Shark AI Ultra Robot Vacuum with XL Self-Emptying Base – Smart, Powerful, Hands-Free Cleaning
- 🌀 Incredible Suction: Advanced suction technology removes dirt, dust, and debris from all floor types, ensuring deep and effective cleaning across your home.
- 🧹 Matrix Clean Navigation: Uses precision grid cleaning with multiple passes for comprehensive, edge-to-edge cleaning. No spot is left untouched.
- 🗑️ 60-Day XL Self-Empty Base: The bagless base holds up to 60 days of dirt and debris, eliminating the need for frequent emptying or costly replacement bags.
- 🐾 Self-Cleaning Brushroll: Engineered to remove hair and debris without tangling. Perfect for homes with pets, as it captures hair with ease.
- 📍 Precision Home Mapping: 360° LiDAR sensors quickly map your home and adapt to changes, ensuring precise navigation and effective object avoidance—even in the dark.
- 🐶 Ideal for Pet Owners: Captures pet hair, dirt, and allergens efficiently with strong suction and anti-hair wrap technology, making it ideal for multi-pet households.
- 🗣️ Smart Voice & App Control: Works with Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant. Use voice commands or the SharkClean app to schedule, start, or stop cleanings with ease.
- 🔋 Recharge & Resume: Automatically returns to the dock when battery is low, recharges, and resumes cleaning right where it left off.
- 📦 What’s in the Box: Shark AI Robot Vacuum, XL Self-Empty Base, 2 Side Brushes, and 1 Filter.
Brand: Shark
Model: AI Ultra
Color: Cool Grey
Special Features: Smart Mapping, Bagless, Self-Emptying, LiDAR Navigation, Obstacle Avoidance, Pet Hair Pick-Up
Dimensions: 8.43″L x 13.08″W x 13.9″H
If you're tired of constant vacuuming, buy these! You'll be glad you did!
This base wasn't working on initial setup, so I called and it turned out to be user error. The agent barely made fun of me for (yes, really) not plugging it in. This little vacuum (named him Wadsworth) is going strong.
These things may seem like easy assumptions, but of the 4 other robot vacuums I have owned over the years, this is the first and only one to complete all of the above successfully.
This is the first Shark robot that I have purchased and I am so glad I did.
I am hopeful that this robot will serve me well for many years to come.
I did a "matrix" clean, and the patterns in the carpet were almost mathematically precise!
I just set up Alexa to have it do my upstairs everyday at 10:00am, and I just ordered ANOTHER unit for downstairs!
EDIT: Just ordered #3.
I have a dog that sheds her own weight in fur every 24 hours. I'm used to seeing tumbleweeds of fur the size of Volkswagens rolling past me as I watch TV...
You have NO idea how nice it is to come home to a house that is COMPLETELY and freshly vacuumed. Almost as nice as having a live-in maid. (well, almost)
Next, I want to get a robotic mop for the first floor. Hopefully, there will be a sale like the one I just took advantage of!
These things are creepy-accurate, mine NAILS the small gap between the couch and coffee table without even touching either! Maybe there's a little guy inside these things to steer! LOL
He [I named him Willie cuz a lot of times he goes "round in a circle" [Billy Preston sing] did take a few times to map out my home, math probably isn't it's strong suit. But I unleash him in whatever room(s) I need and he sing his happy tone & off he goes to clean up. I have a cat that throws litter about like he's in a parade. Little robot Willie sucks it all up keeps me sane. He is fast and efficient. The fact I can use the app to specify what areas I want "touched up" or deep cleaned is nice. The cats aren't tormented by the robot like they are a upright vacuum makes life easier. There is a marked difference in the cleanliness of my home. Not sure if I should feel offended or blessed by having this device.
I recently purchased a cheaper version of this vacuum with a generic brand. And it was definitely subpar compared to the Shark robot vacuum.
I have two French bulldogs that have mild shedding. I have allergies & asthma , so daily vacuuming is a must. This picks up so much of the pet hair and other things they drag in from grass to dirt. On top of the great suction it also vacuums in perfectly straight lines, and if for some reason it feels like it missed something due to an obstruction. It will go back over that spot again. I could not be happier with this purchase it took a daily chore of vacuuming off of my hands. And that makes me a very satisfied customer. Overall shark products are the best. I Will buy more from them in the future!!!
Pros: so easy to set up, it did take two tries to “map” the house. Make sure doors are open and take items off the floor (dog toys, kid toys, shoes, etc). Super easy though. Love that you can set a schedule and/or just open the app and tell it to clean. You can even choose a specific room instead of the whole house. Cleans the tile wonderfully, no more dog hair tumble weeds!
Cons: not great on high pile carpet. I ran my Dyson over the carpet, just in the main traffic areas and I filled the canister five times. This was right after the shark had vacuumed. Dog hair tends to get stuck in the side of the brush causing it to stop and need to be cleaned frequently. However, once I just used it for the tile only this happened less frequently.
Overall, it saves tons of time cause I was staining the tile every other day. Not enough suction for my carpets, but still worth it in my opinion.
You will still need an upright or second unit for cleaning against the walls monthly.
The quietness of the machine. Everything is phenomenal. This is well worth the money, and I am considering getting a second 14 my other floor. The only thing that I would improve would be the app design. It is challenging for me to find some of the settings that I would like to customize.
Our living room and dining room are relatively smooth sailing for Finn. But life isn't all hardwood and sunshine. Between the high chair, bouncer (a piece of furniture so massive it could moonlight as a studio apartment), toys galore, and strategically placed space heaters, Finn has his work cut out for him. Oh, and then there's "The Mountain"—a one-inch tile lip separating the dining room and kitchen, complete with broken and missing tiles.
At first, I doubted Finn's ability to conquer this Everest. But Finn has grit. Sure, he tries every single impossible route first, bumping and spinning like a determined little pinball, but eventually, he finds his secret passage—the one magical spot where he can make the climb. Watching him triumph feels like witnessing a tiny robot Rocky Balboa moment every time.
And let's talk about Finn's hunger. We have 3 dogs (two of which are huskies—read: fur factories) and 2 cats who seem to think shedding is an Olympic sport. Yet Finn never says, "Enough!" He devours it all, even dust and debris we didn't know existed.
Finn isn't perfect—his smarts sometimes take a backseat to his enthusiasm—but he’s relentless, and that’s what counts in our house. Life with Finn is cleaner, funnier, and just a little more inspiring.
We give Finn 5 stars! Shark makes amazing products, and Finn is just another reason to love this brand. He even self-empties, which is advertised as holding 60 days’ worth of debris. In our house, though, it’s closer to a week—but hey, that just proves Finn is doing his job!
We run Finn about three times a day, and our floors have never been this clean. We used to battle fur and debris nonstop, with even our $700 LG vacuum failing to keep up. Plus, who has time to vacuum for an hour every day? Not us. But Finn does!
Seriously, Finn is one of the best purchases I’ve ever made. I even got him a 3-year warranty for extra peace of mind, though with how solid and well-built he is, I doubt we’ll need it. The mapping software is impressively accurate—so much so that I’m still surprised by how well it works.
If you’re on the fence, do yourself a massive favor and just buy one. I promise, you won’t regret it!
The build quality isn’t amazing. It’s fine, if somewhat flimsy feeling. It’ll probably last a few years but I wouldn’t expect it to withstand much abuse.
It sometimes makes a wad out of some dog fur (two heavy shedders with medium length, fine fur) and gets it jammed in the beater brush. This stops the machine until a human clears the jam and is frustrating.
The app. It’s hot garbage. Slow, clunky user interface. It takes 10-15 seconds to refresh to display current status and battery level. I use it only to schedule cleaning and otherwise leave it alone.
Vacuum power. It’s good enough to pick up aforementioned dog fur. There’s not much else to pick up, so this is good enough. Battery lasts about 90 minutes for me, which is enough to clean the area I want (~750 square ft). Charging takes forever, though (2-3 hours).
The dust collection base seems to work well but has several filters that are pretty small and collect very fine dust quickly. If they get clogged the machine won’t run until it’s all cleared out.
Navigation. It makes nice straight patterns on the carpet. It will cleanse one room at a time before moving to the next (if you let it map the house out via the app and then assign rooms to each area at least). It can be sent to a specific room or rooms via the app. The “matrix” clean / multi-pass clean only is available one room at a time though.
Would I buy another one? Maybe. If it ends up buying durable, then probably. If the app gets faster and more useful, that would be good, too.
1st off the charging station and debris emptying function is awesome. So much better then doing it from the Vac itself which you can still do.
2nd this thing is actually smart, well smarter then out previous ones from other manufacturers. This one scans the area and goes in a grid like pattern. When battery is low which is after about 3/4's our main floor it then promptly goes back home on its own. Charges for a period of time (about an hour)that will give it enough to finish the floor then goes back home to fully charged for the next day.
My only 2 complaints (1 is just a nit pick preference really) is that, A) it only comes or came in white and doesn't/didn't have a black option, B) There is an option for off limits areas, however I've never seen it work. If the function doesn't work don't put the option there. Idk if this is just pur machine or the product line in general of this model.
Other than that we thoroughly love this thing.
Pros
1. sweeps the house with little to no oversight.
2. Very quiet. Even when you are in the same room you can still easily have a conversation. I wouldn't run it when I was trying to sleep, but much quieter than our manual vacuum.
3. Setup was easy. Found the wifie with no problems
4. No connectivity issues. This is great and a pleasant surprise based on other wifi appliances we have owned.
5. Mapping was adequate, if a little awkward. You only have to do it once so I count it a win!
6. Handles the carpets well. No problem getting onto and off of them. It struggles with the ledge into our kitchen which is probably a full inch but it always triumphs! Also no problem with going over electrical cords.
7. Nice low profile so it can get under pretty much all our furniture. This is a big win.
8. Dust bin is quite adequate for our house. Occasionally it will empty in the base in the middle of a clean but it takes right back up. We empty the base after each cleaning
Cons
1. Battery life is adequate but barely. Our upstairs is a little less than 1200 ft and it can do it on one battery charge if nothing goes wrong, but if there is a hickup then you're out of luck.
2. When it encounters an error it cannot restart from the point the error occurred. You have to restart from the beginning.
3. It sees our intake vent for our furnace as a cliff occasionally and will ask for assistance. This is the one error, however, which it recovers from gracefully and continues so it is really just a minor annoyance.
4. It seems to fail more often than I'd like. Either the rollers get clogged, or the dustbin on the unit gets clogged or something. One time it unplugged the base station during cleaning! As noted above if one of these errors occurs you have the fix the problem and start over, it won't take up where it left off.
5. Mapping is awkward. I would like to make our furnace intake vent a no-go zone, but am not ready to try that with the mapping.
It is cool to see it trundling around doing it's job so earnestly. Table legs, kitchen ledges -- it perseveres until it gets the job done!
So, my first impressions of this Shark are pretty much in line with what most of the reviews said. I downloaded the app and after charging the battery and following the instructions had the vac map my house. I have a single story 2350 square foot home and the mapping took all of 15 minutes or so. I bypassed setting up separate rooms and turned the Shark loose to vacuum my entire house. The app advised me it would take 155 minutes and the actual time was 165 minutes. The vac returned to the dock twice to dump its load and once to recharge the battery.
A pretty thorough inspection of the house told me I bought the right vacuum. I couldn't find a single crumb or any dirt anywhere that the vac had missed which I could never claim with my 2 other units.
Also, this unit is very quiet by comparison to what I'm used to.
Contrary to what some people have said, the app worked flawlessly. I really cannot find anything to gripe about. It's $299 very well spent.
Pros: quick set up, easily connected to my WiFi and after a month has stayed connected
Mapping was complete on the first run!
It hasn’t gotten stuck once and seems to deal with cords better than Roomba
It is so quiet (compared to my Roomba)
It takes 85 minutes running time to do one level of my home.
It dumps the dirt out itself…yay!
The app is easy to use.
Cons: It doesn’t pick up everything…small pieces of cat food can be left behind or whisked out of it’s path
It doesn’t vacuum into corners well. I have to sweep out tight spaces ahead of time if I want them
cleaned.
It does have to stop for a recharge midway through my entire downstairs (but it recharges quickly,
as opposed to my Roomba which would take multiple longer stops to do the same area.
I debated on whether I really needed to replace my Roomba, but with hindsight I am so very glad I did. The Shark is easy to use and works well…as do my other Shark products.
The Matrix Clean Navigation is impressive—it moves efficiently across our vinyl flooring, covering every inch of the space while avoiding obstacles with ease. The home mapping feature ensures it knows exactly where it’s been and where it needs to go, making cleaning more thorough and systematic. I also love that the roller and brushes don’t get jammed like our previous vacuum did. This vacuum has been much more reliable in that regard!
