Shark Freestyle Pro Cordless Upright Vacuum SV2000UK Review

Introduction

Cordless vacuum cleaners tend to be a little more complex than your average plug-in upright, with more heads and modes to choose from, but the Shark Freestyle Pro Cordless Upright Vacuum SV2000UK is different. A simpler, more basic cordless upright, this is a grab-and-go cleaner for most floor-cleaning jobs. 

It’s great for general cleaning, but the relatively short battery life and lack of accessories make it less versatile than many rivals.

Design and Features

• Foot operated
• Two modes: carpet and hard floor
• No accessories

There must have been a name change along the way, as the Shark Freestyle Pro Cordless Upright Vacuum SV2000UK is also known as the Shark Freestyle Max. Indeed, the front of my vacuum cleaner clearly says ‘Max’ on it, as do the sample shots on Shark’s website; but the product page uses the ‘Pro’ name instead. 

Anyway, the names might not quite match up, but regardless of which name you use, the Shark Freestyle Pro Cordless Upright Vacuum SV2000UK is a simple, upright cordless vacuum cleaner with an integrated battery.

Much like the Gtech Air Ram 3, the Shark Freestyle Pro is designed for floor cleaning only, and doesn’t have any additional accessories for detail cleaning.

Rather, this is a grab-and-go vacuum cleaner. It sits on its charging dock on the floor and is ready to go when you need it.

There’s just a single power button, operated by your foot. Tap this once and the Shark Freestyle Pro is in carpet mode; tap it again and it’s in hard floor mode.

That’s it for controls and, once on, all I had to do was pull the handle back and I could push the Shark Freestyle Pro around. At just 3.2kg, this vacuum cleaner is super lightweight. That’s handy for when it needs to be lifted, such as to take upstairs, but most of the time, this cleaner will be on the ground where its light body just makes it easy to push around.

There’s a spinning brush bar, and unlike other Shark vacuum cleaners, this one is not an Anti-Hair Wrap model. However, the brush bar does at least come out easily for cleaning.

A 0.69-litre dustbin is a good size and should take a full load of cleaning before you have to empty it. Emptying is an easy job, as the entire bin lifts out. Both the top and bottom open up, which makes it easy to clean.

A sponge filter sits under the dust bin, and lifts out easily enough. This can be washed under a tap and then left to dry. 

Performance

• Good carpet cleaning
• Excellent on hard floors
• Does get tangled with hair

I would normally measure a vacuum cleaner’s suction power at the handle, but that wasn’t possible with the Shark Freestyle Pro, as it can only be used in upright mode. Instead, I just focused on my normal tests.

I started with the dust collection test on carpet, adding 20g of flour to the floor. After a single pass forwards and backwards through the flour you can see that the cleaner does well towards the centre, but leves a bit of mess at the edges.

After continuing to clean until the carpet was visibly clean, I measured that the Shark Freestyle Pro had collected 83.25% of the flour, which is slightly higher than the Gtech Air Ram 3’s managed and puts this cleaner in solid mid-range territory.

A tougher test is my edge test, where I add 10g of flour to carpet tiles, right up to the skirting board. I ran the Shark Freestyle Pro along the skirting board and found that some flour was left behind. Overall, 85.4% of the dust was collected, which is a good result. A more powerful vacuum, such as the Shark PowerDetect Clean & Empty IP3251UKT, will do better, but you have to spend a lot more.

I then moved on to the hard floor test and added 20g of rice to the floor. I was pleased to see that the Shark Freestyle Pro managed to collect 100% of the spill and didn’t drop any grains of rice at the end.

I combed some cat hair into the carpet and found that the Shark Freestyle Pro managed to pick all of it up without any problems.

I then added some strands of human hair to the floor. These were all collected, but ended up wrapped around the brush bar, where I had to cut them free.

Battery life comes in at just under 20 minutes, which is enough to tackle a floor of a typical home or a flat. Or, you can break up cleaning and do it in shifts. At 64dB, I found that the Shark Freestyle Pro was pretty quiet, too.

Should you buy it?

FAQs