Verdict

Lightweight, effective and chic-looking for a vacuum cleaner, Shark’s handheld vac sets the standard for a light, portable spot cleaner.

Pros

• Powerful suction for size
• Excellent build quality
• Copes with pet hair
• Easy to use on stairs
• Dock tool store

Cons

• Micro-sized bin
• Fairly noisy
• Not cheap

The idea of a compact rechargeable cleaner for spot cleaning isn’t new, but it’s the way that Shark addresses the issue that’s unique. The Shark Cordless Handheld Vacuum Cleaner WV200UK is a funky, wand-like handheld cleaner offering mighty suction, an always ready charging dock and several tools.

Like the tune, this is a catchy baby Shark. Take it for what it is – a small-area cleaner – and the WV200UK lives up to the task with aplomb. Its great suction, fair run-time and decent tools allow it to effectively clean dry spills, stairs and upholstery, and its quite a looker on the worktop too. It isn’t cheap and the bin is tiny, but as handy domestic gadgets go, there isn’t much that’s handier than the WV200UK.

Shark Cordless Handheld Vacuum Cleaner WV200UK Design and features – Neat with decent accessories

• Small, light and easy to grab
• Stand has room for vacuum and accessories
• Excellent range of acccesories

The WV200UK is a cleaner with a very distinct mission. It’s designed as a spot cleaner, for dealing with small spills quickly and conveniently, or smaller area cleans such as the sofa or stairs. It’s also portable, so can clean hard to reach areas such as car footwells with ease.

For those tasks, the WV200UK’s promised eight minutes run-time on its single power setting doesn’t sound so bad. But eight minutes isn’t going to clean up the living room carpet from skirting to skirting, but that’s not the point.

What the WV200UK offers for that eight minutes is super-high suction power for such a small and lightweight device. Compared to those dust-busting battery cleaners of old, the Shark could quite literally suck one of those in and spit it out in pieces. Well, not that literally, but you know what we mean. This thing sucks!

The wand-like design and slanted charge dock ensure it’s ready to go all of the time. It takes around 2.5 hours to charge and the dock then simply keeps the WV200UK topped up until you grab it and go. That could be for a spill, a nip up the stairs, for cleaning your pet’s bed or heading out to spring-clean the car.

At just 1.3kg, it’s ridiculously light in the hand, with the battery positioned in the handle giving comfortable balance. Hold it up to get a cobweb or dust your blinds, and it puts very little stress on your wrists.

Setup is as simple as dropping it in the slick-looking charge dock, which also neatly houses the two supplied tools. A wire mesh plus washable HEPA-grade filter ensure minimum dust is exhausted into the room. The small bagless bin simply hinges to empty in seconds.

For a more thorough clean-out it can be removed from the cleaner completely. Beware, though: the power button and bin empty button sit very close together, and on more than occasion we accidentally emptied the bin mid-clean.

The Shark’s main unit ends in a wide nozzle that can be used naked for day-to-day vacuuming tasks. From spilt oats to spot-busting pet hair tumbleweed, it ‘ shaped at a good angle and is wide enough to offer plenty of airflow.

The multi-surface pet tool is a small upholstery-style unit that slips inside the main nozzle. It’s held in place with a small plastic clip and removed by simply pulling it free. The tool’s floor contact surface is curved to allow some airflow front or rear, depending on how you tilt the cleaner, and there are some very small air-holes to reduce stick down on fabric surfaces. A short, stiff velvet-textured strip to the front and rear helps grab pet hairs, agitate surfaces and protect harder surfaces from potential scratching.

The duster crevice tool is a chunky nozzle with a small flip-over dusting brush. Horizontally slotted crevice tools aren’t our favourite, and the business end of this particular unit is so chunky it’s almost square. While it might be fine for concentrating the airflow into a small spot, a crevice tool it isn’t. The flip-over dusting brush is, conversely, on the small side and has a narrow row of bristles on three sides only.

The sleek-looking charge dock is neat and practical. Given that it should be on your worktop or in a handy place for quick access, it looks “stylish” as charging docks go. It has two slots at the rear to house the tools and a captive lead running on 1.2 metres of cable to a wall-wart charger.

Shark WV200UK cordless handheld vacuum cleaner  performance – Powerful but short battery life

• Lasts for just eight minutes – good enough for small spills
• Can clean as well as a full-size cordless cleaner
• Relatively quiet

Despite its bijou dimensions, this Shark uses a compact 10.8v lithium battery to power its micro-sized 110W motor. It takes around 2.5 hours to charge from flat. During charging the blue LED-lit power symbol on the on/off button fades slowly in and out, dimming to a solid blue when fully charged. In use, the power symbol is solid blue and begins flashing when the charge is getting low.