We’ve used the spot-clean feature in our entryway where our dogs and people come in, and it’s fantastic for quickly cleaning up dirt, mud, or pet hair without having to run a full cleaning cycle. The "no-go zone" feature is great, too—allowing me to block off areas I don’t want the vacuum to go, like around the dog bed or delicate furniture.
The scheduling option is seamless, running at the perfect time each day without me having to do anything. Plus, with voice control, I can ask it to start cleaning while I’m in another room or even from my phone when I’m not at home.
This robot vacuum has been a lifesaver for keeping our vinyl floors spotless with minimal effort, especially with all the shedding and constant foot traffic in the entryway. If you're a pet owner or just want an efficient, smart vacuum, I highly recommend this one!
First review, damn it’s cool. We mapped the house at night and our place is pretty dark already so I did put a ring light underneath lifted furniture to help it see when it first explored the house. It was stupid accurate for only having gone through the house for a brief period.
Ankle biter is also so quiet, especially compared to the roomba we had that was approaching 5 or so years in age…. Eek!
As for the first cleaning, we have a dog who sheds constantly and a long hair cat who is also shedding constantly, so think allergy central and “I will never have clothes not covered in fur again…” Ankle biter did LAPS around what our roomba, even when we first got it, was able to collect. It also travels in a super organized manner which satisfies me greatly, I was tired of getting woken up at 9am to the ungraceful sounds of the roomba trying to remodel the kitchen with its battering ram.
We have a dining table that is a nightmare to traverse unless you move all the chairs out of the way, not only did Ankle biter map it as floor space but it also vacuumed there without trying to eat the legs off all of our chairs!
Our house has some not so sharp ledges and bumps that are a little hard for a regular robot to try and get over, but ankle biter has big wheels to help get over ledges. (Not gracefully but it sure does get its way around.)
So far so good! I love this, bought it on sale as a Christmas gift for my family and everyone loves it. Even the cat, who was too scared of our thunderous roomba to go near it but wants to play with Ankle biter super badly.
Liked so much I bought a second (named Al) for upstairs which is scheduled to vacuum during the day while I’m out running around.
Was concerned that Al might have issues being based on carpet, but he navigated from and back to, then docked perfectly on base. Cleaned stair landing with no issues and didn’t fall down the stairs (I was concerned I might need a baby gate for him).
Had considered either a puppy or a man for Christmas, but very happy to have George and Al instead (don’t have to walk, entertain or clean up after - they clean up after me)
Now if Shark could come up with someway to do stairs.
First, let me start with some of the "bad" - but please note that while there's quite a bit I'm going to list, it's all mostly small stuff and most of it has to do with the app.
Cons -
App is "okay" at best.
Mapping works - but it's not the best at defining rooms.
When you want to build / merge / delete rooms - you can only do it in resizable "squares" - meaning if you have an odd shaped room you need to fill it with a bunch of these squares and then merge them all together.
The app doesn't display actual battery life - only in increments of 10%
Initial setup was a bit annoying - it wouldn't connect to the app, had to restart it, needed to be at 50% charge to start mapping, but even when the app said it was 50% - it wouldn't work right away.
Can't see live location on the map, or where it has already cleaned / pathed.
Okay - that was a lot, but nothing truly major
Pros -
The self empty base works wonders. It fully empties the vac each time, and really makes it so I can go longer periods without doing anything.
The vacuum just plain works. My house is mostly hard flooring with a couple rugs. I have 5 animals that shed like crazy. This is the only vacuum that actually picks up the fur, especially on the hard floors.
It's not very loud
Navigating works well - it sticks within the room boundaries, avoids no-go zones, and doesn't get stuck. Climbs over small obstacles with ease.
I previously tried the Eufy L60 and while it worked for a couple days, I eventually noticed that it was just pushing the fur around more than it was sucking it up.
Next, I ordered both the Shark and Roborock, but tried the Shark first. After a week of complete satisfaction with it, I decided to try the Roborock.
Like the Eufy, the Roborock had a phenomenal app. Very intuitive, the mapping worked amazing, etc. But also like the Eufy, the actual performance was subpar. I had it run in the living room + kitchen twice, a couple hours after the Shark. It barely picked up any fur.
So the tl;dr of this is - while the Shark's app is a bit more limited and the mapping isn't as great - the actual performance of the Shark makes up for it. The Eufy and Roborock have fantastic apps and mapping, but that doesn't matter when I can run them two or three times and not be able to tell that they did anything.
My suggestions to the Shark dev team though would be just to improve the app a bit. Minor improvements would go a long way - show true battery % instead of increments of 10% - allow me to define a room using straight lines, not just squares.
It's now been 2 weeks of using the Shark, I haven't actually vacuumed once myself. If that isn't proof of good results then I don't know what is.
He showed me the amount to dirt, hair and debris the vacuum picked up every time it went around. I was shocked to see all that it got, and this was AFTER his wife, 2 kids, and 4 dogs had moved out of the house.
I was sold and found this Ai robot vacuum. It was the highest rated with the most reviews.
I ordered it before leaving his house. The next day it arrived and I unpacked and set it up. I got confused at the beginning because I thought it was shipped without the 2 front spinning brushes, but then I found them taped to the protective film I had removed when I took it out of the box.
The directions that it comes with are bare bones. I had to learn how to empty it from a YouTube post.
It mapped out my rooms perfectly, I was able to set the zones in the app on my phone. The app is also bare bones. It displays the map of your floor the robot scanned, and you can section the map into rooms. This is very handy for when you just need an area of the floor to be cleaned.
I swept the hardwood, and used my stand-up vacuum on the carpets prior to the robot's first cleaning.
Then the robot did it's work. I was amazed at how much I missed. It needed to empty halfway through cleaning over 600 sq. Ft. I have run it 5 times since and it ALWAYS picks up dirt, and hair everytime. The base stores what the robot picks up for up to 60 days, but with 2 dogs, 4 kids and a wife, all with long hair, this is constantly filling the base.
The suction is amazing for how small the robot is. I set it to clean on a schedule at night time when we are all asleep, and I can also manually have it clean in demand.
It has no remote, on 2 buttons on the robot, and the app has more functions like, low, med, or high suction mode, a matrix cleaning option, and spot cleaning for a small square footage space.
Overall, I am extremely happy with this purchase. Having no particles to step on with my bare feet when I walk around first thing in the morning is my satisfaction for making this purchase. The floors ALWAYS look great now that this vacuum is in our home.
Definitely worth the price tag.
(Jindo, think husky — and a cat — lots of fur and dander). Picks up hair & dirt easily off of both.
Cons:
-Not the greatest at obeying “do not go areas” I recommend physically blocking off so it does not get registered on the map. You’ll need to keep things there the first few cycles as it’s “learning”.
-You need 3 feet to each side of the robots docking station. I only have 2 spots that’s really feasible, and one of those is a walkway and it’s very inconvenient.. so just know you might need to rearrange furniture.. I think this is because of the high suction / self cleaning function.
The first run, it learns the floor plan of your home. At first, it did not generate a good floor plan at all, so I left the house and had it try mapping again (this time with no humans or pets walking in front of it), and it mapped my floor plan very well. I like that it allows you to click and drag different areas to designate the rooms. I've had it do two full cleans now and I'm impressed. I have carpet in a couple rooms and hard wood in the rest of the house. It transitions nicely between the carpet and hard wood, and also can go over area rugs easily. You can schedule it to clean on specific days at specific times which is really nice, and also select specific rooms you want it to clean.
Here are some minor drawbacks I've found: First, that circle thing sticking up on top of the robot is just high enough that it prevents it from being able to go all the way under some furniture. Second, it is kinda loud and squeaky. Not a big deal. I'd rather have a loud vacuum that's good than a quiet vacuum that does a bad job, but that's just me. Third, it misses some edges. Again, not the biggest deal. I'd rather it not ram into things like the roomba did. The shark stops just before it would run into something, turns, and continues, which causes it to miss some edges. Over all though, I think it's great and will keep my floors pretty clean. I am mostly impressed with the home mapping part. I will report back with an updated review when I've had it for a bit longer. We'll see how she holds up!
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Have had the Bot for 2-3 weeks now.
Mostly used on 2nd floor (bedrooms/bathrooms/Loft area) which is 90% carpet. I mapped this floor only.
Occasionally used on 1st floor, which is about 50% carpet. (Not mapped).
Overall it seems to do a pretty good job, keeping in mind these Bot Vacs are not meant for DEEP cleaning carpets.
Much quieter than my old Neato Botvac80!
Cleans my 2nd floor on a single charge with BOOST cleaning, and recharging takes about 3 hours.
Overall I feel it's a good Robot Vac, but wouldn't spend more than $300 for it.
Floor Mapping Review:
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- My 2nd floor is about 1,000sq ft and it takes about 10-12 mins to map it.
- It's not the greatest at mapping. It will sometimes take 2-3 "Explore" runs for it to get it right because it
occasionally misses entire wall sections.
- Adding/Changing/Removing Room Labels and No-Go Zones on the app is pretty easy.
If you're older, it's easier to do it on a Tablet vs the phone.
- I noticed that once it completes the entire cleaning run on the 2nd floor, it seems like it internally compares the results
with the full map(??), and if it detects area's that it missed it will go back to them to clean them.
When it does do that, it doesn't always clean them in the most efficient order, often running from one end of the
house to the other to address these areas. I have also seen this behavior when tasked with cleaning a specific room.
It's will sometimes bounce around in the room getting the spots it feels it missed.
- There have been times where I've seen it do several clockwise/counter-clockwise spins in the same spot as if it's trying
to decide where to go next. Sometimes these crazy spins can last 30-40 seconds.
- So far no problems with it finding the Base Unit and Docking with it.
- Mapping is only required if you need to specify No-Go Zones or want the ability to vac a specific room(s) so you CAN
do like in my case, map the most commonly vacuumed floor (ie: 2nd floor) then manually initiate a cleaning for the 1st floor.
(see more about mapping in my "CONS" section).
Detailed Review:
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PROS:
- It's fairly quiet. You can actually have a conversation standing next to it as it's cleaning.
- Their SHARK CLEAN app is easy to use. Again, if you are older using it on a Tablet (larger screen0 will be a better experience.
- The self-vacuuming / evacuation unit works well, typically removing 95% of the bot vac's contents.
- So far have not had any issues with it getting stuck in a corner, going over room thresholds/transitions, etc.
- Bump avoidance it pretty good as long as objects are high enough for the Lidar Sensor to see it.
- No issues transitioning between carpet and hardwood/tile surfaces.
- Although it may not take the most efficient paths on occasion, and sometimes re-cleans a section(s) 2-3 times during it's total run,
it does appear to do a very through clean, cleaning all the places that it possibly can reach.
- It does well respecting No-Go Zones.
- Ledge detection works well also, but the fall-off is only detected after about 25% of the bot is hanging over the edge - depending on it's speed.
It can be nerve wracking to watch near stairs!!
- The Evacuate and Resume feature is nice to have. (After every 30 mins of cleaning, it will return to the Dock to empty its dust bin then
return to clean where it left off.
- The Do Not Disturb Schedule works well.
- The No-Go Zones work well.
- Although I have not had a need for it as of yet, I'm confident the Recharge and Resume feature will work fine.
FYI:
- Initial WiFi Setup: I did have an issue trying to pair the Bot with my phone. I think after I rebooted my phone it finally worked.
- Annoying - if you remove the Bot's dust bin while it's ON, it will complain stating it's dust bin needs to be replaced.
- The foam roll filter in the Docking station gets VERY dirty real fast and needs to be cleaned every 2-3 runs.
It's easy to clean, just tap over a garbage can to get the bulk off, then slide off the foam roll from it's base and rinse in a sink.
Let dry completely before returning to docking station.
- The Evacuation system will engage EVERY TIME you return the Bot to the dock. So if you pull the Bot off just to check the roller, as soon as you
re-dock it, the evacuation system will turn on.
- The Evacuation system is as loud as a typical upright vacuum, so keep that in mind when deciding on a location for it!!!
- I have not tried the SCHEDULED Cleaning at all. I personally prefer to manually initiate when/where I want it to clean.
CONS:
- I was not able to Register the Bot via the app - kept saying "Something went wrong". Had to do it online.
- The app could use some improvements/updating, like showing the current location of the BOT and what it's cleaned so far as it's running,
estimated time of completion, etc.
- Deleting your map when you want to do a "Re-explore" (ie: Re-Map) can take a minute or two to complete.
- "Matrix" cleaning can only be performed on one room at a time. So if you have 3 kids bedrooms you want to Matrix clean you have to select one,
do the cleaning, then send it out again to do the Matrix cleaning on the 2nd bedroom, etc.
You might be able to work around this by setting up 3 Scheduled cleanings(??), one for each room.
