Shark Sonic DUO (mini-review)

THE PRODUCT

The Shark Sonic Duo carpet, tile & hardwood floor cleaner ($299.99 — on sale as of 12/1/13 at Canadian Tire for $229.99!).

THE GOOD

• If you own Berber carpets, and you’ve had anything fall on or be otherwise smushed into them, you know that it’s darn near impossible to get stains out of these fibres. THIS ACTUALLY WORKS and is gentle enough on Berber that it doesn’t create pulls or pills. We tried cleaning stains as old as three years; everything from (child) pee to food to something that was black and looked like mould; it removed all of those stains with relative ease. I really, really wish I’d taken a picture of the black mould-like crud because I was shocked that it came out (and so quickly, too). In fact, I turned to my husband and shouted “Did you see that? DID. YOU. SEE. THAT?!“
• The Shark Sonic DUO works on all of our floors. We have hardwood, ceramic tile and marble mosaic tile. There’s an appropriate cleaning pad for each surface and it’s gentle yet thorough
• It leaves all of our floors streak-free…which is probably thanks to its 1,000-times-per-minute scrubbing technology
• A little goes a long way when it comes to the concentrated fluid for hardwood floors
• I love that the cleaning solutions are non-toxic and safe for both kids and pets. Because, let’s be honest: kids and pets lick floors
• I really like that you can turn the Shark Sonic DUO on, use it and just push the handle upright to get it to stop; you don’t have to turn it completely off if all you need is a short break. Just push the handle back down into “ready to vacuum” mode and it starts up again
• It’s got a pretty small footprint overall. We actually tuck it right into our walk-in pantry

THE GAFFE

• The only stain that the Shark Sonic DUO didn’t remove (and actually made worse) was in our master bedroom. I haven’t a clue what the stain is from but it looked like rust. I’d say it was smaller than dime-size before trying the DUO on it, but once I messed with it, it grew to be about toonie size. Blurg!
• Stains require A LOT of the carpet-cleaning solution. By the time we’d used this machine on about 20 square feet of stains throughout the house (that’s TOTAL square footage, not in each room), the bottle of cleaning fluid that came with the DUO was gone. So, if your house is full of carpet stains, stock up
• I think $300 is way too much; $200, maybe at the very top end, because you have to keep buying the solution. If this was less than $200 and came with more replacement cleaning fluid, it would easily get a 4.5-rating

THE GEARS

4/5

DISCLAIMER: This product was provided for review purposes.