The Best Cordless Stick Vacuums (2026)

All four picks share a sealed HEPA system, a removable battery and a brand with a US service network, and all four have been through Vacuum Wars' standard protocol, so the numbers can be set side by side. What separates them is measured suction, carpet against hard floor, real run time, weight in the hand, bin size and whether a dock does the emptying.

01Read the measured suction, not the air watts

Dyson prints 315 AW on the V16, 240 on the V15 and 150 on the V12; Shark prints no air-watt figure at all. Vacuum Wars' sealed-suction measurements rank them differently: 124 inches of water lift for the V15, 112 for the Shark, 92 for the V12 and 85 for the V16. The newest motor with the biggest number produced the lowest sealed suction of the four; Vacuum Wars' explanation is that beyond a certain point extra suction stops producing extra pickup, and the V16 gets its results from how power reaches the head. Use measured suction to rule out weak machines; between strong ones, the cleaning tests decide.

02Carpet: the deep-clean test and the surface test disagree

On Vacuum Wars' embedded-sand test the V15, the Shark and the V16 all scored 100 and the V12 scored 96, so all four will pull grit out of a carpet. The split is what you see on the surface after one pass. Mumsnet and CHOICE both found the V15's bristled Digital Motorbar cleared carpet more completely than the V16's twin cones, which leave a few flakes or single hairs behind along the plastic strip between them. TechGearLab measured the V12 at 78 percent on low-pile carpet and 44 percent on high pile, the weakest of the four, because it ships with the standard Motorbar. If carpet is most of your floor, the choice is between the V15 and the Shark.

03Hard floors, lasers and the wet roller

The V15 and V12 pair a soft Fluffy roller with a green laser angled across the floor so fine dust shows in the beam; the V16 builds the laser into its cones and adds a separate soft roller in the Submarine box. Vacuum Wars saw near-perfect hard-floor pickup from the Dyson soft rollers and top marks from the Shark's dual-roller head, which also collects on the backstroke. The V16's Submarine roller adds wet cleaning from a 300 ml tank; Vacuum Wars scored it 131 on dried stains against a 139 category average, and CHOICE needed several passes on dried marks and refilled the tank often. Treat it as a kitchen convenience rather than a wet-dry cleaner.

04Sealed HEPA is the entry ticket

Every pick has a sealed system with a HEPA-grade filter. Vacuum Wars' fog test showed no leaks from the V15, the V16 or the Shark, including the Shark's dock, and TechGearLab's particle counts came back excellent for both the V15 and the V12. A leaky vacuum blows the finest dust back into the room; check for a sealed system on any stick outside this list.

05Run time in the mode you will use

The quoted figures are Eco: 70 minutes for the V16 and the Shark, 60 for the V15 and V12, and Shark's figure is measured as a handvac. Nobody cleans a house in Eco. In Auto, where the sensors set power, Mumsnet got about 40 minutes from the V16, Vacuum Wars estimated 30 to 40 for the Shark, and independent tests put the V12 at about 30. At Max, the V16 lasted 15 minutes at Vacuum Wars, the Shark 13, the V15 9 to 11 across two tests and the V12 8 to 10. Charging runs from about 4.5 hours for the Dysons to 6 for the Shark. All four batteries clip off without tools, which matters in year four.

06Weight, trigger or button, and the bin

Vacuum Wars' handle weights: V12 1,480 g, Shark 1,804 g, V15 2,069 g, V16 2,158 g. Complete, the sticks weigh 5.2 lb, about 8 lb, 6.8 lb and 3.4 kg, roughly 7.5 lb. The V15 is the only pick that runs on a held trigger; the other three use a button. For stairs and upholstery the V12 is in a different class; for floors only, the extra weight of the V15 or Shark buys pickup.

The V15's 0.77 L bin is the largest you empty by hand every time; the V12's 0.38 L is why TechGearLab called it an apartment machine. The V16 holds 0.4 L but a lever compresses the load so about 1.3 L fits, though CHOICE found sand does not compress. The Shark is the only pick that empties itself, into a bagless 2 L base rated for about 45 days, at the cost of a dock about 46 inches tall, an emptying cycle of about 85 dB and roughly a pound more in hand than the V15. On hair, Vacuum Wars scored the V16 7 of 10 on 14-inch strands and found minimal tangling on the V12; Expert Reviews found nothing on the V15's rollers, and two multi-week Shark reviews reported rollers that looked new. Warranties: five years on the Shark vacuum, two on every Dyson.