- The Mapping system could be MUCH better. I can understand it not mapping a shoe on the floor, but missing an entire 10-FOOT WALL SECTION???
Would be nice to have Multi-Floor/Level mapping also.
- I've run into an occasional issue where after doing a manual cleaning (via press of the CLEAN button) on the 1st floor (not mapped),
then using the app to vac a specific room on the 2nd floor (mapped), it will clean the room, but then starts re-cleaning the last 3-foot section
over-and-over until I manually stop it. Others also have reported odd issues jumping between "Mapped" cleaning and "non-Mapped" cleaning areas.
The fix for me was to delete my map and have the bot do a re-explore to build it again (and hope it does it correctly on the 1st pass).
If this issue continues, I'm toying with the idea of not doing any mapping at all and just letting the Bot figure it out as it goes regardless of the floor it's on.
I'll loose the No-Go Zones and Specific Room Clean functions and it will likely take longer to run,
but it might be worth it until the Mapping Logic is improved.
CUSTOMER SUPPORT:
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I did reach out to them when I had the "re-cleaning the same 3-foot section" issue after bouncing between a Mapped and Un-Mapped floor.
This was during Black Friday weekend, and I only waited 5-10 minutes to speak with someone. They were OK, some easier to understand than others.
I was eventually connected with one of their Technical Support staff and had to re-explain the issue. He asked if I could run the cleaning session
again (I was fine with that) and he wanted to video record the Bot in action, so he sent me a link for the video connection. I was unable to get
that working (Android phone issue??). He asked me to re-explain the issue to him again, and we got into a brief disagreement about how the MATRIX CLEAN
function worked - he claimed that was only for "Spot cleaning", which I told him was NOT true.
He finally suggested I delete my floor map and re-run another mapping session then try to replicate the problem again.
I was assigned a Ticket# to reference when I called them back with my findings.
After re-doing the mapping, I haven't been able to replicate the problem yet, and I'm leaning towards assuming the Bot works best with Mapped areas only,
and jumping between Mapped/Non-Mapped floors is not 100% supported (???)
The robot itself isn’t overly loud, but the vacuum when emptying the bot is. However, the cup empties completely. If the bot’s dirt cup fills while cleaning, it returns to the base, empties, and picked up exactly where it left off. Same if it runs low on charge. It does take 3-4 hours to recharge, but it returns to where it left off and finishes.
I also did a matrix clean in our bedroom to get all the dust and dirt from under the bed, and it did just that room flawlessly.
No issues with our multiple area rugs or going from bare floors over thresholds into carpeted rooms.
It has done three whole house cleanings, and one matrix clean with no issues and plenty of suction to pick up small debris, dust, and dog hair. (We have a long hair shepherd/chow mix. Hair is everywhere all the time.)
I have not yet cleaned the wheels or beater bar but plan to once a week. I purchased replacement filters, and brushes upfront to prevent downtime. I can’t yet speak to the durability because we’ve only had it a few days, but it doesn’t smack into things to find them, the sensors seem to be working as advertised.
We own multiple Shark products (and Ninja). All have performed as expected This robot vacuum is no different. Great value for the money.
Update
The more I use this the more I love it. I live along a main road and have a lot of dust. A quick vacuum every morning! This is much better than sweeping with a broom. There’s no dust particles in the air.
Update:
I’ve had the shark a couple of months. I live on a major road and have tons of dust in my home. The shark is much better than a broom. The shark doesn’t kick up dust like sweeping and i can easily use the shark daily.
We let our 3 dogs stay inside some of the day on beds, they don’t roam and other than that we don’t have a lot of dirt tracking. But this thing went under counters, couch as you see in video, and seems to provide a pretty good suction at the basic level.
It’s louder, but if it bothers you maybe run it when not home, it’s not near as loud as our vacuum. I like to be able to schedule certain rooms.
Lastly it did suck up part of my leggings then it let me know lol but that’s on me, so it will take a sock and then tell you it has something in it.
All in all I think the quality is so far well worth it! I got it on sale, so I’m fairly happy with it, will see in the coming weeks how it continues.
Update 12-11-24: I spoke with Shark customer support and they got me in contact with their IT support group. They were extremely helpful and got the No-Go zone issue working. It does help to have 2 cell phones handy, phone 1 to use the Shark phone app and phone 2 to take video in real-time of phone 1 so IT can walk you through the steps necessary to fix the problem. It worked great. We have had the robot vacuum cleaner for 5 months.....wish I had contacted Shark sooner. I give the robot vacuum 5 stars.
Setting up was easy. We worked out the best and most out of the way place its base would be situated and then we just followed the clear setup instructions.
Carson did his mapping and we ensured prior to that we had as much stuff off the floor as possible in order for as complete as possible mapping of our home would be done. It’s something I’d highly recommend be done before it’s sent out to map.
Carson we have scheduled to clean three times a week on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Every Monday we remove as much stuff off the floor as possible so we get a thorough clean. Especially after the weekend.
We are amazed how much dust and hair is collected when we empty the base station each week. Our floors have never looked cleaner. We have hardwood floors with some area mats. We also have a dog that sheds a lot and no longer do we find a tumbleweed of dog hair lurking along the skirting.
As the main level of our property is 1500sq ft Carson does have to go and recharge for a few hours ( you can opt to turn this off ) half way through, but it’s no drama. We also have it periodically empty itself during the cleaning process which only takes a matter of a few minutes.
We purchased a few spares just in case but we do clean the filters each week to ensure maximum efficiency.
The noise level is minimal and not a problem. The dog whilst scared of it at first has no issues with it now.
Things we would like to see improved with Carson
1 It could be slightly shorter to enable it to get under more units.
2 More brushes, there are two, might be better if four. But I’m sure the designers would have looked into thar.
3 The scheduling in the app could be better. You can only schedule it once a day. Whilst it can be sent out to clean separately via the app it would be nice to have a few more scheduling options.
4 We take it to the other floors on the house where it does its own thing, and it does a good job but it doesn’t map the floor areas on those levels or generate a report for those areas. It would be good if it could generate a report and produce a map not just for the main level. It does however let you know when it’s completed the clean of those areas so we can go and take it back to the base station.
Overall we are delighted with Carson and we highly recommend it. Our home is a lot cleaner as a result.
You cannot beat the convenience of coming home to a clean house. You can schedule cleans or clean right before you get home. I’ll typically set up a schedule, but if I’m leaving for a few days, I’ll turn it off and do a clean right before I come home so my kitties don’t get freaked out. Alfred does a great job, especially with the litter dust that my cats track everywhere. He even gets the clumps of fur! I think the only place that he misses are underneath chairs and right against the counters.
I saw that many people had issues with mapping. I didn’t have a problem with this. Getting my vacuum connected to the wifi was a little frustrating, but everything else was easy to set up! He needed to map it once, and I haven’t had an issue since. The interface gets smarter every day.
My cats took a few days to get used to it. They HATE regular vacuums because they’re so loud. Alfred is pretty quiet! They didn’t like him because he would come towards them while they were eating lol (I probably shouldn’t have scheduled the clean so close to their feeding schedule!). They would run away and jump on the counters to stare in fear. Now they don’t bother with him and just stand there while Alfred bumps them.
Overall, this was the best purchase I have ever made. I tell everyone about my third cat, Alfred. This was worth every penny, and I will never buy a traditional vacuum again. The only thing I would suggest is making the app have more features like vacuum tracking (it doesn’t show you where it is). If you’re debating it, buy it!
My house is 124 years old and has lots of raised thresholds so this was my first concern. I have all heart pine floors with many area rugs so I wanted to make sure the transition was smooth between the two. This vacuum has exceeded my expectations. My floors remain clean and debris free and we are loving life! I have the app on my phone and choose which rooms I want vacuumed. It worked great while I had company at my house for week. I could kept the floor clean while and set it off early in the morning or when we went to bed and left me plenty of time for entertaining.
Now, If you think a robot vacuum will 100% replace a regular vacuum, I do not see that happening. I pull out one of my manual one to use at times (especially when I intend to mop) but what I empty is far less than I used to. Still, I highly recommend having this product in you life.
Setup: I was tentative from the start. But, I told it to start mapping and forgot about it. 15 minutes later I saw it on the base and assumed I never started it or it failed, so I opened the app and saw a highly detailed map of my house. I was amazed. It had mapped and returned to the base so quick I assume it didn't work. I used my phone and assigned room boundaries to the map, put a DO NOT GO zone over the basement stairs to be safe, and setup the app to auto vacuum at 6am on M/W/F.
Running: I have had only one time it needed intervention. It sucked a small cat toy into the roller and detected the strain on the motor and stopped, asked for help. It took about 60 seconds to open the roller, remove it, remove the toy, and put it back together. It resumed the process and finished. I have had it for months and that is the only time I have intervened.
Vacuum quality: Each time I empty the bin I am horrified at the amount of dust and cat hair that it is picking up. It is running 3x a week, and in one week it takes a kitten worth of hair off the hard wood, and enough dust to make you queasy looking at it. It is a powerful vacuum, it gets the entire house when it runs, and does a great job, but it is quiet enough to run without waking anyone up.
Pros: Setup, simple. Set and forget. Empty once a week or two or three. Almost no human intervention required. I don't prep for vacuuming, don't tidy up, don't do anything. It just works and works well. Lidar constantly updating the map, it rarely touches anything, so it doesn't scratch walls and furniture, it uses sensors and lidar to "see" the obstacles and work around them.
Cons: It takes a recharge to fully do the house. We work from home and I can't tell it the order to vacuum. So sometimes our offices are the last rooms, and by the time it runs, recharges and starts the second half I am already working and it wants to come vacuum my office. If I could set the order of room vacuuming it would be literally perfect. That is the ONLY con I can possibly think of. Seriously, it is THAT good. I don't know what the $1000+ models can do that this can't.
Let me first preface this by saying I had a huge bias against purchasing a robot vacuum. I honestly thought they were useless, unable to adequately clean the house, and would be built to be more of a remote control car than an actual cleaning device.
Well....Prime Day comes along, and this bad boy is on sale, and I figured I'd take a shot at it. I have a husky, and I spend most of my evenings sweeping the floor - CONSTANTLY. It would get so bad, especially during the summers where I'd just be exhausted from work, gym, and dinner that I would avoid sweeping until the next day or the day after. I eventually transitioned to using my vacuum, which helped a little, but I found myself going through the process of still sweeping, then vacuuming to pick up any missed particles of hair, fuzz, or dust.
So...I bought this guy, and omg it's been a godsend. I run this bad boy every three days, and my house is noticeably cleaner and smells better. I can literally relax and play with my dog while the robot is cruising around the house picking up everything!. I was impressed by the amount it picked up. As a result of the frequency, I find less and less hair/dirt/fuzz on the floor. Don't get me wrong, I still use my broom and hand held vacuum, but that's usually on the weekends when I do a much deeper clean of the home. However, it takes less time because there is so much less mess on the floor. I still speculate that the robot isn't 100%, but I guess neither am I. HAHAHA
Pros:
- Cleans my 900 sqft home in about 40 minutes. Able to pick up dust, fur, dirt, and crumbs from the floor with no issues. (haven't tried larger objects)
- The wheels are like hidden monster truck wheels and are independent of each other so that it can traverse over carpet and other slightly elevated areas.
- The app allows a full map of your house, as well as creating or sectioning off your home so that the if you want to vacuum specific areas (in my case the kitchen and game room where my husky usually sleeps or hangs out) it will clean the area and be done.
- The speed settings are pretty nifty too, and can be adjusted to get a much thorough cleaning.
Cons:
- This could be my fear, but due to the warning about liquids on the floor, I have to do a preclean to make sure there isn't spots of drool from my dog, or areas where I may have dropped water from washing dishes, etc. I also have to ensure that all the wires, and stuff on the floor are put away to make sure the robot doesn't get caught.
- The battery seems a little bit of a drain. One cleaning reduces the battery all the way to 60%, not sure if that's normal, but I figured since it's new, it'll be at maybe 80% or have a power save function.
- The collecting bin should come with some cleaning instruction, I want to make sure this bad boy stays with me for a long while, so I like to learn how to keep the seal that keeps the bin closed tight, remains in tact. It's made of like a soft sponge material, and feel it'll degrade after a few dumps (we'll see).
- After researching a few models, I wish this also had the swiffer pad attachment or something so that it could polish or mop the floor as well. I know it doesn't always pick up the super tiny dust bunnies, but that pad would be amazing
Overall, I give it a solid 90%. I've only had it for a little over a month, and I hope I have many years with this thing. If you haven't given a robot vacuum a try, I'd definitely recommend it....coming from someone that despised them.
