Shark Cordless Stick Vacuum Cleaner with Anti Hair Wrap, 120 Minute Run Time (2 Batteries), Flexible DuoClean Vacuum Cleaner with Motorised Pet, Multi-Surface & Crevice Tools, Black & Blue. IZ320UKT

Product Information

I finished off the test using Eco mode at the bottom of the mess and Turbo at the top. As you can see, the vacuum performed well in Eco mode, although it left a trace of dust behind; for smaller spills, this lower power mode will do the job. The Shark IZ320UKT was subjected to a month of high-intensity family use – it didn’t get away lightly with a couple of lab tests – I’m talking about broken glass, sand, mud, damp cereal, pet hair, trodden in garden debris and probably half a kilo of peas during that time. On top of the vacuum is a screen with three buttons below it, all of which fall easily under the thumb. The middle button switches the vacuum on and off. The button on the left toggles between carpet and hard floor modes (the rollers in the floor head spin faster in carpet mode), and the button on the right cycles between the device’s three power modes: Eco, Standard and Boost. Bauer Consumer Media Ltd, Company number 01176085; Bauer Radio Limited, Company number: 1394141; Registered office: Media House, Peterborough Business Park, Lynch Wood, Peterborough PE2 6EA and H Bauer Publishing, Company number: LP003328; Registered office: The Lantern, 75 Hampstead Road, London NW1 2PL Overall, the look and feel of the vacuum is a winning formula for Shark in my eyes. Sure, it's never going to be as pretty as a Dyson, but it's sleek and compact, and the colourway works really well. Using the Shark Stratos

Shark has included its Anti Hair Wrap technology on the floor head, which stops hair from becoming caught around the rollers. And it works, meaning you won’t have the dirty job of cutting away hair on a regular basis to maintain optimum performance. This floorhead is the new version with PowerFins, which are designed to agitate dirt in carpet better, making the vacuum cleaner more efficient and effective. It might not beat our favorite Dyson cleaners, but the slight drop in price compared to the V15 may push it just ahead in your eyes.

The device has a couple of main controls. A thumb switch on the top is used to turn the vacuum on and off and swap between hard floor and carpet modes. With carpet mode selected, the rollers spin faster to agitate the fibres more and clean deeper into the carpet. This doesn’t alter the suction, but you can give it a boost by pulling the trigger that sits just in front of your forefinger as you hold the handle. The CleanSense IQ feature is an exciting development from Shark, and can be seen on the head of the vacuum in the form of an LED bar. When the vacuum senses more debris, it'll amp up the suction power used, and the bar will illuminate to reflect that. Shark is a brand that comes up time and time again in round-ups of the best vacuum cleaners and it’s for good reason too. This Anti Hair Wrap Flexology model, in particular, is great for pet owners or just anyone with long hair because the brush roll won’t get all clogged up with hair. Other handy features include headlights so that you can spot smaller specs of dirt and dust, while a trigger allows you to boost the power setting for a more thorough clean. Like most cordless vacuums now, the Shark Stratos uses a point-and-shoot mechanism, which means the canister collapses out into your main rubbish bin when you empty it. Unlike some vacs I've tested, the mechanism here is seriously powerful, and I've not yet had to fish any hair or dust out from the bin manually. This being a pet vacuum model means you get a second motorised roller tool, this one is smaller and connects directly to the main unit and is very effective at cleaning cat or dog hair off your sofa or upholstery. I also found it very good at getting deep into the stair carpet. Any downsides?

