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- Compact, lightweight and manoeuvrable
- Powerful suction
- Stands up on its own
- Short battery life
- No extra tools for detail vacuuming
The Shark Freestyle Pro Cordless Upright is a cordless upright vacuum – a category of floor cleaners that has played second fiddle to the more popular cordless stick in recent years.
I’m not quite sure why that is. After all, a cordless upright seems to offer the best of both worlds: freedom from long mains cables and a vacuum that doesn’t need to be leaned against the wall when you need a break from cleaning.
And this one delivers plenty of that convenience. It’s an amazingly lightweight upright vacuum cleaner that still manages to offer powerful suction on all surfaces.
The flip side is that it comes without anti-tangle tech and has very short battery life. Is this enough to rule it out of contention as a good buy? Not at all if you have a smaller house and, in this review, I’ll explain why.
Shark Freestyle Pro Cordless Upright review: What do you get for the money?
Costing just £150, the Shark Freestyle Pro sits at the budget end of Shark’s cordless vacuum cleaner range and, if you hold out for a sale, you might even pick it up for £100. Even at the full RRP, though, it’s cheaper than vacuums such as the Ryobi 18V One+ cordless stick and a lot cheaper than the Dysons of this world.
Confusingly, the name on the box, and on the vacuum itself, is Freestyle Max – don’t worry, though, this is the same product. Shark itself has pictures of the Freestyle Max on the Freestyle Pro page.
Regardless, the Freestyle Pro/Max is a pretty simple thing. In the box, you get the main unit with a head that can detach for easier charging, and a long, simple handle that clicks into the dust collection bin semi-permanently. It’s not the most glamorous-looking vacuum cleaner on the market, but it works and doesn’t weigh too much, at 3.2kg for the entire unit.
If you’re expecting any accessories with the Freestyle Pro, however, prepare to be disappointed. There are no additional accessories at all, meaning you can’t take the head off to attach something like a flexible tube for stairs and corners. This vacuum is designed to be used to clean the floor, and that’s all it’s designed to do.
However, it is provided with a small plastic tray, used to make charging easier. Just connect the supplied power adapter to it then connect that to a plug socket, and all you need to do is pop the vacuum on top to charge it. It’s a simple but neat solution, and means you don’t have to bend down to connect the charger to the vacuum.
The only other things to note are the debris screen and filter, which are both located in the dust cap and should be removed once a month to be rinsed in water. These need to be dried for at least 24 hours before they’re replaced in the vacuum.
What’s it like to use?
The best thing about cleaning with the Shark Freestyle Pro is its manoeuvrability. Because it has a nice long handle and most of the weight is down low, it feels extremely easy to push around, and it has a nice smooth action while in use. It does feel a little flimsier than the more expensive vacuums I’ve tested recently, though.
Unusually, the power selection mode button sits on the motor head instead of the handle – you operate it with your foot – but I didn’t find this a problem. It’s easy to get used to, and once you know what you’re doing it’s easy to see which mode you’re in, too: the green LED lights up when it’s in the more powerful carpet mode and the blue LED for the slower speed, designed for delicate hard flooring.
The Shark’s slim lines mean that it’s far nimbler than most standard uprights and, as it can lean back to around 160 degrees, it was pretty good at cleaning under low furniture. It also did a good job of getting up close and personal with skirting boards, with edge cleaning being just as good as at the centre of the head.
The downside, of course, is that are no other attachments that would allow you to more easily vacuum areas such as stairs or window sills, or high-up spots. I was expecting this to be a dealbreaker for me, but I think that for the price and the power you get from this little Shark, it’s worth the compromise.
Considering how compact the Shark is, the bin size is quite impressive at 0.69L in capacity and is, in fact, larger than the more expensive Dyson V8 Cyclone I was testing at the same time.
It’s also nice and easy to empty. Simply remove it from the rest of the vacuum and just press the release catch when you have it positioned over the top of your bin. It’s hands-free and meant I didn’t get any dust or debris on my hands, and it was a quick job to do.
There are, however, some downsides. For one, there’s no anti-tangle tech on the brush head, so you have to cut any hair that wraps around the brush free by hand. A groove on the bar helps you get a pair of scissors or knife underneath, but there’s no getting away from the fact that it’s a dirty, unpleasant job to have to do.
And, to charge the Shark you have to position the vacuum itself close to the plug socket as there’s no detachable battery. It takes around three and a half hours to charge fully from flat.
How well does it clean?
We conduct the same tests for all our vacuum cleaners. We spill measured quantities of Cheerios, flour and pet hair onto a short-pile carpet sample and hard floor, weighing the collection bin before and after a single pass at maximum power, to see how much the vacuum collects.
And we carry out all these tests before using the vacuum in real-world testing to ensure results are consistent with other vacuums we’ve reviewed. We also test suction power to provide a balanced look at overall performance.
The results aren’t bad overall, but there’s no getting away from the fact that battery life on the Shark is woeful. With the slower hard floor setting enabled, the battery lasted 19mins 45secs, while in the faster carpet mode it lasted 14mins 25secs. For those living in a small flat or apartment, this should be plenty, but otherwise it’s not going to cut the mustard. In real-world testing it just about got me around my two-bed terrace, but it didn’t have much juice left at the end.
I was hugely impressed by how well it cleaned, however. I ran a suction test, but it should be noted that results were probably a bit lower than the actual power of the vacuum as I was unable to get a full seal and some air was still escaping. In carpet mode, the suction registered at a low 15kPa, and in hard floor mode it was 10kPa.
I wasn’t expecting great results with our Cheerios test but, on carpet, I was pleasantly surprised to see that it picked up 22g out of 26g, slightly more even than Dyson’s top of the range V16 Piston Animal. Results on hard floor with Cheerios were a little odd. Using the dedicated hard floor setting, the Shark only managed to pick up 4g but it picked up 19g when using the carpet setting. This is probably down to the carpet setting having more powerful suction, but I would have expected the dedicated hard floor setting to be a little better designed for larger particles.
Flour posed no problem at all to the Shark, however. It collected the full 50g on hard floor in a single pass and an impressive 49g on carpet. Pet hair and the Shark didn’t go together brilliantly to start with, with the vacuum picking up only 2g on carpet and 1g on hard floor out of a total 5g. However, I discovered that if I lifted the vacuum slightly and placed it on top of the hair, the whole 5g was easily vacuumed up on both surfaces.
I was using quite dense curly dog hair from our local groomers, however, and when faced with lighter cat hair, the Shark had no problem vacuuming it all up successfully. I did notice a couple of my long hairs wrapped around the brush head but, thanks to that handy groove, these were easy enough to remove.
Should you buy the Shark Freestyle Pro Cordless Upright?
If you live in a flat or apartment (or a very small house), this little vacuum cleaner could be the ideal fit. It’s easy to move around, slides under furniture and beds with ease and has surprisingly good cleaning power for the price.
There is no getting away from the short battery life, which means it’s a no-go zone for those living in larger properties. But this basic vacuum packs a good punch for the price, and I don’t think you’ll be disappointed if you do splash out.