I recently deep cleaned the house and I’m trying really hard to maintain it, so I decided to upgrade our robo vacuum. I got this on sale and it’s quickly become my new favorite thing! Here are my favorite things about it (in no particular order):
1) It works! I thoroughly vacuumed with our Dyson upright before I started using it, so I didn’t think it would have much to pick up (although we do have 3 pets, 2 little boys, and me who makes a mess in the kitchen). I just emptied it after a couple days out of curiosity and was amazed by the amount of stuff it has been picking up! The pictures are from when I emptied it after about 4 days. It makes me feel so much better about walking around.
2) On that note, my feet feel so much better! Between the cats tracking litter around, the kids dropping crumbs, and the dog tracking dirt and grass from outside, our floors were always full of different textures that were not fun to walk on. Now I just feel the floor!
3) I love the app and the map feature! After reading reviews (and the manual), I let it charge fully before running it the first time. It mapped my house perfectly in one go and I was able to immediately label the rooms. It’s really nice because if one room is a mess, I can still run it in other rooms.
4) The self emptying feature is awesome. I love that I don’t have to remember if I emptied it already before running it.
The only real issue is that it doesn’t seem to connect to Echo devices like it claims. Apparently I’m not the only one who has this issue. For me it’s not a deal breaker, but I understand how that could be an important feature for some, particularly those with certain disabilities. But for our ADHD family, it is a very welcome addition!
After working weeks of 12 hour days, 6 days a week, I decided I was sick of vacuuming; especially all the kitty litter dust my two fur babies left all over the carpet. I have two long-haired cats who I adore, but they shed and leave trails of kitty-litter all over my apartment. I hated stepping on it.
After living in this apartment for 5 years with two cats and a crappy vacuum, and my lazy self, I bought the Shark robot vacuum, hoping it could bring the carpets back from grossville.
One time, I brought home the Rug Doctor and hurt my back trying to rejuvenate these old carpets, and all I got in the end was an empty wallet and sciatica. Well, maybe I felt a little less germy for a bit.
This is going to sound like a late-night TV infomercial, but I cannot believe the difference the Shark robot vacuum has made on these old carpets in just two weeks! Literally, night and day difference. I now wonder if I’m actually allergic to my cats because I’m no longer sniffling, having runny eyes and sneezing like I used to.
The Shark has pulled so much cat hair and kitty litter dust from these carpets that it’s disgusting to think what I was living with before.
Now that I own a Shark robo-vacuum, I realize it wasn’t an item I just wanted, so I didn’t have to vacuum, or a new toy to amuse me and the cats, but a powerful tool I actually NEEDED in keeping my home clean and allergy-free.
Get one. I promise you will love it.
Mapping: A+
It mapped my entire house in one run and it created a very accurate map of my home.
Cleaning: A+
Does an amazing job on hardwood for pet hair. Also cleans our low Pyle carpet really well - sucked a ton of dust out of the carpet. Cleans way better than the previous vacuum we had.
App: B-
- The app is very simple to use and allows you to spot clean, whole house clean, etc. You can create separate rooms in the app and then clean rooms one at a time if desired.
- You can create No-Go areas - I did this for the one place in our dining room where our dog sometimes has accidents. I wish you could make smaller no go zones, because right now I have to use half my dining room for my poop free no go zone, instead of just the corner of the room for a no go zone.
- The app does not show progress during a clean. Other brands have apps that track the movement of the vacuum and draw lines on the map as it cleans. This would be a great update, as the current functionality is sub par.
- You cannot remote control the vacuum from the app. Roborock vacuums can be remote controlled with the app - a really nice feature if you want to clean a very small spot.
Dust Bin: A
- The vacuum empty’s automatically into the dustbin. Only problem here is that the process is very loud and might wake light sleepers if scheduling night runs.
Navigation / Getting stuck: A+
- So far my vacuum has not gotten stuck, but I did have to move some cords off the floor for fear it woul.
Overall for $299, this is a great vacuum. The app is a bit behind other competitors’ apps, but it works fine and gets the job done for now. The excellent cleaning and dust bin make up for anything the app is lacking. I do wish it could avoid dog poops, but there’s only one vacuum on the market that does that and it costs $999.
So now this thing is working better. You've got to let this thing charge like 100%. Let it map the house. Then it works pretty good. It got stuck a couple times on some obstacles but I'm not going to knock that. Once you vacuum proof AKA childproof your floor. It'll work fine. Every time it's done vacuuming it dumps itself which is The first time I've ever had a dumping vacuum. It is definitely nice not to bend over and pull that dust bin out all the time with dogs. All in all I'm pretty happy with it. I'm knocking off a star because this thing is clunky. Even brand new it sounds like it's breaking. It's got like a grinding crunching noise when the bar spins underneath the machine. You also can't zoom into maps and see little tracks where the unit has run. Other vacuums has little trails on where the unit went. This just tells you it did that room in general. It would be nice to see the exact route this thing took so I can see if I have to put a no-go zone somewhere. Make sure you get it on sale and it's worth the money. End of story unless it breaks and I'll report back.
Update:
Let it charge over 50% before you use it. When I set it up the app kind of let me run it right away and instead of mapping the house it just started cleaning. I put it back on the charger and let it go to 100%. It seems to charge very very slow compared to my last one.
Once it was 100% charged it did map the house in about 15 mins and then it dumped itself and I set it off to clean. Seems to work pretty good over all. Lots of dog hair and dirt in the hopper. I will report back after a few weeks. So far I am happier than I was when I first got it so we will see.
I think it's important to log your first impression so here we go. It was well packaged I was pleased to see that. It takes up a good bit of space in your house so find a nice piece of wall. It had 30% charge when I set it up and for some reason it wanted to get started mapping my house so I let it. I'm coming off of a wyze vacuum cleaner. I had bought it twice from Amazon and I like it but some reason after a year the suction just seems to die down and no matter how much air I blow through it it doesn't seem to clean it out. Thus this replacement. My first thoughts is it's like watching Grandpa walk around when he's lost at home. The thing bumps into everything with no hope of actually having a plan. It still mapping my house so I'm going to give it the benefit of the doubt. Right now I'm not so impressed with the suction. I don't know if it slow suction down while it maps the house or what. It might be a little early to leave a review but I think it's important again to explain this in detail. Right now I've got a lot of doubt but will give it a couple days and I'll report back. One thing I really don't like is right now when I press dock it went the complete wrong way and decided to not dock. I liked the Waze vacuum cleaner because it went right to its home and knew everything was. I hope this works out better than my first impression.
This vaccum sports state of the art 360° LiDAR vision. This makes the vaccum easily navigate your home with almost zero hassle. With this vaccum, you will be able to fully map your house where the vaccum has access to. Connect the vaccum to the SharkClean app on Android or IOS, and activate the "Explore" mode. This mode will retrieve an almost completely accurate reading of the floor your vaccum is on, enabling you to later have the capability to select 1 room at a time!
This vaccum also offers a "Matrix" mode. This option provides grid-like coverage to the area being cleaned! I tested this lastnight and it worked beautifully.
There seems to be no lack of suction when it comes to this vaccum! So far, it had exceeded expectations. I went to clean the dust bin on my vaccum station and the Shark itself this morning, when I noticed the vaccum's dust bin had a grape tomato in it. That to me, shows this vaccum is more than capable of competing with other products.
The only thing I wish this vaccum features was an on the go mapping update. While cleaning, this vaccum will not update the saved map to the device's profile. With this being said, if the map needs to be updated, you must delete the current version, and re-explore your house. However, the time to map a roughly 800sqft apartment is approximately 30 minutes. It is very reasonable.
If you are on the fence about purchasing this product, make the jump! It will be worth every penny!
[This is not a paid promotion/review of this product. This is a personal review of my purchase on this product.]
The vacuum goes under tables and chairs and beds easily, but not under my couch and chairs and ottoman or dressers that have a lower profile.
I don’t have problems so far. I’ve had to replace a brush after it got caught on a rug, which was simple, and I’ve had to clear the brush roller a couple times. All was easy to accomplish. I’ve used the matrix clean room cleaner and the no-go zone feature. Both worked well. (You need the app for these functions)
If you accidentally kick your vacuum or it gets knocked off the base, it will return on its on. You can easily use your vacuum without the app, there are controls for cleaning and docking on the top of the vacuum. The app helps you program daily vacuum or a certain time. That is convenient for me. The only thing that could be a problem is where you locate the vacuum. There should be 5 feet of clearance on both sides and the front for the vacuum to have space to realign with the base.
When I bought this it was not reviewed yet, and in spite of my hesitation, I do not regret my purchase. I paid just under $400 for my vacuum and I highly recommend this product.
The AI features work great. It did a pretty good job of mapping the rooms. It doesn't get stuck too frequently, and basically when I start it, I don't have to worry about it. Because it is an AI vacuum and learns your rooms, you are basically restricted to having it on one floor. You can't move it to another floor; you'd have to get another unit for multiple floors.
The big thing is that you do have to leave the lights on for the vacuum to see where it's going. I made that mistake a few times, and the vacuum got stuck when the lights were off.
I had thought about letting the vacuum run while I'm on vacation, and while I think running it while I'm not home for the day would be fine, I don't think I'll run it while away just in case it gets stuck (and because not all of the lights down there can be turned on remotely).
The noise level isn't too bad. I work from home, and if it's running when it's not in my office, I can barely hear it, and it's no problem to be on a call. If I'm just working, the noise level doesn't bother me for the five or so minutes it comes into my office to vacuum, but I do pause it if I'm on a call.
So far, I've had it for about a month, and I haven't had to do a thorough manual vacuuming. I have gone through with a cordless vacuum to do the steps and touch up spots where it can't reach. Between using this and bug repellers, we also only spot the occasional spider down there; nowhere near the amount of bugs we were getting before.
The first thing you do is plug it in to finish charging up the battery. I didn't use it until the next day. In the meantime, download the app and connect the vacuum to the internet. This was the most difficult part for me. It kept saying to reboot the modem, reboot the vacuum, reboot... But after several times, it finally did connect to the wifi, so be patient. The app itself is user friendly. I played around with it just to figure it all out. (And you get to name your vacuum as this point.) The next day, I let Jaws map the house. He was fun to watch as he went from room to room, turning, stopping and going, spinning and looking around. After he finished mapping, he went back to the dock. This is when you label the rooms and make no-go zones in the app. Just a tip about no-go zones. Pinch the map to make the area larger so you can clearly see exactly where you want to put the no-go zone--otherwise it's too small to see where you want it. Once you are satisfied with that, you can send him out to clean a single room, multiple rooms or the entire house. And you can choose the power level of cleaning. In settings, there are a few other choices like do not disturb, recharge and resume, evacuate and resume, etc. I sent Jaws out to clean a room at a time just so I could see where he went, what he cleaned and if he missed any areas. When that was all done, I realized that I had to remap the house again. This is a minor flaw with the app. You have to map the entire house and can't map one room at a time. There were some areas that he missed but I think it was more my fault than his. In the app, trying to distinguish exactly where one room ends and another begins is not exact. Instead of labeling every single room, for instance, I made my master bedroom with adjoining bathroom and adjoining walk-in closet as one huge room. I did that also for the guest bedroom--the hallway and guest bathroom and the guest bedroom were mapped as one room. You will know what I mean once you are actually in the app and mapping and labeling your rooms. But if you want to, you can label every single room, large or small, especially if you think any of those rooms need a touch up more than others. By the way, after cleaning three fairly large rooms, the battery only went down to about 70%. The vacuum picks up surface dirt: crumbs, dust bunnies, cat fur and litter, etc., and some deep stuff. I still own a regular vacuum for very deep cleaning but now use it less often. Otherwise, I use Jaws every day. I am a senior citizen and don't want to spend my retirement thinking about dragging out the big vacuum. I love it. You learn after a few runs what you need to pick up or move out of the way beforehand. I found that out after Jaws went into the kitchen for the first time and attacked the cat food and water bowls. But you learn all this as you go along. I ended up making about five maps all together before I was totally satisfied knowing that most, if not all, of the rooms were getting cleaned. For some reason, it misses a very small 2'x2' corner in my bedroom. Doesn't want to go over there. It might have something to do with a no-go zone close by. Rather than make another map of the ENTIRE house, I am ok with the map that I ended up with. Other than that small area, he cleans the rest of the house to my satisfaction. Jaws spoke to me today and said to clean the filter. There was a clump of dust bunnies and cat fur blocking the poop door. Smart fellow. Almost forgot: I attempted to set it up with Alexa to use verbal commands but for some reason, it wouldn't work for me. I could have spent more time trying to figure it out but it's just as easy for me to use the app. Money well spent. I also purchased a two-year warranty so I'll end up with three years of protection. And I bought a kit of replacement parts, filters, etc. No regrets. Jaws and I have become good friends even if he wants to eat the cat food.
- General cleaning power
The Shark seems to be right up there with the Roomba. Suction power and brushing is very similar (even though the Shark has only one brush to the Roombas two), with the Shark having a minor edge in suction power.
