Shark Anti Hair Wrap Upright Vacuum Cleaner XL with Powered Lift-Away and TruePet AZ950UKT Review

Designed for larger homes, the Shark Anti Hair Wrap Upright Vacuum Cleaner XL with Powered Lift-Away and TruePet AZ950UKT is the perfect big vacuum cleaner. Its large DuoClean head and bin make cleaning large areas simple and quick, while Lift-Away mode turns this into a smaller and more nimble cleaner. With near perfect cleaning across all surfaces, you won’t find a better large vacuum cleaner anywhere.

If you’ve got a big house and need plenty of vacuuming capability, the Shark AZ950UKT could well be the model for you. This over-sized vacuum cleaner makes short work of dirt, with its large floor head meaning that you can spend less time doing one area.

Yet, for all of its size, the smart Lift-Away mode means that this vacuum turns into a lightweight handheld model when you need to tackle a smaller area or places that are hard to get into.

Shark AZ950UKT – What you need to know

• General vacuuming: The large bin and floor head can make it tricky to get around some bits of furniture, but this cleaner is otherwise nimble on the floor and Lift-Away mode makes it versatile.
• Carpet test: The wide floor head and powerful suction make light work of dirt in any type of carpet.
• Hard floor test: Quickly picked up our spilt rice without leaving a grain behind.
• Pet hair pick up: Easily picks up pet hair from carpet, while the Anti Hair Wrap tech leaves the roller free of hair.

Related: Best vacuum cleaner

Shark AZ950UKT Design and Features – Massive but cleverly designed

Unbox the Shark AZ950UKT and the first thing that you’ll notice is that this is one big vacuum cleaner (1175 x 305 x 280mm), weighing in at 7.5kg. Don’t let any of this put you off, as there are plenty of advantages to the size of this vacuum cleaner, plus it has some special features that make it feel and handle like a much smaller unit.

One of the main advantages of size is that the Shark AZ950UKT ships with the large DuoClean floor head. With its wide width, it means you can clean large areas fast. As with Shark’s most recent vacuum cleaners, this floorhead has the Anti Hair Wrap tech, which uses a series of combs to stop hair wrapping around the roller. It really works too, and you’ll never have the miserable job of cutting away matted hair. I love the dual LED headlights on the front of this floor head, showing up any dirt that you might otherwise have missed.

Next, the Shark AZ950UKT has a massive 1.6-litre bin. That will take an age to fill, so you can zoom around a large house without having to pause and empty. When you do empty, the bin lifts out easily, and there are flaps at the top and bottom to make it easy to get all dirt out without spilling any on the floor. Taking the bin off reveals one of the two washable filters, with the other under a flap at the front of the vacuum.

As for the weight, you don’t really notice it in normal use. Put your foot on the back of the cleaner and lean the handles back, and the cleaner zips around the floor easily. Admittedly, the wide floor head and the large bin can make getting around some bits of furniture a little tricky, but there’s another trick in the bank: Lift-Away mode.

Press the button on top of the pin, and the main cylinder lifts away, letting you carry it around where you want it. With the flexible wand lose, you can get into small areas more easily, or clean up high, all without having to lug around the full vacuum and floor head. Lift-Away works brilliantly, turning this beast of a vacuum into a more nimble one.

Shark has thoughtfully included a secondary LED, which really helps when you’re cleaning around the back of a sofa or inside a wardrobe where there’s not much natural light. And, it’s great to see the controls on the handle: there’s a thumb button to turn the vacuum on and off, and a slider that lets you choose between hard floor, carpet and thick carpet modes. The slider both adjusts the air vent, slowly reducing suction from hard floor down to thick carpet, but it also adjusts the speed of the DuoClean floor head, too.

In the box, you get the 2-in-1 crevice tool, which adjusts from a regular nozzle to a brush, an upholstery tool, and a mini pet power brush, which is great for pet blankets or even tackling stairs. Just be warned, this brush is super loud: I measured it at a maximum of 91.9dB with the cleaner on hard floor mode. Shark includes storage onboard for two of the tools, leaving you to only find space for one in a cupboard.

There’s an 8m power in the box, which means that you should be able to cover most of your house with two or three power socket changes; at the worst, you can cover a large room without having to replug.

Shark AZ950UKT Performance – Incredible suction and cleaning power

There’s no doubting that this is one of the most powerful vacuum cleaners that I’ve tested. First, I started with our suction tests, and I measured the vacuum at a massive 252.1AW on the hard floor setting, 204.4AW on the carpet setting and 102.2AW on the thick carpet setting. The reason for the reduction in power is so that the vacuum doesn’t suction itself onto the carpet to the point where you can’t push it.

Suction power translates into quality cleaning in my real-world tests, too. Starting with the carpet test, I sprinkled one teaspoon of flour onto some carpet, spreading the dust right up against the skirting board. A single pass through picked up the vast majority of dirt, with the wide floor head taking more flour than other cleaners manage. A tiny amount of flour was left where the carpet fibres slide under the skirting board: this was nothing that an extra sweep towards the skirting board didn’t fix. I’ve not seen better performance elsewhere.

Switching to hard floors, I put a teaspoon of rice onto the floor, then gave the Shark AZ950UKT a single sweep through the mess. Again, the wide head meant that most of the spill could be picked up in a single sweep, even the grains of rice that had fallen into the grouting.

Finally, I combed some pet hair into my carpet. Again, a single sweep through the mess pulled out all of the hair and cleaned the carpet up nicely.

I measured the Shark AZ950UKT at a maximum of 77.9dB, which is on-par with the competition: you certainly know that the cleaner’s on, but it’s not loud to the point where you’re desperate to power it off.

Should I buy the Shark AZ950UKT

If you want the biggest, most powerful vacuum cleaner that I’ve ever tested, the Shark AZ950UKT is brilliant. Designed for the largest of houses, it makes short work of any dirt, while Lift-Away mode gives it a more nimble method of getting into smaller, harder-to-reach areas. If you need something a bit smaller, the Shark AX910UKT will fit the bill, but the AZ950UKT delivers the ultimate cleaning experience.

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