Shark Stratos IZ420UKT

What’s the story?

Aimed at pet owners, this new model sits at the top end of Shark’s range of stick cordless vacuums. It comes with a pet-hair tool and two batteries for an extended run time of 2hrs… and if you’re vacuuming for that long, you need a hobby.

You can charge up one or both batteries in the supplied dock, or charge one by plugging in directly. There’s no wall dock or mount to hang the cleaner; instead, press a button and the vac folds for storage, doubling over so its height is halved to fit in a cupboard.

Is it any good?

The Shark Stratos arrives in plastic-free packaging with four accessories: an upholstery tool with stiff brush, a crevice tool, a thin dust brush and a powered brush for pet hair. Not much, but you do get a storage bag for it all. There’s one floorhead with two rollers: fluffy and brush.

The foldaway mechanism is clever and intuitive – and you can also use the folding button for stoop-free cleaning under furniture. Five LEDS illuminate cleaning well.

There are two power levels, but most of the time you’ll use the Clean Sense IQ setting, which revs up when it detects dirt. The display is easy to read but shows battery percentage rather than estimated minutes remaining.

Edge performance is good and the accessories impressed us: the thin dust brush cleaned Venetian blind slats well and the powered pet-hair brush also lifted stubborn dirt from a doormat.

And when you’re done? Pop the body off the tube to take it to the bin, then push one button to empty the dust canister.

The Shark is hard to fault; an even better storage bag is the only improvement we might wish for.

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£550 go.stuff.tv/sharks

Key specs

● 0.7L ● 2x 1hr run time

● 2 power levels ● 2.2kg

STUFF SAYS The folding design is genius and the battery life is superb ★★★★★