As with Shark’s plug-in Lift-Away models, this vacuum cleaner has a pull-out central section that means you carry the cleaner where you need it and use the attached hose to get into hard-to-reach areas. For this model, Shark has redesigned the controls. There’s now an LCD screen that shows battery life as a percentage. This is far better than the old display, where you’d get a set of lights to indicate the rough level of charge remaining; but it isn’t as good as the Dyson V15 Detect, which shows you battery life in minutes. While raw power tells us a bit about a vacuum cleaner, real-world performance will largely come down to the quality of the accessories. Fortunately, Shark didn’t let me down.

Overall, this is a superb performance, surpassing the abilities of the more expensive Dyson models, including the V15 Detect and the V11 Outsize. It’s worth noting how good the anti-hair wrap technology is, too. The soft roller has a comb that cleans itself as it goes, catching long hairs and sending them into the vacuum before they can wrap around the roller. Despite being tested in areas that collect a lot of hair, such as around dressing tables, the rollers on our test unit stayed tangle-free. 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. Performance is excellent, with Standard mode cleaning a path through my spilt rice grains, with nothing dropping out at the end.For the price, the Shark Anti Hair Wrap with Flexology is a terrific vacuum cleaner. The two-in-one motorised floor head means you don’t have to keep swapping floor heads to get the best performance, so it’s always ready to clear up mess, whatever surface you’re cleaning. If you can manage its weight and stiff handling on carpet, this Shark is an excellent buy. READ NEXT: The best robot vacuum cleaners to buy today Shark Anti Hair Wrap with Flexology IZ201UKC review: Should you buy it?

I put the Shark IZ320UKT through my raw performance tests, measuring suction power in airwatts (AW), which uses a combination of airflow and suction. On Eco power, the vacuum runs at a basic 37.33AW, moving to 61.40AW on standard, which is about average for cordless cleaners. On Boost mode, the vacuum manages a huge 199.79AW; few cordless vacuum cleaners are this powerful, bar the Dyson V15 Detect, which manages an even higher 280.93AW. With cordless vacuum cleaners, in particular, the raw figures give an idea of performance, but it’s only by testing them for real that you can see how good suction really is, as it’s a combination of power and tool efficiency that’s important. There’s a large 0.6-litre bin on this model, which should see you around an average house without having to be emptied. It’s easy enough to pull out, and opens at both ends to make it easy to clear dust and to clean. Pull the floor head off and you can easily clean close up or even around the ceiling, with the Shark IZ320UKT nicely balanced. As you can see from our chart above, this isn’t as powerful as Dyson’s latest Gen5detect, and it falls behind the power of the cordless upright ICZ300UKT, though it is more powerful than the Hoover HF9.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. As I said before, it delivers where it really counts, thanks to a powerful motor, large dust capacity and effortless movement around the house. 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. Many of the latest models from the top vacuuming brands are turning things up a notch by introducing lights and lasers to the front of the heads. This one has an LED light on the head, which allows for better visibility of what is lurking in hard to reach and see areas. The light stays on the whole time, is clear (not coloured) so it really helps seeing what you’re doing if it’s a darker corner of the house – and you’ll be as surprised as me how dusty it is. In the box, Shark provides a crevice tool, pet tool, dusting brush and upholstery tool. That’s all that you’ll need, although it’s a shame that there’s no onboard tool storage with this model. Shark does provide a tote bag to put everything in, though.

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. However, you can get extra tools if you're willing to spend more. The pet variant (the Shark IZ300UKT) comes with a mini turbo brush, while the IZ320UKT comes with the same turbo brush plus an extra battery, letting you clean for twice as long without recharging.This performance even beats the Dyson Gen5detect, which left more Cheerios behind on a single pass across hard floor, although it, too, didn’t struggle to collect the remainder on a second pass. If you've read this far, then you might have gauged that I am a huge fan of this vacuum, and that I'd tell anyone it's a worthwhile investment. I test a lot of different vacs, and this is the one model that I've fought to keep in my flat (even though we definitely do not have room for it!). It really is unmatched for me in terms of suction power, and I've grown addicted to those clean vacuum lines it leaves in my carpets. Moving on to the hard floor test, the Shark ICZ300UKT impressed. Its floor head is a DuoClean model, which means that it has a hard floor roller built-in; there’s no changing floor heads to move between surfaces, as you do with a Dyson. 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. If manoeuvrability is key for you, the Eufy HomeVac S11 Infinityand Dyson Micro 1.5kgare both much easier to handle.