- Mapping
The Shark seemed to map my house much faster than the Roomba. It apparently uses its lidar to do so, while the older Roomba had to physically travel over the floor area to include it in the map. The Shark map appears a bit more accurate than the Roomba's.
- Cleaning style
The Shark, like the Roomba, cleans in neat parallel rows, and they both do it well. But the Shark has the advantage of Matrix Cleaning, which covers the area twice - in two directions - and that's a great option. And I also like the spot cleaning option, as well as the ability to set keep-away zones with the Shark.
- Flexibility
Both machines allow the user to direct them to clean certain specified rooms via their apps, and both do it well. The Shark seems to go to rooms faster, while the Roomba has to think about it a lot before proceeding. Both apps are intuitive and work well.
- Noise levels
Sound levels are about the same to my ears, although they sound different. The Roomba has a sucking whine, while the Shark has a slightly rattling sound.
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Some negatives for the Shark:
Maintenance - The Shark uses a bagless sytem, whereas my Roomba uses a tidy throwaway bag. While bagless may seem like an advantage, it requires you to clean the dust collection container instead of just pulling out the bag and tossing it. The bag also serves as a filter, meaning that the Shark has to have multiple internal filters (3 in fact), which have to be periodically cleaned or replaced.
Object Avoidance -While it doesn't bang into walls and objects as much as some vacs, it can be too cautious and stop 3-4" from baseboards, leaving an uncleaned zone along walls. Looks like I'll have to pull out the old upright vac every so often and vacuum the perimeters.
Profile - Its lidar module on top extends higher than on many vacs, making it tend to get stuck on low clearance furniture. It makes a very good effort to avoid these situations, though, so it's not a major issue.
Dock - While it's a lower-profile dock than some vacs, it's also wider, so it takes up more wall area. Leaving the recommended amount of free space on either side is hard to do, so placement might be challenging.
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All in all, this Shark self-emptying smart vac is a great tool. At full price it might seem a little pricey, but it's on sale from time to time, and might be worth waiting for a good price. In today's smart vac world it's a solid contender, and it earns all 5 stars from me in spite of some minor shortcomings.
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*Update* - I've used the Shark for a month now, and I'm very happy with it. It seems to avoid getting stuck better than all my other vacs, and it has no trouble finding its dock and docking itself like some vacs. I can send it to rooms clear across the house and it just obediently goes there and does its job, then comes back.
Matrix clean is awesome. Cleaning our carpet in one direction and then coming back in the other direction is genius. What it doesn't get going north-south it gets in the east-west direction. It doesn't seem to allow me to select more than one room at a time for matrix, but I can deal with that.
I've been a Roomba fan for years, but this Shark is changing my mind!
We did not have any trouble with mapping like some others did. We read a few reviews on here and turned on every light in the house and picked up toys before it mapped and that worked perfectly. We only had to do it 1 time. The app is helpful to see and set your rooms after mapping. We also have it synced to our Google Home app. I’m amazed at how persistent our little shark is at getting under cabinets and around end tables. We love the matrix feature for our floors. It was pretty impressive to watch it ultimately make the grid pattern. My best advice is just to let it go - don’t move it or reposition it while it’s sweeping. Trust the process and it’ll get smarter each time. You’ll end up with perfect straight lines. Pretty impressive.
The battery has good charge for our home. We have it sweeping about 1,600 square feet of our main floor and no need for it to recharge in the middle. It emptied about 2 times, but it goes right back to where it was sweeping afterward like a good little worker. It goes from carpet, to rug, to wood floor seamlessly. It’s quiet and not disruptive. The empty sounds like a bit of a jet, but it’s brief. You do need to have a 3 ft area around the front of your base so it can back itself in and turn around, but it’s not an eye sore. And honestly, this thing is so helpful that I don’t even care. My husband and I watch in amazement. We said it’s like getting a color TV for the first time - we want to have all our friends and family over to watch and share the excitement!
I chose a spot for the dock that doesn't really comply with the instructions but it hasn't affected the operation in the least. It is under a side table in a bedroom. Works very well from there.
I used the app to map my apartment, which it did very well. I closed the doors to rooms i didn't want it to go - either because i just want them cleaned more thoroughly by our cleaning service or i thought it might get stuck on the rugs. It handles rugs pretty well, though.
Minor complaint that others have mentioned: it doesn't take the same route each time. And it goes over the same areas more than once.
The first time it ran, it got itself stuck under a low riser dresser so i now put a stool in front of the dresser to prevent that.
I think the app is pretty slick and easy to use. You can set it to vacuum every day or any odd assortment of days. Ours runs twice a week to be sure the cat hair gets cleaned out.
First run complaint: since it was vacuuming under beds, it was probably going places that had not been vacuumed in a long time. So that first time, it filled the bin with cat hair and just stopped in mid run. I had to take it back to the dock but even then it couldn't off load the hair. It was too full and compacted so i had to remove the bin from the robot and clean it by hand. That hasn't happened again though. Just be aware if you have any areas like that.
The app lets you do the whole house, just one room, or a selected 5 ft square space. In the app, choosing Spot, it puts a square in the middle of the screen with the house map over laid. You choose the spot by moving the map under the square until it is over the area you want cleaned. It's not intuitive, but once you see it, you know how it works.
I read many of the older reviews that mentioned a magnetic strip to keep it from going certain places like off a step. I was wondering where those strips were because mine did not come with any. I almost returned it before the first run because i do have a sunken room and was concerned about it going off the step but it ran right up to the edge, stopped, and then ran along the entire width without a problem. Pretty impressive.
It will obviously have trouble negotiating table and chair legs so if you want those areas cleaned you will need to move the chairs.
It would also be nice to know how to deal with the sunken area of our home. For now, i take it off the dock and carry it to that room before turning it on. It does the room completely and returns to the starting point where i again have to pick it up and return it to the dock. Then, i have to use the app or the button on top to tell it to return to the dock, which works ok. Im just concerned if this confuses the mapping of the rest of the house. I wish the instructions addressed this issue.
The self-cleaning brush roller isn't completely maintenance free, but I never expected it would be. The worst culprit isn't the cats, but my wife's hair. Fortunately it's extremely easy to pop the roller out and untangle the stuff, which I do about once per month. You can hear when it needs a cleaning.
The only thing I really wish for is a single-room learning update. No way I want to update the whole house again, but there are one or two small pockets where Buddy just doesn't go. I'd like to be able to update just that one room without having to re-learn the whole house.
But, I have to say, this is one of the most unexpectedly satisfying purchases I've made ever.
[original review]
I can't compare this robot vacuum to any others because it's my first. I will say that I didn't expect it to work as well as it does. We have two rag doll cats that put out an amazing amount of fur. It's either vacuum all the time or just put up with it between vacuuming. Not any more! Sure, it can't get everywhere the fur likes to go hide, but surprisingly, it does get most of it.
We have wood floors with area rugs. I was afraid it would choke on the thicker area rugs. They're a pain to do even with a regular vacuum, but it handles them like a champ! It's so refreshing to see the floors so tidy. I'm embarrassed at what we put up with before. Another nice thing is if I make a mess, such as in the kitchen, I no longer care. I just whip out the phone and order up a room cleaning.
Now for the big advice. Spend as much time as needed getting the initial exploration, map, and room creation process as perfect as possible. Move everything you can out of the way so it doesn't mistake something like a bathroom scale as part of the house geometry. After the first few tries, there were areas it just decided weren't part of the house because it couldn't get there when exploring. It simply wouldn't clean there even if not obstructed! Once I went through the house thoroughly and got everything I could out of the way, it made an excellent map. When you put things back, the map will remain but those things will just be seen as temporary obstacles. Seriously. It's worth the work.
My biggest ask for improvement would be single-room learning. After going to all this trouble getting a good map, I really don't want to re-learn the whole house if I, say, rearrange the furniture in one room. But for now that's not an issue. I initially took off a star for these initial shortcomings but have put it back up to five stars. Overall it's fine.
I can't say for sure, but I think it's getting smarter. For sure, it hugs the walls really well now, where it wasn't doing that before. The only downside is I can't say this thing is saving me any real time yet because I end up following it around the house just to watch. lol!
At the time of writing this review, I've had it for about a week. Before ordering this, I already had a super cheap robot vacuum that did not have a self-emptying base and wandered around aimlessly while cleaning. It didn't have a roller brush and was worthless on the carpet. I have a dog that sheds, and it's super hard to keep up on vacuuming with a busy day-to-day life. Needless to say, once I ordered this, I was very antsy to put it to use.
The setup was super easy, and I was impressed with how quickly and well it mapped my house after I had charged it up. I set up rooms and zones on the app once it had mapped my house and then started to put it to use. This robot vacuum immediately blew my mind!! The LiDAR and other features are no joke with how well they work. It did great at picking up hair and other debris on the carpet, which was one of my top concerns prior to purchasing it. It covers every inch of the floor and is so efficient with its ability to go back and forth in straight lines. It cleans exceptionally on hardwood as well. The self-emptying base is priceless. Not having to empty the vacuum itself before every cleaning makes it so convenient. If you have pets, this vacuum is a must. Yes, you'll have to vacuum your carpet with a normal vacuum occasionally, but this robot will minimize that and keep your floor looking clean every day. It's such a time saver, and I look forward to getting home to clean floors daily.
This vacuum is so good that after using this for about a day, I ordered another one for my downstairs. There may be better robot vacuums out there, but the price you pay for what you get with this vacuum is extremely hard to beat. I can't recommend this vacuum enough.
⭐It has a very intuitive app that goes along with it. After it maps your house, the app displays a diagram of what exactly it managed to scan. Kinda scary how accurately this robot can see.
But its neat because after it scans the house, you can section off individual rooms and have the robot vacuum them individually through the app.
You can also set a 3'×3' area through the app whenever a small accident happens, which I never use since its easier and much quicker to just grab a broom. But people who are physically disadvantaged would definitely appreciate that feature.
⭐You can schedule times for the robot through the app. Ours turns on everyday after everyone goes to work. Takes about 6 hours to clean the entire house, stopping only for an hour to recharge before finishing for the day. Empties itself out at its charging station about 5 times before needing to recharge.
⭐Doesnt bother our pitbull or yorkie. It doesn't use an actual vacuum, it uses brushes to sweep things up, so the dogs dont really care much when they see this things in motion. They'll nibble on it when it sneaks up on them however.
⭐Has 3 modes you can activate through the app. The powerful mode has woken me up several times, a few of which I was irritated enough to get up and press the home button. But the eco mode is easy enough to sleep through. Can't really tell if the power mode is any different than the eco mode in terms of cleaning power.
🤷♂️It speaks several languages, which can be changed using the app. Which isnt really practical in anyway because it only speaks when you give a command through the app or when it gets stuck.
⭐Notifies your phone when it has a problem. So when you're at work it will let you know when it sucks on a shower mat.
❌Its a hit or miss with rugs. With heavier and flat rugs its fine, but expect an occasional hiccup with rugs that are thin, fuzzy, decorative, or just dont stick to the ground well.
⭐It has about a 1.5" clearance from the ground. If you have any transitioning trim in between rooms then you dont have to worry about the robot struggling to climb over.
❌ Recharge station is loud when the robot goes to empty out, you can hear it from several rooms over. Probably wont be a problem for most people, however for graveyard shift workers it might be annoying if you set it up nearby where you sleep.
❌I recommend buying a spare parts kit as along with your Shark. It doesnt come with enough.
⭐ Maintenance and part replacement is easy. No tools needed to remove panels, replace brushes and filters. All panels are marked and give instructions on how to open them. You can easily clean out the robot and replace filters/brushes in less than a minute. Emptying out the recharge station is easy too, although hopefully you're okay with using your hand to do that part.
❓As for frequency of maintenance, Ive untangled enough hairs to say that it happens quite a bit. However, its never really a hassle, takes only a few minutes at most. Mysteriously lost a few brushes as well, probably got sucked up by the robot. Im the type to enjoy it though.
🤷♂️ This robot doesnt totally clean perfectly, however it does enough to make you realize that you havent swept in weeks.
Its pretty much like having a pet that pays for itself, by giving you minutes of your life back that you otherwise would be sweeping. We called ours Wonton, and he earned his place in our house. Hardest working roommate we got.
First, there are few directions within the app. Thus I had to search through the various menus and randomly press buttons in an effort to find something. Then on several occasions I found the item I wanted to find wouldn't show up at all until the robot completed it's first full cleaning. It's a learning curve I know, but they could have helped a lot more than they did.
Then after the robot completed the first cleaning, magically, a map of the house appeared and once I got the image turned rightside up, it was simple to name the rooms. But herein lies a small issue. The app provides a list of room labels to choose from, but there appears to be no provision for customizing names. Hence, my wife's sewing room became the "Playroom."