Overall, this is a superb performance, surpassing the abilities of the more expensive Dyson models, including the V15 Detect and the V11 Outsize. Keeping the Shark emptied and clean is simple, too, with one button that releases the collection bin and filter unit from the device and a second button to open the trap door on the bottom to empty it. The filters can all be rinsed in running water and, since the vacuum also comes with Shark’s Anti Hair Wrap tech, you don’t need to worry about detangling regularly, either. This hasn’t transferred across to the pet tool, unfortunately, which gathered quite a bit of tangled hair during our testing. Flour proved a bit more of a challenge. On hard floor, the vacuum collected enough flour from a 50g spillage in a single pass to register 50g on my scales afterwards, although close inspection showed it wasn’t entirely perfect, with some flour still left over. A few subsequent passes on the Boost setting removed the rest effectively.It didn’t carry its perfect performance over to the flour test, but it still did a decent job. On hard floor, I measured 44g of a 50g spill making it into the collection bin. However, apart from a small residue near the start of our pass, it certainly didn’t leave 6g of flour behind. I suspect most of the missing flour was lining the tubes or caught in the floor head and would work its way into the bin eventually as I performed other cleaning tasks. The Stratos did leave a line of flour behind the motor head, where the fins on the roller seemed to funnel the flour without offering enough agitation or suction to lift it all up. This amounted to 4% of the flour on that first pass, although that’s still way above average. It was happily collected by subsequent passes made at a different angle.

The dust bin on the Shark Stratos IZ420UKT is fairly small, at 0.8litres, meaning that those looking to clean areas that are far away from their main bin might struggle. On the flip side, I think that making the capacity any bigger risks ruining the sleek feel of this vacuum, and I'm happy that SHark has kept it smaller. Fully extended, its dimensions are 260 x 245 x 1,180mm (WDH), and there’s a hinge in the middle of the extension wand that lets it fold down to 690mm in height for storage or be used for cleaning under low furniture. It’s quite heavy at 4.58kg, but this is evenly distributed between the floor head at the bottom and the handheld unit at the top of the vacuum.Compared to many cordless vacuum cleaners, what you get with the Shark Stratos Anti Hair Wrap Plus Pet Pro IZ400UKT is relatively sparse. Don’t worry, though – on the whole, Shark has simply pared the box’s contents down to the absolute essentials, without losing anything important. It comes with the main dual-purpose floor head, a crevice tool and a smaller “pet” tool. The headlights and Flexology features make it far easier to clean, too, with the visibility and on-the-fly flexibility to ensure you don’t need to get on your knees to clean in hard-to-reach places.

In the box there’s a good assortment of accessories, including a crevice tool, a dusting brush and an upholstery tool. The supplied charger plugs directly into the battery unit, which is easily removed so you can choose whether to charge it in situ or separately from the cleaner. On the plus side, Shark’s articulated “Flexology” elbow does make cleaning under low furniture very easy indeed, allowing you to stand up and swing the cleaning head underneath your cupboards and sofas from a standing position, without having to get down on your hands and knees. I was impressed with the emptying and cleaning process, which hasn’t changed from previous models. To do this, you have to remove the motor unit from the extension wand, then press a button to open a door at the bottom and the dirt simply falls out. In my tests, I occasionally had to manually clear a ball of hair from the inside, but gravity does most of the work here. If money is no object then the Dyson Gen5detect remains a superior option, but not to the extent that it’s worth paying almost twice the price. Its battery lasts a bit longer and it comes with a few more bells and whistles, but you’re definitely not getting twice the vacuum.

The Shark ICZ300UKT is a brilliant cordless vacuum cleaner that’s capable of a whole-house clean

Flexology in action: a bendable tube for flexible cleaning and easy folding when not in use (Image credit: TechRadar) Design and features In terms of battery life, the vacuum performed reasonably well. At full power it lasted 10mins 47secs, which is slightly short of the competition. In Economy mode, however, it was only a few seconds short of the more expensive Dyson Gen5detect, while in Clean Sense mode it lasted almost 41 minutes. We don’t move the vacuum during this test, so we’d expect that time to drop in real-world use as the vacuum encounters more dirt and increases the suction. You don't have permission to access "http://sharkclean.co.uk/product/shark-anti-hair-wrap-cordless-vacuum-single-battery-iz202uk-zidIZ202UK" on this server.