From a full charge, we consistent achieved around nine minutes of use before the machine powered down, peaking at over nine and a half minutes. Ironically, the LED indicator begins blinking almost precisely at the eight-minute mark. Over several static tests, the results were pretty consistent at just over nine minutes. That’s none too shoddy at all. It’s amazing just how much you can clean in under 10 minutes.

Unless you have a near-spotless house, the limitation isn’t the battery; it’s the bin. Given the Shark’s decent suction and cleaning capabilities, that 0.25-litre capacity fills very, very quickly. This is particularly evident when vacuuming mucky areas such as the dog’s beds.

Shark also claims this machine will handle stairs and upholstery in pet-centric homes. At which point, even nine minutes of run-time can mean several trips to the bin. We peaked at four empties for a single charge tackling the area in and around the dog’s beds.

The small, very high-speed motor is audibly reminiscent of Dyson’s early digital motors. The sound is high pitched and far from easy on the ear. We measured around 79-80dB, which is well above most full-size cordless cleaners. The reason being, the small form factor doesn’t allow for much sound-deadening plastic in the design. This machine also uses direct fan suction, rather than a cyclone, which further increases noise.

Thankfully, since this is a spot cleaner, this is hardly a major issue. Okay, you won’t be able to dust around a sleeping family member or clean up a library without stern looks, but the low duration of the sound (nine mins max) makes it passable.

The WV200UK isn’t designed to take on acres of carpet or hard floors that span the miles majestically. This is a vacuum for spot cleaning, dusting and perhaps tackling pet hair on the sofa. For those roles, it works very well indeed.

Both the suction pressure and airflow are especially good for the size of the unit. It isn’t going to compete with Sharks’ full-size cordless cleaners for sheer suction, but it isn’t as far behind as you might expect given its size.

Our standard vacuum cleaner tests involve a small oats spill on tile floor, powder in a spot on carpet and a small patch of dog hair on upholstery material. It seemed churlish not to set the same task for the little Shark.

On hard floors, the good suction and airflow dispatch smaller debris and dust with ease. On the spilt oats, the WV200 performed admirably. However, the small nozzle and not-quite-full-size machine suction means you do have to go over the same areas a couple of times. Do that and it delivers a decent spot-clean of oats, even into the grouting grooves.

For carpets, the WV200Uk understandably isn’t a speedy operator. The small tools mean our standard powder test area took 30 seconds or so of cleaning, including going over the same area several times to lift as much dust as possible. After that time the results were more than passable, competing with a full-size cordless vac, albeit taking longer to do the job.

The small tools allow you to get close to the edges, and there were only a few grains of heavier carpet cleaning powder remaining. It took a little while, but the Shark’s solid suction power and easy operation delivered effective results.

With no rotating brush bar, the WV200UK is always going to be a little compromised when addressing pet hairs. Thankfully, the upholstery tool is up to the task and the textured pads on the base of the tool help pull hairs from carpet pile. Plenty of those hairs will get stuck in the pads though, so a clean-out after each pet-hair busting operation is probably essential.

Out on hard floors, the Shark is a great little cleaner for chasing down tumbleweed balls of pet hair. In our home, it was equally handy for picking up dropped pine needles that the pets brought in from a walk in the woods. The single “full” power mode means it will suck in loose fabric on furniture, but the venting on the multi-surface tool helps to reduce that effect.

For pet hairs on carpet, the small size and light weight means it’s easy to go back and forth over the same area several times. That’s a requirement of picking up pet hairs with this cleaner, though, so don’t expect an instant clean in one pass.

Agitate the cleaner or draw back, lift and repeat, and you’ll eventually get rid of pet hair on carpet and upholstery. There will be some rolling of hair into balls along the way, but simply lifting the WV200UK and dropping it directly on the fur-balls will dispatch them forthwith.

That rather depends on how many stairs you have. For a single flight of carpeted stairs in the home, the WV200UK has more than enough run-time and suction to clean from top to bottom. With such compact tools, it isn’t a speedy operation, so expect to use most of that available run-time.

That said, The WV200UK is super-light, easy to manoeuvre up stairs and gets neatly into turns and corners. It can also be flipped onto its side to clean the step uprights too. The multi-tool is ideal here and gets very close to corners and can be rolled over front edges of the step.

The WV200UK isn’t going to deliver the deep clean of a full-sized stick-vac with rotating brush tool, but it’s great for a quick stair-way freshen-up.

Shark WV200UK Conclusion.

It isn’t a replacement for your main vacuum cleaner, but the WV200UK is in a little category of its own. A handheld cleaner, spot-vac or domestic gadget, this baby Shark is a neat, stylish and effective tool for dealing with dry spills, spot cleaning and dusty upholstery. It’s far more flexible than its nearest competition, the Vorwerk Kobold VC100, although if you need something bigger the guide to the best cordless vacuum cleaners will having something suitable.

Trusted Score