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After impressing with last year’s NZ801UKT, this year we have the improved Shark Anti Hair Wrap Upright Vacuum Cleaner with Powered Lift-Away and TruePet NZ850UKT.

Although similar in look, Shark has fine-tuned the design for the NZ850UKT, with the controls moving to the top of the handle, rather than on the main vacuum cleaner’s body. It puts everything you need by your thumb, so you can start and stop or adjust the power level without having to bend down.

Shark has made little adjustments elsewhere: the accessories now clip more easily onto the onboard storage clips, and the hose locks firmly into place and doesn’t spring out and wave around as with the older cleaner.

Shark has used its DuoClean floor head for the main work. This has both a soft roller and a carpet brush, so you don’t need to swap floor heads when you move between different floor types. Shark’s Anti Hair Wrap tech continues to be brilliant: we didn’t have any hair caught around the floor head, even in a house with pets and people with long hair.

Performance is excellent. We measured the hard floor more at an incredible 260AW: that’s about the same as a powerful cordless vacuum in its maximum power mode. Of course, on a cordless cleaner you’d only get a handful of minutes at this power, where as the NZ850UKT continues at this level for as long as you want.

Switch to carpet mode and power drops to 233.96AW, which is still a lot. Besides, that’s combined with a fast-spinning floor head to agitate dirt. On Deep Pile mode, power is 130.19AW (around the same as a cordless on medium power) and the floor head spins more slowly: this helps prevent the cleaner from getting clogged on long carpet fibres.

Real-world performance is excellent. On carpet, the NZ850UKT picked up everything on a single pass, it cleaned right to the skirting board, picked up larger debris on hard floors without dropping anything and effortlessly dealt with pet hair.

When you need to get into detail work, there’s Lift-Away mode: just push the button and you can lift out the main cylinder, using the hose to reach into those hard-to-get areas, or using the anti-tangle pet brush, which we found got our sofas back to the best condition.

For the majority of homes, the combination of power and flexibility makes this the best overall vacuum cleaner.

Reviewer: David Ludlow
Read the full review: Shark Anti Hair Wrap Upright Vacuum Cleaner with Powered Lift-Away and TruePet NZ850UKT review

A best of a cylinder vacuum cleaner, the Bissell SmartClean Pet weighs 9.98kg. Don’t let that put you off, as the large wheels make this much easier to move around than you may think, and the long 3m hose gives you plenty of reach: we could tackle our stairs with the cleaner at the bottom. In fact, the only time we had to lift this vacuum cleaner was to physically go upstairs.

The core tool is the motorised brush, which is suitable for carpets and hard floors alike. It’s an anti-tangle brush, designed to stop hair wrapping around it. And, it works well: we didn’t have to cut any hair away from the roller during our testing.

As this is a large vacuum cleaner, it has a huge 3-litre bin. That’s absolutely massive to the extent that we only had to empty it every couple of weeks or so.

We measured suction at 227AW in maximum mode (that’s a lot of power and outdoes many cordless cleaners on turbo mode), down to a more sedate 185AW on minimum: that’s a more useful power mode for thicker carpets. There’s an Auto mode, too: we found that this lets the SmartClean Pet adapt to the surface it was on perfectly.

Real-world tests showed that this cleaner was excellent: perfect cleaning to the edges, clean sweeps on carpet and hard floors and pet hair removed with no issue.

There’s are multiple clips for the wand: one for storage while cleaning, and a second one underside for storage when the vacuum is stood on its back. It’s a shame that there are no clips for the brush and crevice tool. The lack of a mini motorised tool for upholstery is a little disappointing, particularly for a vacuum cleaner aimed at pet owners.

This is a very large and heavy cylinder vacuum cleaner, but if that doesn’t bother you, it’s power and cleaning ability make it a great choice, particularly in large homes.

Review: David Ludlow
Read the full review: Bissell SmartClean Pet review

Great value, with decent performance, the Hoover Telios Extra TX50PET is a great all-round cylinder vacuum cleaner. This model weighs 5kg, which is pretty good as far as plug-in cleaners go. Besides, as the vacuum is on wheels, we rarely had to lift it.

