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.

You can also remove the entire bin from the vacuum for a proper clean, too. And the filters are washable, by rinsing them in cold water. READ NEXT: The best Shark vacuum cleaners to buy Shark Stratos Anti Hair Wrap Plus Pet Pro IZ400UKT review: What’s it like to use? 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.verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ 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. 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.

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.This wand has an articulating elbow that allows the vacuum to be folded up and stored upright, and it also allows you to more easily vacuum under low furniture. There’s a large display on top of the handle that shows the battery level and the power mode you’re using. The Shark Stratos Anti Hair Wrap Plus Pet Pro IZ400UKT comes heartily recommended. It’s a terrific cleaner at a good price. Its performance in our tests rivals that of vastly more expensive models, and I love the fact that you don’t need to switch the floor head over when moving from one surface to another. 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.

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.