I knew there was a place to set the robot's suction power (Eco, Normal, Max) and after 20 minutes of re-searching, I found it. However the setting appears to apply to all the rooms to be cleaned. This is fine if you have all carpet or all smooth surfaces. Most of our floors are smooth but the master bedroom is a rather deep pile carpet.
The app allows you to name each room and send the robot off to clean all, several, or just one. This is nice. But having that capability without the ability to set the suction level for each room separately seems rather brain-dead!
That's my compaints so far. Lets move on to the more positive aspects of the robot.
I mentioned, the fairly deep pile carpet in the bedroom. The robot handled it with aplomb. There was a noticeable change in speed and ease of operation but it pushed through without a whimper. I had it on normal power and would prefer "Max," but will try that later.
The map it produced was remarkably good for a single cleaning run and I could easily determine which room was which, once I got it rightside up.
" a single cleaning run" could be misleading. Two full charges were needed to complete the cleaning. The app does provide a decent report of the robots activity. It started cleaning at 9:56 am, then briefly docked 30 min. later (orientation ??) and resumed cleaning after emptying its dust bin. The battery ran low (about 30%) after 83 minutes of cleaning time. 3 hr. and 15 min. were required for the battery to recharge. It then cleaned (with an intermediate docking) for nearly 2 hours where it died in our bathroom with 5% charge showing in the app. We carried it back to the docking station where it exhausted the debris and began recharging. 6.5 hours were required from staart to finish. This isn't good, or bad, It;s just information for you.
The app says 2276 sq ft were cleaned. This is about twice too much. About 1350 sq ft (gross outside dimensions) were available, but that includes closets, furniture, bathtubs, etc that block the robot. I did notice that it systematically recleaned numerous areas on the second charge, So I don't think their numbers are wrong, just duplicated.
Its ability to navigate appears to be excellent. It does travel in long, precisely straight lines when it can. Though it seems to turn around at about 20 ', regardless. When it approaches a wall or furniture, it will slow and gently tap the barrier, or turn just before reaching the item. It typically turns corners around furniture efficiently, though there is sometimes a bit of wasted spinning around.
Except for the time where it ran out of juice, it effortlessly relocated the dock to recharge and empty the onboard dust bin.
We have a pet cat with 2" fur, very fine fur, that sheds constantly. There is no reason that cat isn't totally bald! The roller brush and side brushes seemed to handle it well. Both were relatively free of her fur. I know I will have to clean the axels and the roller every few weeks but it should be tolerable.
If I think of it, I'll add to this review at a later date.
So here is an update. It's now April 21, 2023 and I'm still very pleased with the machine. It seems to do a good job on our hard surfaced floors as it seldom misses visible debris. The degree of cleaning on our carpets is harder to know, but the dust bin always contains an abundance of cat hair. Speaking of cat hair, the roller NEVER clogs with cat hair. However, the axles on the roller do collect hair. I have to clean them every 2-3 weeks as the machine stops and says "my roller is clogged." That said, the roller axles are very easy to clean. No tools are needed since the roller cover just snaps in and out and the roller then lifts out nicely exposing the axles and housings. Though a small pick is needed to clean one end of the axle.
The shark never gets caught in a corner or tight spot when there is a path out. Our Neato used to get caught frequently for no good reason. The shark has gotten caught a few times on cords, shoe laces etc, and twice has run up on the track of our patio door and gotten stuck but it is vastly better at returning to the base station than our Neato.
I have the "Extended Clean" option turned on which tells the Shark to continue cleaning until it needs charging. Lately it has run out of power a few times and had to be manually returned to the base station . I will try it with extended clean "Off." This may cause it to take longer to clean the house but may increase reliability.
The attached photo illustrates the depth of pile in our carpet as well as the manner in which it cleans. The shark is quite systematic when cleaning but it does sometimes cover some areas twice.
We have some open grates on our floor and the Shark traverses them without issue. The Neato would stop on them and discontinue cleaning so we had to use the magnetic strips (supplied) to avoid this issue. The shark recognizes the magnetic strips, but they aren't needed for the grates.
I empty the dust bin on the base station probably once every 3 weeks which works fine. That's all for now.
Here's another update,. It is now January 10, 2024 and the Shark has 11 months under it's belt. It started doing weird things/errors after about 6 months so I replaced the battery which was needed with our Neato and it took care of our problem. It continues to perform well until it picks up a small rock or pea sized chunk of dog food, which happens frequently now that we were forced to change our little dog's food for medical reasons. The shark does pick up these items but they fail to exhaust into the dustbin and lodge either in the throat of the dustbin or get stuck in the spring loaded door on the Shark. When that happens an error occurs and the shark ceases operation. This issue is simple to fix. However the most annoying thing is after clearing the blockage, the Shark doesn't pickup where it left off. I have to select the rooms that were missed (very nice capability by the way) and tell it to start cleaning again.
May 14, 2024
The shark, as near as I can tell continues to function normally. However, the dustbin's failure to empty and subsequent error messages that prevent the unit from continuing to clean has finally pushed me over the edge. It is rare that the entire set of rooms get vacuumed. Most days I have to restart the machine at least once during the cleaning cycle and then it "forgets" where to restart. The bottom line is it's too frustrating to use now and it's going in the trash.
The Shark vacuum cleans well, is quieter than the i3 was, seems to map the house better, and the self-emptying base is truly amazing. We have four indoor cats and two dogs, so the hair situation is intense. This one has a self-cleaning brush (we have a regular Shark vacuum with one that we've had for years now and it has survived the hair well) which was a selling point because I had to clean the rollers in our i3, mid clean, everytime, in order to keep it at optimal performance. I clean the brushes on this one about every other run (I also run it daily) and it seems to manage the hair better than the i3 did.
I also had issues with the i3 not cleaning up the cat litter near the litter box as well as I wanted and this Shark does a phenomenal job of it! It even cleans over the top of the litter mat perfectly, which the i3 didn't. The Shark has two side brushes instead of one, which seems to help it collect debris better.
I only have two complaints on the Shark and they're relatively minor, in my opinion. 1- I wish the side brushes were longer, they don't seem to reach some of the areas along baseboards/under cabinets as well as I would like. I think slightly longer brushes would help with that. 2- The antenna, or whatever it is, on the top of the Shark makes it just slightly taller than the i3 was and, sadly, it doesn't fit under our couches.
Overall, we are really happy with the Shark so far. It has only been about 1.5 months, but I am loving not having to clean/empty this vacuum constantly and the fact that I can still watch TV while it is running! In the 1.5 months, running it almost everyday, i have only emptied the base once, and there was still room in it. I do prefer the app and mapping system on this compared to the i3 also. I would definitely recommend it.
ORIGINAL REVIEW: This is my first robot vacuum so I can’t really compare it against other models. We have had it for a few weeks now so I feel like I can give a proper review. I will update if my feelings change. We had been skeptical of robot vacuums for years but I wish we didn’t wait so long. This has been a game changer! Our house has multiple pets (dogs, cat, cockatiels) and we live in the country. To keep the floor clean, I needed to sweep at least once a day if not more. I also have a lot of furniture (obstacles) in relatively small rooms so I was concerned a robot vacuum would get lost, confused, or just not do a very good job. So far, this vacuum has gone above and beyond my expectations.
Let’s start with the cleaning power. We have low carpets, laminate flooring, and stone tile. The robot does a great job cleaning all floor types. We had an Oreck vacuum for the carpet and I think the shark does a better job picking up the pet hair and dust. There is also some minor elevation changes throughout the house (0.5-1 inch high in some entryways) and the robot actually climbs over these areas really well.
The app and the map: The app is relatively easy to use but I wish it would show you where the robot had actually been while cleaning on the map. The mapping is pretty accurate but I didn’t get it right until the second try. For our first mapping run, I thought it would be best to keep all things on the floor that would normally be there so the robot would be better at negotiating around things. This made a very confusing map and the robot had a hard time properly identifying rooms. You can name rooms during map editing but it is easier to do that if the borders actually make sense. Second round, I took all small/medium things (pet bowls, trash cans, etc) off the floor. Only furniture and large appliances were left on the floor. This was a much better map and even though there are usually these smaller things on the floor, the robot does a really good job tightly negotiating obstacles. Having said that, make sure you place the base in an open area because if anything gets in its way directly around the base, it will get confused and start circling things like table legs or get stuck in a loop somewhere near the base but never make it to the base. It tells you exactly how much open space around the base you need so take that seriously.
The self emptying base is awesome. In the first few runs, we had to rescue the robot from cords and larger things like marbles and legos that sometimes got stuck but now that it is on a daily schedule and we moved all cords, there haven’t been any issues. Maintenance is really easy and intuitive on this machine. I just wish it could suck up larger things like legos and coins.
Overall, I definitely think it was worth what we paid. My only complaints are that I wish the app showed the path of the robot on the map and that it could pick up larger things without those things getting stuck. Other than that, we are all very happy with it.
Our house is single story 1200 sq ft and here is our experience with the robot. It took a couple of days for the robot to learn our house....be patient with this little dude, he'll get it pretty fast and you can use the room settings to send him to any room he doesn't catch at first. I set the vacuum every morning to pick up the cat gravel in the laundry room and to freshen the kitchen. The cats are not afraid of this unit at all and they are terrified of the loud upright vacuum. He picks ups the crystal gravel tracked out of the box by the cats without any trouble.....our stick vacuum shoots the heavy gravel around the room....this robot picks it right up. We used ultra clean the first two days to get a deep clean....be sure to set the Evacuate and Resume and the Recharge and Resume features to On in the app....it took a recharge and two empties for the ultra clean setting doing the whole house the first day. We did find that hair was trapped in the wheel mechanism after 2 days of ultra clean and 1 day of regular clean ...the robot told us (yes it talks) to check under the unit.....and we had to remove hair from the wheel axle area.....so we will check this area every few days with daily use. We just let it do its thing during a clean...don't move it or touch it....it gets around everything on its own...hasn't gotten stuck at all....goes around cat toys, under our couch, and over floor register covers and thresholds. We do a quick check of the floors before we unleash the kraken....we have seen pictures in reviews of floors with all kinds of obstacles for the robot to have to move around (usually with poor reviews) ..can't imagine you would get a good result in that case but if your floors are picked up and there is a good path through every room you should be very happy with the work it does. We do not have three feet on either side for docking as recommended and were a little worried about that.....but docking has never been a problem....he has plenty of room in front to line up to the dock. A seriously great tool for any household!
The LIDAR makes all the difference.
No bumping into things because the laser sees things before it runs into them. Of course this vacuum is several iterations more advanced than my first Roomba, but WOW did this vacuum blow me away. It picked up things I never thought it would and was extremely thorough. THIS VACUUM HAS OCD. It took mere minutes to map out my main living area and was then ready to go. I went out to a restaurant and remotely sent it off to clean. Not only did it clean every square inch of my space, it made periodic trips to the dock to dump it's dirt and then went back out. In the pics attached you'll see what it picked up. Keep in mind I regularly vacuum 2-3x/week. It still found more...much much more! Also notice the vacuum lines on the carpet. That's how good this thing is. This is seriously one of the best purchases I've ever made on Amazon. A+++!!
Pros:
1) Intelligent mapping
2) Thorough and methodical cleaning
3) Smart enough to intelligently dock, empty and go back out for more
4) If it runs short of juice, will go back to the dock, charge and then go back out and resume where it left off
5) Easy to use app that lets you divide the floor up into rooms and zones
6) Did not fall down the stairs
7) Spot cleaning, select room cleaning and high traffic zone options
8) Customizable No Go and High Traffic Zones mapping
Cons:
1) No support as of yet for scheduling of specific rooms. Specific rooms can be cleaned individually, but it's a manual process in which you have to tell it to go do those zones. Support said this may come out in a future firmware update 🤞. Seems completely do-able since it can be manually told to go do a specific room.
2) Also, no way to schedule multiple times per day. Once per day only.
3) No ability to auto schedule specific high traffic zones only for cleaning. Again, you have to manually tell it to go do those zones.
My specs in looking for a robovac: Pet hair was a must item it can tackle, and hardwood floors with rugs, also an affordable price point…
After 4days, I will say GAME CHANGER. I love I can run it in different areas and rooms, and make certain rooms/spaces “ultra cleaned” — one of my other favourite things is that it goes under my bed and reaches, dust and pet hair I can’t reach with my Dyson stick vac and swiffer (picture attached of hair from first run in our bedroom).
Things to consider and note:
• You need to pick up anything you have like cords, toys, shoes etc. before running it to maximise its clean - my dogs love pulling toys out and normally have 5-10 across the lounge/entry way.
