The Shark Lift-Away Pocket Mop is a premium steam cleaner with plenty of settings and features to get you started. In a sometimes overwhelming steam cleaning market, does the Lift-Away stand out from the crowd and hold its own in the battle against dirt?
Design
The overall look and design of the Shark Lift-Away would best be described as unique. Following the curvy style of the rest of the Shark line, the Lift-Away looks unlike any other steam mop out there. The circular handle, while interesting, isn’t particularly comfortable to use though, giving me hand ache pretty early on during testing. This really isn’t helped by the whopping 3kg weight of the mop itself.
It’s also unable to stand up on its own too, thanks to the loose hinge connecting the mop base to the steamer. An upright steam cleaner really should stand upright on its own, like the Vileda Steam Mop, letting you take a break during cleaning without finding someone to lean it.
You’ve got three different steam settings on the Lift-Away, designed to be used for different cleaning situations. The dust, mop and scrub settings can be used for different floor surfaces, with varying power settings. Coming out of the box are plenty of attachments to be used for wall surfaces, including a squeegee and steam nozzle. You can also use the Lift-Away on carpet, thanks to the supplied carpet glider, although it wasn’t particularly effective and was a battle to to push about even with the glider attached.
Despite the 0.3 litre tank capacity, which remarkably heats up in only 30 seconds, the Shark Lift-Away barely gave me 10 minutes of steam time, having to head back to the sink after just 8 minutes on the highest steam setting.
Unfortunately, there aren’t any notable safety features found on the steam mop. While a little light does let you know that the Lift-Away is plugged in and hot, you can easily access the boiling water inside the tank just by simply twisting off the cap. Thankfully the water tank doesn’t heat up the exterior of the steam mop, unlike the Morphy Richards 12-in-1, so there’s no risk of burnt hands so long as you don’t open the tank up.
Cleaning performance
With no manual control, you can’t directly alter the amount of steam that comes out of the Shark Lift-Away, with steam coming out automatically. When ridding hard flooring of some difficult breakfast stains, the steam mop definitely struggled. I found that the two weaker settings, dust and mop, were quite feeble at getting rid of any stains, so I largely opted to use the scrub setting during use.
The reversible rectangular mop head proved to be quite useful though. It’s two-sided with a mop head for wetter jobs and a scrub head for tougher stains. It can be flipped around in an instant, depending on your needs.
The mop head pushed a lot of dirt around, making more mess which sometimes felt like a losing battle. Steam output was pretty low even on the highest setting, struggling to clean dirt and stains on the floor. I had to put a fair amount of effort into it, steam cleaners are supposed to be effortless, but the Lift-Away didn’t get rid of the stains as much as i’d have hoped, especially considering the premium price point. The Vileda Steam Mop is considerably cheaper and cleaned floors much more effectively with very little effort.
The Shark Lift-Away can be used as a steam cleaner for wall surfaces, thanks to the detachable water tank plugged directly into the mains. There are plenty of attachments to use and it should be able to handle any steam cleaning scenario. Cleaning grout from tiles was relatively easy and is definitely the better side of the Lift-Away.
Conclusion
When putting the price point into consideration, there are much better and cheaper steam cleaning alternatives out there. The premium steam mop surprisingly works best just as a handheld steam cleaner, so you’d be much better suited with the Karcher SC1, which is considerably cheaper. Alternatively, the Vileda Steam Mop is a better choice for tackling heavy duty, dried on, floor stains, which the Lift-Away really struggled with.
Dimensions (HxWxD): 1200x300x150, Weight: 3Kg, Maximum reach: 7m, Water tank capacity: 0.3 litres, Warranty: One year RTB