Shark PowerDetect Clean & Empty review: can a £320 Shark keep up with a moulting spaniel?

The first time the dock emptied, Bramble left the room. Not a trot. A full springer exit, ears back, claws scrabbling on the laminate, and he spent the next ten minutes in the garden looking at the back door as if it had betrayed him.

That noise is the whole point of this Shark, so I'd better explain it. When you stand the hoover back in its tall base, the base sucks everything out of the little bin and into a bigger one of its own. You don't press anything. You never tip a bin of dog hair and dust into the kitchen pedal bin again, and you never breathe in the grey cloud that comes with it.

Pauline has had hay fever every summer for the 41 years I've known her. When I told her the test hoover emptied itself, she said "About time somebody thought of that." Then she asked if it would fit in the understairs cupboard. It didn't.

Which Shark this is, because Shark doesn't make it easy

If you've searched for the "Shark PowerDetect Clean & Empty", you'll have seen two different machines under that name. The first, the IP3251UKT, came out in 2024 with a heavier body and a double brush floor head. It's still around, but stock is thinning and prices have been drifting up as it sells out.

The one Shark sells now is the PowerDetect Speed Clean & Empty Pet Pro, IA3241UKT, in a slate blue Shark calls Ultramarine. Lighter, a single brush roll with rubbery fins instead of bristles, a cyan light on the front of the head and a wand that bends in the middle. Expert Reviews published their review of it at the end of June, so it's properly new. That's the model I tested, bought from Shark at the normal price like everything else we review.

Same house, same dog, same tests as the Dyson V16 Piston Animal I reviewed in August, so you can put the numbers side by side.

What's in the box, and the numbers

Test conditions: a 1934 semi and a spaniel

Our house, if you haven't met it: stone, semi-detached, built in 1934 halfway up a Sheffield hill. The floors change every few metres, from hall laminate to stair and landing carpet to the old red kitchen quarry tiles, with a front room rug and skirting boards everywhere you look. Every stick hoover gets the same routine, written up in full on our how we test page:

• Grit: kiln-dried sand, 50 g of it, trodden into one patch of landing carpet. Three slow strokes, then whatever reached the bin goes on the kitchen scale that reads to a tenth of a gram.
• Tiles: dry porridge oats and uncooked rice, a mugful, scattered across the kitchen floor.
• Long hair: 20 strands from our daughter Joanne's hairbrush, about 30 cm each, on the front room rug.
• Edges: plain flour run in a thin line tight to the hall skirting board.
• Stairs, battery and noise: all 13 steps against the stopwatch, every mode run from full until it stops, decibels read from one metre.

And then 36 days of ordinary life, from 29 July to 2 September, which in our house means late-summer moult and our grandson Alfie visiting four days a week in the school holidays. Alfie is seven. Alfie eats crisps while walking.

Carpet and sand: close to the Dyson, not level

Three strokes on Auto brought up 44.9 g of sand. Boost managed 47.6 g. For comparison, the Dyson V16 managed 46.8 and 48.7 on the same patch, and my stubborn old corded upright 41.2.

So the Dyson digs about two grams deeper in fifty on Auto. Real, but small. On deep pile the gap will matter more. On ordinary carpet like most of Britain's, it won't.

The quarry tiles were better than I expected. Rice gone first pass. The oats did what oats do with finned brush rolls: a little wave built up at the front for about 20 cm on the first push, then the head swallowed the lot when I pulled it back. Shark calls that "direction detect", the head boosts on the backward stroke. It works. Just don't judge it on the first push.

The cyan light surprised me most. It throws a low beam across hard floors and shows every crumb, hair and bit of grit like a torch across a snooker table. Pauline took it into the hall on day two and found half a digestive under the radiator that I'm told has been there since Easter.

Hair: a very good result, with a small asterisk

The long hair test went well. Of Joanne's 20 strands, three ended up wrapped round the ends of the brush roll where it meets the side of the head. The other seventeen went straight in the bin. They pulled off with finger and thumb in a few seconds, no scissors. The Dyson had none wrapped at all, so this is a hair behind, if you'll forgive me.

Bramble's hair is short and wiry, and here the fins were faultless. 36 days, a spaniel in full late-summer moult, and on the last day I flipped the head on the workbench in the shed, ready to find a mat of it. Nothing. The fins are soft rubber, and dog hair just doesn't grip them the way it grips bristles.

"For nineteen years I carried a hooked blade in the van for cutting hair off brush rolls. I'd have been out of work with these." Clive, day 36

Edges: where it beats a £750 Dyson

My one big complaint about the V16 was its pointed floor head, which left a centimetre of flour along every skirting board. The Shark head is flat across the front. On the flour test along the hall, it left a strip about 3 mm wide, and a second pass along the edge took most of that too. Shark says the head boosts suction when it senses an edge. I can't prove what the sensor did, but I can tell you what the flour did.

So I stopped reaching for the crevice tool on the hall and landing. At my age, knees keep a ledger.