• it is kind of louder than I expected, but so is the normal vacuum, and vacuums have noise regardless and tbh, I’ll take it if I’m not the one doing the cleaning…
• I chose this model and brand due to the hair roller thing that spins, because of my long hair dogs and own hair — i like you can remove the roller and clean if needed (robovac got in a pile of pillow stuffing my dog ripped up) and it’s easy to unclog or unwrap hair.
• Battery life is actually really good
• It maneuvers really well on rugs, around objects. Couldn’t deal with something bonking into every item to get where it needs to go. It also climbs up on higher pile mats and my tiled fire place.
• it’s sensor does well to return to dock and avoid things like the dogs or items like bags that may be in the way.
• self empty bin, it does not require bags and holds a decent amount - I choose to empty daily due to dog hair - also, it has a filter too so similar to the dyson self empty.
• you do need a space in your house with nothing 3ft either side of the unit or 5ft in front of its base/home — I have an older and more intimately spaced duplex so this was kinda a struggle where the outlets are located but I made it work.
• the app, I wish you could see where it is at in its clean (tells you an eta for time to clean rooms or house) but cannot say what % it’s at of the clean — maybe they’ll make this upgrade this in the future.
This is my first week and I’ll update this review if it doesn’t live up to my expectations. But overall, for the price point (scored during Black Friday at $299 pre tax) and it’s easy usage, functional settings and smart (enough) capabilities I’m happy. I also dig that it is white/silver, not a massive fan of having a black unit in my walk way. It’s cute and works great! Definitely recommend.
Also, I read reviews and blogs to research best options… please consider your own personal expectation of these appliances. If you’re looking for a deep cleaner, hire a cleaner. If you don’t want to vacuum all the time like me, I hate the feeling of sand and dirt under my feet — this is the gadget for you!
Value-for-money: This has been a good deal during Black Friday sale.
Cleaning - Overall: It's very thorough. After the first run, we could hardly find anything manually to take off the floor (vinyl flooring).
Cleaning - Carpet: Love the suction power. We immediately felt the cleanliness.
Cleaning - Targeted: Navigation of the Robot is not great yet.
Mapping - Needs improvement in terms of mapping and boundary recognition. Although, feature-wise it has room creation and no-go zone creation. I'm expecting the mapping should improve - although it seems the map is deleted every time I send it to re-explore.
Customer support - Needs improvement. The representative just took me through what's written in the manual.
Technical support - Horrible. I never got that call-back from them.
App (android) - Needs a lot of improvement. The model for AV2511AE is not listed. Even 2500 is not listed. Choose the 2000 series for Spark AI.
App (iPhone) - Extremely smooth.
>> Troubleshooting help to set up if you're using an Android App
1] Wi-Fi : this one works only with 2.4 GHz bandwidth.
2] If you have a dual-router, log into it (198.168.1.254)> Advanced Setting> Wi-fi or the screen that shows you the networks.
3] Usually both the 5 GHz and 2.4GHz are named same.
4] You can just change the name for the 5 GHz by appending something like '-5' at the end. All your 2.4 GHz devices will continue to work (or need a reboot). This way, you're separating out the 2.4 GHz network from 5 GHz.
4a] You can also do that by creating a Guest network which is 2.4 GHz. But then you'll have to keep that on all the time. It's preferable to follow the approach of the previous step as you can have all your home devices (including security devices) connected to that network permanently.
5] Download Shark Clean app on your Android and create a login (email/ pwd)
6] Invite a friend who has an iPhone. Connect the iPhone to the 2.4 GHz network at your home network. Download Shark Clean app. Log-in using the same email/pwd used in the previous step. Add the Robot by following the steps.
7] Now the robot will be available in your account, even when accessed through the android app. So, you're good.
More on the usage experiences to come once I use it some more times.
So, I decided that this was one way that we might have one less chore to be concerned about. We live in a single story log cabin with wood and vinyl flooring and a couple of area rugs. So, I think we're probably the ideal target for a robot vac. I did some research online and decided on the Shark IQ for several reasons: 1) It was self-emptying. When it fills up, it returns to the dock and empties itself.; 2) The dock was easy and not messy to empty (at least according to the reviews I read); and , 3) It has a mapping feature and ability to schedule as needed. So, we went ahead and ordered one.
When it arrived, it was easy to set up and the first time it did the job, I was a little concerned with the erratic path it took. It seemed to jump from one area to another but eventually went back and covered the area that it missed. I noticed that the map it created didn't seem complete, but the instructions said to allow time and as it did its job multiple times, the map would improve. So, I let it go for the first week and just scheduling it every other day. Well, sure enough, after a few days of use, the map did improve and I used the app on my Android phone to identify the areas (all you can do is draw boxes ... so, I basically divided it into four sections: Living Room, Kitchen (including our open Dining Room/Kitchen/Mud Room, Master Bedroom and Office.
The map allows you to specify cleaning any room when needed and it works great because I don't want my office cleaned when I'm working and on conference calls, etc.
I guess the Shark IQ (we named it Sharky), passed the test when my wife was satisfied and remarked that, when she's looking at the sun coming in across the hardwood floors, she doesn't see any dog hair (a major issue we have with Rocket, our Jack Russell Terrier.
The Shark IQ has 3 settings (Economy, Normal and Ultraclean). It was set by default on Normal and that has been fine for our needs. It maneuvers around just fine and hasn't gotten stuck anywhere and is smart enough to return to the dock to recharge when it senses it is getting low on battery. Once recharged, it will then pick up where it left off.
To say we are satisfied would be an understatement. We're kicking ourselves for not buying one sooner. Highly recommend the Shark IQ!
I would give this a five-star review purely on the basis that in two months of running it daily, I haven't had to flip it over and de-hair the rotating brush ONCE. This one feels more like it was designed to handle medium-length dog hair than any other "pet-friendly" vacuum I've owned in my LIFE.
PROS:
Never have to empty the vacuum itself, and the canister is very easy to pop out and empty. It's also tall enough and the release is up high enough that I don't have to kneel on the ground to do so, which is nice for my knees.
No clawing tangled dog hair, string, etc. out of the brushes, which is monumental.
Does a good job getting under furniture and into corners, which really minimizes the dog hair tumbleweed effect.
The app was easy to set up and schedule, and gives control over when it runs, what mode it uses, and how often it empties.
It can run for a good amount of time depending on the cleaning mode.
CONS:
It's pretty loud when it empties, and I haven't figured out if there's a way to turn off its little singing noises that let you know when it's heading back to the dock, etc.
In theory you can tell it which room to clean but it's a toss-up whether it actually goes there.
You may have to re-map your house frequently - it got real confused when I moved the couch, for instance.
The dogs are extremely offended by it (but that's true of every vacuum cleaner in existence).
VERDICT:
I hate to say "great value for the price," because that sounds like an insult, but this is about as good as it gets unless you're willing to spend several hundred more dollars on a high-end model.
We started years ago with a Deebot that was such a pain we threw it out. The last 2 years we’ve had an Eufy 11S that ran 1-2 times a day and we really liked it. We decided to move the Eufy to the basement and get something self emptying and easy to schedule because I now travel for work.
The shark was extremely easy to setup. It’s first run was impressive, no ping ponging around the house randomly, it worked methodically back and forth in rows. It seems to get smarter every day and the map was pretty complete after just a couple of runs. I like that I can see exactly where it ran in the app as well.
I did empty the base after The first run just out of curiosity. I emptied it again today so the picture here is from 4 days.
The picture of the bottom is today after 5 runs. I haven’t touched it. Our deebot and Eufy had to be cleaned after every run, usually with scissors to get the hair off the roller.
I have 4 dogs. One is a mastiff who sheds a massive amount and another is a mutt who also sheds a lot of undercoat. We have 3 acres and the dogs are in/out all day long tracking dirt in.
I used to run the Eufy twice a day but had to start it manually (I gave up on trying to use their app). Now that I travel for work I would get home on the weekend and find my husband and daughter forgot to run it most days. Now I can come home knowing it’s clean.
We have vinyl plank flooring. My office has an area rug. We also have a few throw rugs. It has only gotten stuck once under our plant stand which is next to its base. I think the battery just ran out. The Eufy was always getting stuck on a rug, under the fridge or on something random.
I also can’t believe how quiet it is. I run it on the highest power and am able to be on conference calls. It even self emptied while on a call and I asked and no one heard it.
I’ve scheduled it for 7am and was pleasantly surprised how quiet it is. Didn’t even wake us up on Sunday when we wanted to sleep in.
There is only an option to schedule once a day though. I think if we have a really dirty day I could run manually in the afternoon or evening.
Our main floor is around 1300 sq ft. It seems to clean 770-950 each time which makes sense with furniture (and my daughters bedroom door is nearly always closed).
This is well worth the money and I’m so happy with it so far.
We are very pleased with robo/vac which takes 90 min. to clean our 1300 sq foot (one floor) condo with hard wood floors. It is especially fun watching it on the first couple of runs as it “figures” things out and maps the area.
While I had 5 ft in front of the home station, I only have 2 ft. on each side and that works just fine.
It is a good idea to go from room to room ahead of time and make sure the vac can access everywhere you want which may mean moving a few things, pulling up corner of bed spreads, remove problematic small rugs, sweep dust/dirt away from hard to access places, etc.
I don’t know why the instructions don’t tell you this: You can operate the robot vacuum initially to see if it is working OK without downloading the app by just using the buttons on top of it. Push the “clean” button on top and the vac will make it’s first run, so you can check to be sure it is functioning properly.
If the vac continues to clean longer than necessary, just push the “dock” button on top and it will stop what it is doing and return to the home station. Be sure to let it recharge completely after it returns to the home station.
The robot vac will not get everything on the first run. It takes 2-3 runs to get a more complete map of the rooms.
The app contains some useful features. For one thing, you can name the rooms on the map (Menu—>map—>Edit map—>+Add. Move the highlight by hand and size it to the room, then click on “label,” select appropriate name, and click on save.
Initially, the robot stopped exactly after one hour and returned to its home station before it has finished. I found that if I go to the app’s Menu—>settings—>your robot—>”Recharge and Resume is on,” which is a setting for places larger than 1800 sq ft. I had to turn “Recharge and Resume to off,” so that it would do the entire 1300 sq ft in one run before returning to its home base. Later after the vac finish, it went back to some rooms a second time. I found that in the settings, "Extended clean is on" so I turned it off. Again, these are features you find in the app.
The first time I connected the vac to Wifi, it went smoothly, but after a couple of weeks, it failed to reconnect. I tried all the instructions for reconnecting, but it failed to connect. I found that I had to delete the robot on the app and start over with instructions to connect to the app. That worked and the map was not deleted along with the vac.
To give you some context of the surface and space we are using this robot vacuum for, our house is laminate wood, we have 2 children and 2 dogs that shed. I run our robot vacuum at least once a day. I do make sure that all toys, clothes, and other items that could get sucked up and cause trouble are picked up before I run it.
For years we had a Debot robot vacumm. It was good and did the job but I frequently had free it from getting stuck under the edges of furniture, sucking up things that would cause an error, and I had to clean it often.
After it finally died, we bought the Shark. It was on some kind of really good sale and we got it for a little over $300. I was nervous because that was a lot more than our previous robot vacuum but it promised to do much more.
After having the Shark for a couple months and running it every day, I can tell you that it is WELL worth the money.
FEATURES I LIKE:
1. Run time:
love that this thing will clean for a solid 2 hours. The running time is far superior than the vacuum we had previously.
2. Doesn’t get stuck:
I have not had to rescue this robot a single time. It can get under our furniture just fine and it never gets caught under edges of things. It also can get over obstacles in a room. For example, if I forgot a dog or kid toy out, it can climb over things with no problem.
Brush Protection:
This vacuum does not allow for as many things to get sucked up and cause an error code. It has some protection over the brush to keep this from happening. I have had to get one child sock out but that was my fault. On my previous vacuum, I was having to get things out that were stuck ALL the time.
4. Self Emptying Feature:
The self emptying feature is awesome. The Shark will clean and empty itself if it gets full and then get right back to work. The vacuum on the home base seems very strong and does a good job of extracting the contents from the Shark itself. The Shark never has a problem with finding its home base. I used to have to empty our previous robot daily. Now I empty the main container from the home base every week or so.
5. It stays clean:
Our previous robot vacuum would accumulate dirt and hair in the crevices of the robot. On the Shark, I have not noticed this to be a problem. I was ALWAYS have to cut hair and remove dirt from little spots on the Debot.
All in all, I LOVE this robot vacuum. I would definitely not bat an eye at paying more than $300 for this thing. I cannot speak to the rest of time but it wouldn’t surprise me if this lasts a long time.
