and swore I'd never buy one.

I've not had a shark, but I've had 3 Dyson.

Henry all the way for me now. Yes he's a git for storing, but his suckage (?) Outweighs that x100!

We have Henry and have had him around 10 years, still going strong, and keeps things very clean. Performance wise etc I do think it's better, but with wanting one which is easy to use the shark is considerably lighter and generally you can detatch and use the handheld part on stairs etc.

It does depend on how you would cope. For context my 5 year old really likes hoovering and uses the Henry okay, can help him back up when he falls, and do all of downstairs with him. I do the stairs by using the hose, it will do around 2/3 when it's sat at the bottom, then I take it to the top to do the rest with the hose then do upstairs.

It does leave the house nice and does have a lot of attachments for corners etc so no issues there

When I volunteered at a Hospice for years , the Housekeeping staff always used Henries!
They are hoover of choice for builders too.

Am tempted to get one.

We just got a shark. It broke after one use-no suction. Took it back and got a replacement. It spits out the bits just hoovered when we turn it off, and suction is rubbish-we have to unplug the tube on it all the time. Very expensive mistake. Fortunately we kept our Henry which used to drive me mental bashing in to things and falling over on the stairs-but I actually love him in comparison to the shark.

I thought this was baby names until I read the post properly, Shark for a boy, definitely, but maybe as a nickname for Simon

For a minute I thought this was going to be a baby name thread

Henry all the way for me, it's heavy, clunky, and tips over but, mine has never blocked, it cleans really well and copes with copious amount of cat and dog hair and mine as I seem to shed as much as the pets. Different attachments mean I clean the keys of the piano and get into every nook and cranny. Because I have a back issues and Henry is heavy, I have one for upstairs and one for down stairs, I know that probably sounds excessive, and our gaff is small, but I'd have to wait for dh to carry it up/ down stairs every time we had to hoover (dh also hoovers, but with kids and animals we need to hoover downstairs everyday and upstairs every other day!).

They loose suction really quick and they are just generally awful!
we only have a few short pile carpets and they don’t seem to look like they’ve been hoovered after we’ve done them,
in a care setting