Shark is better known for its cordless and upright vacuum cleaners, but here we have something new: the Shark Bagless Cylinder Vacuum Cleaner CZ500UKT. Although the old cylinder design is less popular than it once was, the smaller bodies and more flexible heads that happily fit under most furniture make them popular with some (me included). While raw performance provides an indication of cleaning power, my real-world tests show how well a cleaner actually does. I put the CZ500UKT through my standard tests, starting out with my carpet test. Sprinkling a teaspoon of flour onto the carpet, I ran the cleaner through on Standard power. As you can see, there’s a clean sweep with sharp edges right through the middle of the mess.

There’s Anti Hair Wrap technology, too, so the brush won’t become tangled with hair. It really does work, too, saving me from having to resort to using a pair of scissors to cut away long hair from the brush roller. The length of the hose enables you to get into hard-to-reach areas, and up numerous steps on the staircase without having to move the cylinder often. The wand even offers enough reach to clean around your ceilings.For the remaining flour, I passed through again at the top on Turbo, and at the bottom on Eco mode. As you can see, both modes did equally as well. The flexible wand can bend in half at the midpoint, allowing it to reach under low furniture without the user having to bend down, a feature seen on many Shark upright vacuums. And for overhead cleaning the small tools can be attached directly to the wand. Likewise, the main floorhead can be attached to the handle for easier cleaning of small spaces like stairs. Performance

At just 260 x 900 x 1180mm, the Shark CZ500UKT is a small cylinder vacuum cleaner. It looks great, though, with plenty of curves and rose gold details around the body. It weighs 7.99kg, which makes it quite a heavy cleaner overall – but that weight is across the body, tools and wand. The main body weighs just 4kg, making it quite easy to lift. You shouldn’t have to lift the CZ500UKT too often, though, since you’ll mostly be pulling the body around with you on its four wheels, cleaning with the DuoClean floor head.

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Moving to Boost mode cleared all but a tiny amount of flour; nothing that the crevice tool couldn’t deal with.

I measure the raw performance of all vacuum cleaners at the hose, using a 2-inch opening. This lets me compare raw suction power in AirWatts. Here, the CZ500UKT was 92.26AW on Eco mode, 227.8AW on Standard and a huge 284.82AW on Max. That’s in line with upright cleaners. We were impressed with the dust and dirt collection even if it was slightly horrifying how much it removed from recently vacuumed carpets. Edge cleaning is good, too, and it was able to collect oats from along our baseboards no matter whether we approached with the front or side of the floorhead. It didn’t struggle to remove hair from carpets and we were pleased to see that none of it became tangled in the brushroll. As with Shark’s most recent upright cleaners, such as the NZ850UKT, the DuoClean head here has a soft roller for hard floors and a brush for carpet, with a set of LEDs that light up the path you’re cleaning.Moving to the difficult carpet tile test, where I sprinkled flour right up to the skirting board, the CZ500UKT did well on Standard mode, although it left a small line of flour by the edge. The flexible wand does its job and allows for easy cleaning under low furniture without having to bend. Although it’s not quite so easy to maneuver in this mode, we didn’t feel we had as much control over the direction of vacuuming as when it’s in standard mode.