Shark Anti Hair Wrap with Flexology IZ201UKC review: A flexible cordless stick vacuum

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.  

With most houses having a mixture of carpet and hard floor, this is a handy time- and effort-saver.

Shark Anti Hair Wrap with Flexology IZ201UKC review: What do you get for the money?

The Shark has a list price of £349 but was widely available for £249 at the time of writing, which is decent value for money. Most competing products at around this price concentrate on carpet cleaning, rather than offering expertise on both carpet and hard floor.

One exception is the Eufy HomeVac S11 Infinity, which comes with both a carpet and hard floor roller, but you have to switch the rollers in the motorised head when you want to change surfaces, which is more fiddly. The Eufy is lighter, though, weighing only 2.5kg, and is currently available on Amazon for £230.

If you’re looking for a Dyson for a similar price, you’re looking at the V7 series, with the V7 Animal available for £250. You can save a bit of money with other brands, such as the Bissell Multireach Active 21V, which is only £175.

READ NEXT: The best vacuum cleaners to buy today

At 4.1kg it’s fairly weighty for a cordless vacuum, with the weight split more or less evenly between the floor head and the vacuum engine, which is located up near the handle. 

Fully extended, the vacuum measures 260 x 245 x 1,180mm (WDH), although it can fold down to a height of 690mm for storage when not in use. Handily, when folded over like this, the vacuum is self-supporting, so it can stand upright without leaning against anything.

In the box there’s a good assortment of accessories, including a crevice tool, a dusting brush and an upholstery tool. The supplied charger plugs directly into the battery unit, which is easily removed so you can choose whether to charge it in situ or separately from the cleaner.

The battery takes a while to charge at 3hrs 30mins, but as they’re so easy to swap, you could get a second battery to extend the cleaning time available between charges. Additional batteries are available from Shark for £80.

Shark Anti Hair Wrap with Flexology IZ201UKC review: What’s it like to use?

Although the Shark Anti Hair Wrap with Flexology is fairly weighty, it’s reasonably well balanced across the device. On hard floor, it glides smoothly, with the soft roller working well to pick up dust and other debris, but I found it a bit tougher to move around on carpet, with the dual rollers seeming to create an increased resistance, particularly on thicker pile.

If manoeuvrability is key for you, the Eufy HomeVac S11 Infinity and Dyson Micro 1.5kg are both much easier to handle.

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.

Below the handle sits the collection bin, which has a capacity of 700ml and is relatively simple to empty. A button on the side lets you lift the entire bin and filter section from the main unit. Hold it over a dustbin and a catch on the side opens the door at the base so the contents can drop out. The filters are placed on the top of the bin, so they’re easy to get to for rinsing in water, but they’re prone to falling out while emptying the collection bin.

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.

READ NEXT: The best cordless vacuum cleaners to buy today

Shark Anti Hair Wrap with Flexology IZ201UKC review: How well does it clean?

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.

It wasn’t as good on carpet, collecting only 20g of the 26g on the first pass. Again, this was due to the chunky cereal particles being sent flying rather than gathered up. On this test a few Cheerios also got stuck in the tube, too, which needed clearing manually.

Running a similar test, but this time with a 50g spillage of flour, the vacuum did well on hard floor again, collecting 49g of the 50g in a single pass. Again, it wasn’t as good on carpet, collecting 42g in a single pass and leaving visible traces behind.

That rose to 43g on subsequent passes, but I wasn’t able to get the carpet looking completely flour-free. In the end I removed the motorised floor head and the extension wand, installed the brush tool in its place and, with a little scrubbing, I was able to remove the last of the residue from the carpet.

This is a solid performance compared to similarly priced rivals. It doesn’t clean as effortlessly as Dyson’s more expensive recent models, but it holds its own against the similarly priced V7 when picking up larger particles and is just as capable of clearing up anything if you’re willing to switch attachments and put a bit of additional work in. Moreover, the DuoClean motorised head makes it more effective on hard floor than models that don’t come with a soft roller head, particularly when picking up larger particles of debris.

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.

However, the battery life isn’t anything particularly out of the ordinary. Shark quotes it at 40 minutes, although this is without the motorised floor head attached. In our tests, we found it lasted 22mins 34secs when tested on carpet with the motorised head attached, falling to 16mins 10secs in Boost mode.

READ NEXT: The best robot vacuum cleaners to buy today

Shark Anti Hair Wrap with Flexology IZ201UKC review: Should you buy it?

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.

If not, then you’re better off considering either the Dyson V7 or the Eufy HomeVac S11, both of which are effective on both hard floor and carpet, and are easier to manipulate overall than the Shark.