This is the real deal. IN fact my wife calls it my new girlfriend, because I like it so much. In fact, we are spending a lot of time together. Over the last 5 years and again this year ... we got new carpet installed in our > 5000 SF home ... which is about half hardwoods and half carpet ... but the new carpet was thicker, certainly very nice, but the old Hoover got bogged down in it ... and even our long time sharp (similar to a classic panasonic vac) all struggled trying to get through it. We had to find a vacuum that could handle the carpet, and we did !!!During my exhaustive research of vacuums, reading all the reviews both good and bad ... it seemed almost all of them tended to do poorly in the high pile / plush carpet ... but this one finally stood out. In fairness, this, and the minimalist Oreck Magnesium. I checked out consumer reports and this one has the highest rating of all the stick vacuums and also higher than any of the uprights, which I was used to using. So I decided to try out the shark instead of the Oreck because it looked a lot more versitile and similarly lightweight.So when our shark arrived, which is the latest 2017 HV382 (basically a HV380 with $99 additional true pet attachments kit). I have used the true pet motorized attachment on the stairs and found it to be average (I prefer the main sweeper head instead) ... but when I used the truepet attachment in the car -- I found it to perform exceptionally well. I then switched to the combo crevice tool and it worked great on the places I could not reach ... and in no time, my wife' minivan floors looked so clean.Now I'll admit, out of the box I was surprised how LITTLE this vacuum is, even the main motorized brush unit. So my wife and I were both pretty skeptical that this little vac could handle our over 5000 SF home and its mix of hardwoords, throw rugs, and both low and a lot of newer high pile plush carpeting. Even consumer reports seem to indicate that most vacuums didn't handle the high pile plush stuff well.So I went straight to work on the carpet test ... trying it out first on an IKEA throw rug which was thick green shag ... and wow, it worked great. I did use the 1 setting and not the 2 (higher power) setting. When you use the 1 setting, the brushes spin slower, but suction is still 100%.So then to our brand new carpet in the living room and office ... worked awesome there also !Then downstairs to our very high end carpet frieze carpet -- and it handled it great also. I was used the 2 setting on everything except the super thick throw rugs. All worked great.I found doing the steps very easy -- this thing weighs so little, that its easy to do the stairs using various configuration of the vac ... depending on how much or how little you want to carry. Every using the main brush, this thing is super easy on the stairs to use.One last thing, the DUOCLEAN thing -- it's probably my favorite feature. Its a little roller at the front of the main vacuum brush attachment and it sucks stuff right off the hardwoods like you can't believe! I also found it seems to work quite well on stairs, getting the stuff between the floor and the riser that you can never get with any vacuum I've every owned, till now!The last thing that totally rocks on this vac -- is the ease of getting to the beater brush to remove hair. This is so well engineered I just enjoy using it, gross as that sounds.The lights on both the main unit and the beater brush part -- work great and allow you to vacuum in the car or dark rooms without any lights on. Its awesome actually how well those led lights work.The unit is easy to empty out, does get fairly full fairly fast .. .but wow, its so well designed that you don't get very dirty emptying it ... which was a concern of mine, but they made it super easy to dump over a trashcan and move on ... no more bags ever !!This is the real deal. I found you can get it online sometimes without the true pet motorized head ... saves like $100 ... but the true pet is a good attachment, so probably worth it in the end.