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. 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.

Type A cordless upright vacuum cleaner, the Shark’s Lift-Away mode delivers extra flexibility to allow you to reach into tight areas and get under furniture. As with most vacuum cleaners, this model has two filters. The main filter is easy to get out, but the HEPA filter is a little fiddly. Both filters can be washed to keep them working at optimal efficiency. Performance The IZ201UK comes with various attachments as standard for narrow spaces, furniture, and dusting (Image credit: TechRadar)

Trigger-happy cleaning from the Shark Anti Hair Wrap Flexology Cordless Vacuum Cleaner

Overall, this is a superb performance, surpassing the abilities of the more expensive Dyson models, including the V15 Detect and the V11 Outsize. The Shark IZ300UKT is Shark’s latest cordless vacuum cleaner. Introduced in late 2021, it comes with a number of new features, chief among which is a new brush roller, which is lined not only with bristles but also “PowerFins” – stiff fabric flaps, arranged in a chevron, that agitate the fibres in your carpet much more vigorously than a brush alone. Otherwise, the two units are exactly the same, measuring 260 x 250 x 1,080mm (WDH) and weighing 6.2kg. Both come with a five-year warranty.

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. Giving the dust bin a wipe to properly eradicate dust inside is a must with all bagless vacuums, and I've found that you probably only want to go about a month before you give a deeper clean to this vacuum. That's because the sensors in the CleanSense IQ head will stop working if they become clogged with dirt or dust, and you'll lose one of the merits of this very expensive vacuum. Comparison Battery life is quoted at 60 minutes, although this is on Eco mode with a non-motorised tool. The floor head shaves off a few minutes. Switch to Standard mode, and you’ll get over 30 minutes of run-time, while I found that Turbo mode pushed this down to just over 10 minutes in my tests.Rival cordless vacs don’t feature removable batteries, so you have to charge the whole thing where you store it. Fine if your cupboard has a three-pin plug in it, not so much if it doesn’t. Each battery takes four hours to charge from flat. 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. READ NEXT: The best robot vacuum cleaners to buy today Shark Anti Hair Wrap with Flexology IZ201UKC review: Should you buy it? We speak to self-confessed clean freak Emma Bunton and find out what part of her home she loves to clean every day!

Flexology in action: a bendable tube for flexible cleaning and easy folding when not in use (Image credit: TechRadar) Design and features This model also has Shark’s Lift-Away design, which means you can detach the main unit from the floor head and carry it to areas that might otherwise be difficult to reach with a full-size vacuum. The wand releases from the main unit, so you can add attachments and reach into awkward places, and you can also remove the wand from the handle if you need to just use the 1.46m hose for jobs like upholstery cleaning.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. However, the battery life isn’t anything particularly out of the ordinary. Shark quotes it at 40 minutes, although this is without the motorised floor head attached. In our tests, we found it lasted 22mins 34secs when tested on carpet with the motorised head attached, falling to 16mins 10secs in Boost mode. verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ The other recent innovation that Shark has brought to this model is the screen and control panel on the top of the handle, which debuted on the Shark IZ300UKT. This is mostly to display how much battery capacity you have left, shown as a percentage that decreases in increments of 10%. It isn’t as accurate as the battery gauge on the Dyson V15 Detect or V11 Outsize, but you get more information than on most cordless models.