Shark Anti-Hair Wrap with Powered Lift Away PZ1000UK Upright Vacuum Cleaner

Product Information

In the box, you get a crevice tool, a multi-surface brush (it’s a hard brush that turns into an upholstery tool) plus the motorised mini pet power tool. The latter works wonders on sofas and stairs. If you don’t have pets, you can buy the Shark NZ850UK, which is a little cheaper and drops the pet tool from the box.

Pet hair performance was excellent, too, with the Shark PZ1000UKT able to easily remove all of the hair in a single pass. I tested the Shark NZ850UKT with my standard tools to measure performance in airwatts (AW), an industry standard that combines both suction and airflow. On the had floor more I measured the cleaner at 260.02AW, which is about as powerful as you’ll get from a regular cleaner given that vacuum’s have a maximum power limit. Switching to carpet mode, power drops slightly to 233.96AW, and down to 130.19AW on deep pile mode. The latter might sound a bit low, but this power level stops the vacuum cleaner from clogging up. Lift-Away mode also makes it easier to get the tools where you want them. You can use accessories on the end of the wand, which provides far greater reach: I could easily clean around the ceiling in this mode. You can also remove the wand entirely, which is ideal for close-up jobs.Shark provides a crevice tool, brush and a mini pet tool in the box, which is excellent for stairs and for getting hair off sofas. When you need to empty the bin, you just push the button on top to remove it, then there’s an eject button that flips the bottom open. It’s pretty easy to empty cleanly, and the top also opens to get all of the dirt out.

That’s where Lift-Away mode comes in. Press the button on top and the main vacuum and bin lift off the cleaner. This gives you a handy cylinder cleaner that you can move where you want it. 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.

Although this cleaner is quite large, it remains easy to use. The power switch on this model has been relocated from the vacuum body to the handle, where it’s simple to grab with a thumb. Last year’s Shark NZ801UKT was one of my favourite vacuum cleaners, delivering power and performance with a great selection of tools. This year, we have the Shark Anti Hair Wrap Upright Vacuum Cleaner with Powered Lift-Away and TruePet NZ850UKT, with an improved and updated design making it easier to use. With excellent suction and near-perfect cleaning on all surfaces, this is one of the best upright vacuum cleaners that you can buy. Design and features If you have a bigger home, then the way to get it cleaner faster isn’t necessarily to up power – although that is useful. It’s to super-size everything, as seen with the brand-new Shark Anti Hair Wrap Upright Vacuum Cleaner XL with Powered Lift-Away & TruePet PZ1000UKT. This vacuum cleaner has an extra-large bin and a wide floor head to make short work of any job. While raw figures give an idea of performance, it’s the quality of the floor head and suction path that can make a bigger difference. So, onto the real-world tests.

While raw suction performance is a good measure of performance, real-life results show how good a vacuum cleaner really is. To this end, I put the cleaner through my regular set of tests. First, I started with my carpet test, sprinkling a teaspoon of flour onto my test carpet.Below it sits a slider switch, which lets you change the cleaner’s mode: Hard Floor, Carpet and Deep Pile. This slider adjusts an air valve to reduce power as you move from hard floor up to deep-pile carpet. The bin itself detaches from the vacuum’s main body, flipping open at both ends for easy emptying and cleaning.

Once you’ve released the bin, though, emptying is simple. There’s a handle on the top and a button on the front to release a trap door in the bottom, which allows the dirt to fall out with minimal further encouragement. Shark’s anti-tangle floor head works wonders at keeping the rollers free of hair, too.Next, I moved to the harder carpet tile edge test, with the Shark NZ850UKT charged with removing all flour right up to the skirting board. This it did easily, and I didn’t have to reach for the crevice tool to finish off the job. Moving onto the pet hair test, I combed cat hair into my test carpet and then gave the vacuum cleaner a pass through the mess. It was all pulled out of the carpet with not a strand left behind. In testing, the Shark ICZ300UKT performed extremely well. The soft roller is by far the best tool vacuum cleaners have at their disposal for collecting larger particles, because they trap them without crushing and guide them gently towards the suction tube. On both carpet and hard floor, the Shark gathered all 26g of a 26g Cheerio spill in a faultless, virtuoso performance.