The dock: the best thing, and the loudest

Put the hoover back in the base, and a second later it roars for about eight seconds. My meter read 83 dB at a metre, louder than the hoover on Boost. There's a switch for a quiet mode, which took it down to 77 dB but made it run longer. Bramble objected to both. By week three he'd learnt the sound of the hoover clicking in, and left before the roar started.

What it saved us was worth the noise. The machine's own bin is small, 0.47 litres, but it never mattered, because every clean ended with it empty. Shark says the dock's 2 litre bin holds up to 45 days. With Bramble moulting, ours was full after 19 days. In winter I'd guess nearer 30.

Emptying the dock bin is the only time you meet the dust: lift it out, hold it deep in the wheelie bin, press the release. There's a small puff, so I do it outside. It's still a world away from tipping a hoover bin five times a week.

Stairs, the bending wand and the battery

At 3.22 kg, it's about 300 grams lighter than the Dyson with a floor head fitted, and the weight sits lower. You notice on the stairs. All 13 took 5 minutes 50 seconds with the pet tool, against 6 minutes 40 on the Dyson, and my forearm had a lot less to say at the top.

The wand bends in the middle at the press of a button. It sounds like a party trick. It isn't. There's only about 9 cm under our settee, and with the wand bent I could get right under it without bending my back. Pauline, whose right thumb is bad with arthritis and who leaves the Dyson to me, did the whole downstairs with this one twice a week. That's the best review I can give it.

Battery was the weakest area. I ran it flat four times on Auto, main head on, across carpet, laminate and tile. The average was 34 minutes. Boost went flat in 13 minutes 10 seconds. The Dyson averaged 44 on Auto. A full clean of our house, stairs included, takes me about 29 minutes, so it made it every time. The day I did the car as well, it didn't. In a bigger house, you'd want two goes.

From a metre away I read 66 dB over tiles and 71 dB over carpet in Auto, and 78 dB with Boost on. A touch quieter than the Dyson everywhere, and Bramble slept through Auto on the landing.

Where I'd expect it to fail, eventually

You can swap the battery without a screwdriver, and that's good news, because it'll be the first thing to fade, typically in year three or four of daily use. Shark guarantees it for 2 years and the rest for 5, if you register it.

My worry is the bending joint. Anywhere a wand hinges and carries power through it, you get a wearing point. I bent and straightened it 200 times one evening while the snooker was on, and it felt the same at the end as at the start. Five years is a different matter. The dock's rubber seal is my second guess. I'll report back at six months.

Shark or Dyson V16?

If your house is mostly deep carpet and it's big, the Dyson is still the stronger machine, and my full Dyson V16 Piston Animal review explains why. For a normal British semi with a dog, the Shark does nine tenths of the job for about £400 less, and you never empty a bin by hand.

Black Friday: wait or buy now?

This is a new model, so it has no Black Friday history yet. What we do know:

• List price is £519.99, and Shark itself is selling it at £319.99 at the time of writing.
• In June, Expert Reviews reported it at £450 on Amazon, then down to £300 during their test. So it's already been lower than today.
• The old IP3251UKT is now from about £349 on PriceSpy, more than the new one. Don't buy the old one unless it's well under £300.

Black Friday lands on 27 November this year, and Shark usually joins in. My rule: £300 or under is a good price and I'd take it. Anything around £320 is fair if your old hoover is on its last legs. If it creeps back towards £400, wait.

Is it a good present?

A hoover as a Christmas present is a risky move in most marriages. Pauline wants that on record. But for the right person it's a thoughtful one: someone with a dog or cat, someone with hay fever who dreads emptying bins, or an older parent who struggles to kneel.

Nothing else is essential. In a big house, look at a spare battery from Shark, and check it's listed for this exact model.

Paperwork matters with hoovers. Bought direct from Shark, the main unit has 30 days of free returns. From any online shop, you can cancel within two weeks of delivery, and a genuinely faulty machine can go back for your money within the first month under the Consumer Rights Act. Holiday return periods are set by each retailer. Most important of all, register it with Shark, because the 5-year guarantee depends on it.

The short answer, by household

Other hoovers worth a look

Dyson V16 Piston Animal, £749.99 list, often £590 to £650 on offer. Deeper on carpet and longer battery, but heavier and emptied by hand.

Shark PowerDetect Speed IA1241UK, £249.99 at Shark at the time of writing. The same family without the self-emptying dock. If the dock doesn't matter to you, it's the cheaper route.

A robot to share the load. In a house that moults daily, a robot on weekday mornings plus a cordless on Saturdays works well. I put ours through our door sills and quarry tiles in my Roborock Saros 20 review. Every score we've given lives in our reviews.

After 36 days

This Shark has done something no hoover has done in our house in 41 years: Pauline uses it more than I do. It's light, it goes under things, and she never has to touch the dust. That counts for more than two grams of sand.

The Dyson still wins on deep cleaning and battery, and I'd want to see that bending joint at five years before I call it built to last. But for £320, with a dog who moults for England, it's the one I'd put in the dining room corner. Bramble disagrees. He's in the garden again.

Your Shark PowerDetect questions, answered