Shark PowerPro Pet Cordless Stick Vacuum IZ380UKT Review

Design and Features

• Flexology
• Anti Hair Wrap
• Clever Boost trigger

This model uses Shark’s Flexology, where the wand can bend in half completely, allowing the IZ380UKT to stand upright by itself. That’s great for storage, as the vacuum cleaner can be folded and kept in a relatively small cupboard.

Flexology is also useful when the vacuum cleaner is being used, as I could vacuum underneath sofas without having to bend down. Once you’ve had this feature, it’s hard to go back.

Just one word of warning: it’s worth emptying the bin when you finish vacuuming. If you don’t then folding and unfolding the vacuum cleaner can let larger bits of debris fall out and back onto the floor.

Bin emptying is easy, and the entire bin can be removed, with a flap opening at the bottom for ejection into the bin. Two filters at the top can be removed and washed, a job you’ll need to do regularly to maintain suction power.

Using the Shark IZ380UKT is easy. There’s a button on the back that turns the vacuum cleaner on in Eco mode.

Rather than having a button to switch power mode, there’s a finger trigger that you pull in when you want a boost.

I found this a great way to get maximum power: a quick pull of the trigger when I needed a bit more power and then releasing the trigger to go back to standard mode. This way, it’s easy to get a boost only when you need it, helping preserve battery power.

With the anti-tangle floor head attached, the floor detection comes into action. With this, the floor head senses whether it’s on carpet or hard floor, and adjusts the brush roll speed automatically, highlighting the matching icon on the vacuum cleaner’s top.

This saves having to make any manual settings, even if, overall, the IZ380UKT isn’t as smart as the Samsung Bespoke AI Jet Ultra, which uses AI to adjust speed and power; or the Shark IP3251UKT or Dyson Gen5detect, both of which have dust sensors to adjust power on the fly.

Using the Shark IZ380UKT on the floor is easy, and I found this cleaner easy to manoeuvre. At 5.68kg, it’s about average for a cordless stick cleaner. That is, it’s not overly heavy, and I found it easy enough to pick up for higher cleaning jobs.

In the box, Shark provides a good range of handheld tools, with a motorised pet tool, crevice tool and upholstery tool. For convenience, there’s an accessory bag that can take all of the tools; some form of on-vacuum tool storage would still have been nice.

This vacuum cleaner doesn’t have a charging dock. Instead, you can either remove the battery and charge it, or you can plug the provided mains adaptor into the battery in-situ.

There’s only a basic battery life indicator: three LEDs on the battery extinguish one at a time to give a rough idea of battery life.

Peformance

• Solid mid-range power
• Good dust collection
• Mid-level battery life

I started testing the Shark IZ380UKT by measuring its power in air watts (AW) at the handle. On Eco mode, the power was 50AW, which is a good mid-range result. That’s slightly more power than you get with the lowest power settings on the high-end competition, but that’s because most vacuum cleaners have three power modes, and this one has two.

On high power mode, I measured 177AW, which is powerful, although a good way behind the main level competition.

To see what the level of suction can do, I put down a line of rice grains, and put the Shark IZ380UKT at the end. On maximum power, it sucked up rice from 2.2cm away. Not a bad result at all, and it shows that handheld jobs, such as vacuuming out a car or drawer should be fairly quick.

Higher power vacuums can suck more dirt from further away, so do better with crevices and make some handheld jobs faster.

Moving on to the dust pick-up tests. I started by adding 20g of flour to the test carpet. Running the Shark IZ380UKT backwards and forwards through the middle of the mess on Eco mode, I found that it did a good job in the middle of the sweep, but quite a bit of dust remained towards the side of the floor head.

I then finished cleaning the carpet until it looked clean, which needed a few swipes and a little bit of Boost mode. At the end of the clean, I measured that 96.25% of the dust was collected, which is up there with the best.

Moving to the Edge test, I added 10g of flour to the carpet tiles next to the skirting board. Collecting this needed me to run the vacuum along the skirting board on Boost, and then turn 90° and run the head into the skirting board. Even so, I collected 84.3%, which is alright, but a way behind the best. I finished the job off with the crevice tool.

Dropping 20g of rice onto my hard floor, the IZ380UKT collected it all on Eco power. As noted above, just watch out for larger debris dropping out as the vacuum is folded and unfolded.

Overall, the Shark PowerPro Pet Cordless Stick Vacuum IZ380UKT did very well across all of my tests, with dust collection similar to that of more expensive rivals, bar the edge test.

I combed cat hair into the test carpet, and the Shark IZ380UKT easily removed it all.

Likewise, with human hair spread over the floor, the vacuum cleaner collected it all without getting tangled.

Battery life came in at 17m 35s on Eco mode, on carpet with the main floor head. That’s not bad, but near-on ten minutes worse than you get with a premium cleaner that can vary its power. For a single floor or smaller home that battery life will be alright, but if you need to clean further, you might want to get a second battery.

I measured sound at 69.5dB on Eco and 70.4dB on Boost. That makes the Shark IZ380UKT relatively quiet.

Should you buy it?