Storage of cylinder vacuum cleaners can be annoying to store, but not the Telios Extra TX50PET. Flip open the flat at the front, and there’s space for the crevice tool, dusting brush and furniture nozzle. There’s also a clip for the floor head, so you can store the vacuum cleaner upright with its hose wrapped around it.

Hoover provides three main floor heads in the box, but the 2-in-1 head was the only one we used: the parquet head felt superfluous and the Carpet Optimax head was practically impossible to push on carpet. It needed so much force, that we gave up.

We measured suction power at 207AW on maximum power and 117AW on minimum. That’s a little behind the most powerful-cleaners, but these power levels are higher than cordless cleaners in standard mode, and you don’t have to worry about battery life here.

Performance is very good: the vacuum cleaned right up to the skirting board, tackled large debris on a hard floor without leaving anything behind and the furniture tool got cat hair off with ease.

Emptying the cleaner is easy, as the EPA bags just lift out to be thrown away. Note that these are HEPA bags, so homes with allergy sufferers may want to look elsewhere. Anyone looking for a neat, well-priced cylinder vacuum cleaner for homes with pets will like this well-priced option.

Reviewer: David Ludlow
Read the full review: Hoover Telios Extra TX50PET review

Shark is best known for its upright and cordless models, but with the Shark Bagless Cylinder Vacuum Cleaner CZ500UKT the company debuted its first cylinder cleaner. This model has many of the features that we’ve come to know and love from Shark cleaner, only in a different form factor.

Cylinder cleaners are often easier to move around because you drag the cylinder behind you. Here, Shark has made that job very easy with four caster wheels.

If there’s one issue with cylinder cleaners, it’s that the controls are on the main unit, so you have to bend down to use them. Here, that’s not the case, as the controls are all on the handle, so can toggle power and change mode all with the flick of a thumb.,

In the box, you get a motorised pet tool, crevice tool and brush, which gives you plenty of flexibility for detail cleaning. The main cleaning head is a DuoClean (works on both hard floors and carpets) with Anti Hair Wrap (this honestly works and stops hair from wrapping around the brush).

Shark has clips to hold the wand and floor head in place, and there’s an accessory clip so you can carry around the detail tools with you.

I measured the vacuum cleaner at a decent 92AW on Eco mode (about the same a cordless in its regular mode), 227AW on Standard and a massive 285AW on Max: that’s a truly huge amount of suction power. Eco mode was enough to tackle our test dirt on carpet, and Standard for everything else: hard floors and pet hair. On our edge test, we did have to finish off with the crevice tool, but that’s our only minor complaint.

If you like cylinder vacuum cleaners and want the features that Shark usually has with its uprights, then this is the perfect vacuum cleaner for you.

Reviewer: David Ludlow
Read the full review: Shark Bagless Cylinder Vacuum Cleaner CZ500UKT

Normal vacuum cleaners aren’t built to handle the kinds of dirt and mess you get from DIY, which is why you may also want a powerful wet and dry vacuum cleaner, such as the Stihl SE 33. This looks much like any cylinder vacuum cleaner, but as well as sucking dirt into a paper bag, and make for easier emptying, you can fit the filter and suck up wet mess, too.

One big difference between wet and dry vacuum cleaners and your standard models is that they can exceed the power limits set: the SE 33 draws 1400 W, whereas a standard cleaner will be 750W or less. This translates into more raw power: we measured it at 406AW, which is double the power of other models in this list.

In fact, it’s so powerful that the suction makes the bog-standard floor head hard to push on some surfaces, such as carpet. You won’t be surprised to learn that this vacuum cleaner scored perfectly in our carpet, edge, pet hair and hard floor tests. We also spread wet Weetabix onto the floor: no problem for the SE 33 at all.

The difficulty pushing this cleaner on everyday surfaces mean that it’s not the ideal everyday cleaner: instead, this level of power is best directed at DIY debris, from sawdust to wet plaster mess. This is a great addition to any household, as a DIY or workshop vacuum cleaner, able to cope with those dirty jobs that a regular vacuum can’t touch.

Reviewer: David Ludlow
Read the full review: Stihl SE 33 review