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. As with other Shark Flexology vacuums, the extension wand has a bend in it, which serves two purposes. Release the clasp on the wand and you can clean under low-lying furniture without having to get on your hands and knees. The bright LED headlamps on the front help you see what you’re doing. Second, fold the wand all the way over and, cleverly, the vacuum supports its own weight, allowing it to be stored temporarily in a corner without you having to lean it against a wall. A unique design to prevent allergen leaking, or the clogging of hair (Image credit: TechRadar) Performance One final point in the Dyson’s favour is that it doesn’t rely on a filter that you have to clean (albeit, very infrequently) which the Shark does.

Shark® Classic Anti Hair Wrap IZ201UK / IZ251UK Series Shark® Classic Anti Hair Wrap

The Shark cordless did a fair job in our standard cleaning tests. On hard floor, it collected 24g of a 26g spillage of Cheerios. The missing Cheerios were sent flying across the room by the enthusiastic soft roller, but that was nothing that couldn’t be sorted out by hunting them down afterwards. But, if weight and portability (or appearance) is your primary concern we’d probably opt for a Dyson V8 Animal. In terms of suction it’s hard to compare two vacuums outside of a lab. You get a range of three suction options with the Shark rather than the two of the Dyson, but does this equate to better cleaning? Who knows?! We will say we never felt like either vacuum let us down in testing, so we don’t think you’ll go too far wrong either way in terms of performance. Most people who’ve owned a cordless vacuum cleaner with a dust roller have probably run into the same problem at one time or another: after a few hours of cleaning, the roller is wrapped tightly with hair. Flexology in action: a bendable tube for flexible cleaning and easy folding when not in use (Image credit: TechRadar) Design and featuresThe Shark IZ201UK comes with three attachments as standard, one of which you can use to vacuum your furniture Credit: SHARK How does it compare to a Dyson? The main feature to mention, though, is the primary floor nozzle attachment. This is what you’ll largely be using to clean your floors, with separate mode settings for hardwood floors and carpets – the latter of which needs a bit more power to draw up dust and hairs.

Shark DuoClean IZ201UKT (English - 2 pages) User manual Shark DuoClean IZ201UKT (English - 2 pages)

If you’ve used a cordless vacuum before, you might have noticed that you can end up pushing around larger clumps of dirt rather than vacuuming them up. While that’s not a huge problem in the short term, eventually you have to take out a pair of scissors or a knife to cut free your vacuuming head, which is up there with unclogging a plug hole in terms of undesirable cleaning tasks. The Shark Anti Hair Wrap with Flexology cordless vacuum cleaner is a good option for houses with mixed floor types. It uses Shark’s DuoClean motorised floor head, which has both a standard carpet brush and a soft roller (for hard floors) built into the same unit, so you don’t have to keep switching the floor head as you move from one surface type to another.While we won’t claim that there’s zero hairs wrapped around the roller, there are far, far fewer than before and they’re much easier to remove. READ NEXT: The best robot vacuum cleaners to buy today Shark Anti Hair Wrap with Flexology IZ201UKC review: Should you buy it?