FACTS ABOUT MY USE
- I have three short-hair cats
- I have a 3 bedroom, 2 bathroom house with some spare rooms
- My house is "2 stories" with some other weird levels
- I have primarily carpet, but some tile, some laminate, and some sheet vinyl
QUIRKS/TIPS
- The errors don't always make sense. The "something stuck underneath me" error is the most common red herring. Look at the tutorials for cleaning the front wheel (you have to pry it out of the little case), and the main brush (it doesn't get super tangled with hair on the middle, but pet hair does get stuck at each end.
- The mapping feature really does just take a bunch of patience and not paying attention. Let it run several times and the map will eventually sort itself out. My bot vac still does some weird patterns on the floor... so I just imagine it's training for the bot-vac olympics floor routine and those unusual paths are worth bonus points.
- For me, a dense dusty buildup (gross, right?) started to accrue on the short bristles of the main roller so that then they didn't move like independent bristles. And then I noticed it wasn't as good at picking up pet hair. I combed that off of the bristles and it's unsurprisingly much better at picking up pet hair.
- It's pretty dang good at regular cleanup if you take care of it (I do a quick clear-out of the brushes and dust bin after each run, it's pretty darn easy), but it's not stellar at corners and edges especially if you vacuum as infrequently as I do/did. So I got my canister vacuum out and cleaned the edges and corners. No biggie!
MY COUPLE OF GRIPES
- My map randomly deleted itself one day? I was annoyed because I'd set up some very clever no-go zones that I was pleased with. The bot vac did, however, remember the automatic schedule. Go figure? This was frustrating but again... the bot vac cleans my floors twice a week. It's worth a weird map glitch to me.
- One of the latches that you pinch together to hold the dust bin in place is now kinda sticky and doesn't pop back into place. I wiggle it to get it to re-latch. Annoying but again... not the worst fate ever
NIFTY FACTS/FAVORITE THINGS
- You can have a map of the main floor you use this on (near the docking station) but you can ALSO then pick up the bot vac and take it to another floor or a room that you don't want cleaned on the regular and it'll clean that without forgetting the main map (see above for map-related oddities... unrelated to moving the bot vac). It just returns to where it starts and then sends you a sad message that it can't find the dock until you pick it up and take it back
- This isn't a feature of the vacuum so much as it a bonus side-effect of the automated schedule. I keep the floors in the main area much tidier now then I used to because I know the vacuum runs twice a week and I don't want to have to quickly dash over and pick stuff up so the vacuum has free reign
- THE BAGLESS COLLECTOR IS AWESOME. It is so nice not to have to deal with the consumable bags from my canister vacuum, and to not have to worry that it'll fill up if I don't empty it all the time!
I've had this now since early December 2020, cleans are scheduled twice a week, and once each week I carry the vacuum to the upstairs or the back room to run, so plenty of cycles, plenty of square feet, and so far so good!
I am SOOOOOOOOOO glad I finally got my bot vac and once I worked through some of the quirks, I am very happy with it!
So here we go...
Pros:
-it literally cleans about 95% of your floors. Hair is not a problem, tangling on the roller is not a problem, larger debris is generally not a problem (I had some things here and there get missed the first go around, but I mostly see that it has problems on carpets, which we have mostly hardwood floors so not a big deal).
-it mapped out our first floor, which is sizeable, in about 2 go cleanings. I was worried about this as a large amount of reviews stated that it took 30 or more cleanings to map their house out and it still didn't map it correctly. The one thing I noticed about these reviews is that they are mostly from from a year ago, so I'm assuming that there has been a software update since then to address this issue. It was super efficient at mapping.
- I see this as a pro, but some might not, is that it teaches you to adjust your cleanliness behaviors. You need to keep the floors free of obstacles (as much as possible) in order for this robot to do its job, which means moving your shoes, picking up toys, moving chairs, etc. It was good for my wife and i to adapt better habits anyway and this was a good way to Kickstart that for our household.
- if you have allergies, this thing picks up a ton of dust. Since we don't have a pet (yet) it mostly picks up some food, hair and dust on the floor. Man does it help. My allergies have been much better over the past 2 months.
- some people gave the app negative reviews, but I found it helpful overall. It is simple, easy and quick to make adjustments on.
-you really don't have to empty this but once a month. And, honestly, I could get away with maybe once every 2 months instead. Don't forget to do a monthly maintenance check and clean the filter, but this is a 5 minute routine once a month. Much easier than busting out the bulky vacuum all the time.
CONS
-speaking of the app, it needs a no go zone feature. The magnet strips, while great, don't effectively help in managing the bots path all the time. Make sure to tape it or use 3m sticky stuff to keep it on the floor otherwise your bot will try to suck it up and take it for a ride with it. The no go zone feature would be helpful for wire areas, furniture, or kid play areas. I hear it is supposed to come along sometime in the future, hopefully soon.
-carpet cleaning is a little bit of an issue. We have a giant area rug in our living room and it sometimes has issues with picking up stuff. Luckily, the bot does 2 or 3 sweeps, which most times gets the debris or fuzzies on our carpet, but not all the time. This is indicated on YouTube reviews that I watched before I purchased this, so I knew what to expect.
-it is slightly noisy and takes a while to clean. I advise to make the schedule while you are not home, because it can change your daily routine pattern. Generally, it takes about an hour and a half to clean our 600 square foot first floor. I keep it on normal mode, but there is a higher power suction mode that is louder. So get ready to turn the volume up on your TV. I did hear from a roomba user though that this bot is quieter, so I guess it's subjective.
-this is more if a personal gripe, it might not be a big deal for you, but I was hoping to have a meet the Jetsons vibe when I connected it to my alexa. I wanted to say "alexa, clean the kitchen" and it do just that. Unfortunately, it doesn't do different room commands, it just does its normal full routine. You can do this through the shark app, which is simple and easy enough. So designate room names and tell it to clean just that room. Still, if you have a kitchen mess and you want to use verbal commands through alexa skills to do something while you are continuing chores or cooking, it would be a nice touch if it did it. Oh well, that's just me.
Overall a great purchase. Currently, I got mine for roughly 315 and I am doing monthly payments with Amazon, which I love this feature of Amazon's payments. I pay it off in March in monthly installments of 64 bucks. It is worth the money compared to those roombas that cause double or triple the shark bot. I did a ton of research on different vacuums and this one is in the top 5 (as of right now). I highly recommend this to anyone with similar lay out as us (mostly hard wood floors with area rugs). I found the cons to be just nit picking at its performance, and overall it makes our life 80x easier. I give it a 4.5 out 5 for my personal home and I hope this review was helpful.
1 year update:
Dog hair: Still going strong and still highly recommend for those with mostly hard wood floors or linoleum. In fact, I recommended it to my mom and dad and now they have one and love it. We did finally get to test it with some serious dog hair. We had an Australian Shepard (which has super thick and clingy fur) and another dog that visited for several days. Both are extremely active and were all over our floors and our one carpet area. They left a ton of fur and it did take 3 or 4 cleanings to get up about 80% of the hair. Whatever was left over was bunched up on the carpet and was easily removable thanks to shark. Just be prepared to wait a few days for the fur to be cleaned up in the carpet. If it's hardwood then it is cleaned up instantly.
Hair and roller blade: I have not had any issues with the roller blades and hair tangling. I had to untangle some hair that rolled to the center twice. It is an easy fix. Take scissors and a quick snip and boom solved the problem. The big thing is that it doesn't hinder the cleaning ability of the vacuum.
Parts: I haven't had to replace any of the parts yet on it. Just keep up with monthly maintenance and it will hold up. Clean the filters and the dust cup monthly and it will run smoothly. The battery life is still the same too. No issues with battery degradation.
Errors and software stuff: so the errors are minor with this robot. It is the occasional bumper is stuck and that the dust cup needs to be emptied, which is nice if you forget to keep up with maintenance. The only issue I have with the software is that it used to be able to clean specific rooms when I originally got it, but now it doesn't allow me to do that at all. It's a bummer since sometimes I still stuff in the kitchen and I just want it to do that room, not an entire cleaning again. Also, and this is a small gripe, but I wish that I could have the robot automatically go to max suction mode every cleaning. Instead, I have to go to my shark app on my phone and change it from normal mode (which is its default cleaning mode) to max.
Overall, I would still say this is a 4.5 out of 5. Minor issues, but still totally worth it.
I have run it 6-7 times so far, and only once had to interrupt it due to getting in a precarious area of our den, but the map is getting more and more accurate. I have learned through other comments and reviews that it is best to turn OFF recharge and evacuate and resume modes while the bot is painting the map. This has helped a lot. I let it run about 45-60 minutes before having it head back to base, and have found this to be the best way to get a complete map. Once the map is completed, I will turn those modes back on.
We have 3 dogs, two of which shed a lot of hair, and were our primary reason for the purchase. I am very satisfied with the amount of hair that is collected. There was a little that was stuck within brushes, but I feel that is mostly due to to some areas we have neglected before that has some build up. That only happened initially, and has not been ongoing.
We were concerned with some other reviews about the noise level, but I have run in all three modes, and find the noise to be acceptable. Like many of us these days, I work from home and host many conference calls and have not found there to be any issue. Of course if the bot is running around your feet in max mode, you will have issues, but not in normal or eco modes. If this was a typical corded or cordless vacuum I doubt you could say the same.
Talking of comparison between a regular push-pull vacuum and the bot, you are not going to get the same suction, although I don’t know that any manufacturer is yet close to make that claim. However, I feel like the shark does it’s job and does it very well. It is picking up the hair, dust and dirt we hoped and expected it to. I am ready to purchase a mop equivalent to follow our bots footsteps. I know the Roomba has it already, but I have not searched for the Shark version yet.
Talking of Shark vs Roomba: We did extensive research online and found the comparison reviews to be very comparable in performance, quality and ease of use. Our main deal breaker was price, and that, above all made our decision. However, with that said, we have also been loyal to Shark over the many years as we have always been happy with their quality. But will also admit that we have yet to purchase a Roomba to compare it to. But feature for feature, we found the Shark to be half to price of the Roomba, and that speaks for itself.
Again, overall, we are very, very satisfied with this product upon initial use. Our only fault was not following provided instruction initially, but have learned from others user experience. We have a two story house, and now we know it works on one floor, we are ready to purchase another for the top floor. The ease of use and the time we save, and the areas the bot gets to above what we would get to with a push-pull vacuum, we feel like it is a great investment... With that said, I only hope I am not having to update this review in the next few weeks/months with any issues, but definitely, so far, so good!
Follow-Up Review -3 months later
The vacuum itself has earned 5 stars. I have used it almost every day in the past three months and it has been up to the challenge presented by three pets and two humans. The floors have never been so clean and the unit is much quieter than the previous iRoombas that we had. I will definitely buy another unit when this one wears out. However, that being said, we have found the Cleaning App to be useless.
Cleaning App- useless
For us, the cleaning App has been useless. We programmed our router to only have 2.4 GHZ WiFi into the house so we know that is not the problem. The ONLY way to have the unit communicate with the iPhone or iPad is to unplug and plug in the router, which causes a reboot. At that point, the unit and iPad communicate just fine for TWO RUNS and then communication is once again lost. What this means is that I must physically push the clean button on the unit and it will then proceed to clean the entire house. I have used the recommended metal tape for no-go zones. It cleans for 30 minutes, empties and resumes cleaning. After this cycle has repeated three times, it recharges and finishes cleaning the house. It would be nice to have the option of selective room cleaning and scheduling, but, without the App, that doesn't happen. Consulting the non-existent technical support is not an option. Hope this helps people in their decision about buying this product.
We bought this unit from Amazon on Dec. 24th, 2020 and it was delivered on Dec. 28th, 2020. In summary, a great product but with zero manufacturer support.
PROS:
• Unit is very quiet.
• Self-empty feature is great.
• Good You-Tube videos on set-up and use.
• Price is 1/3 to 1/ 2 of similar iRooma unit.
• Two ways to mark off no-go areas: lay down non-adhesive magnetic ribbon or program no-go areas through the Shark Clean App.
CONS:
• Horrible manufacturer customer service. (This is the Shark Customer Service, NOT that of Amazon, which is very good.)
• I was told Shark does not have any U.S. representatives. The people I did speak with were difficult to understand and simply read from scripts. After spending quite a bit of time taking down my information in order to register the unit, they said they were sorry, but due to technical difficulties at their end, they were unable to register the device.
• If you have any problems, don’t expect any help from Shark Customer Service. You are on your own!
• App is unstable. System keeps losing contact with network after a few days. None of the nine troubleshooting protocols listed on the app ever worked.
• The only solution that I figured out is to delete robot from app and start over as if it is a new robot. The problem with this strategy is that all of the maps, which took several cleaning trips to create, seem to be lost. For some reason, after the robot had cleaned the entire house, without a map, the old maps reappeared. The device seems to lose communication with the app after a few days. This has happened twice, now.
Overall Review: Such a promising product but clobbered by non-existent Sharp customer service. I am quite tech-savvy and actually told THEM about my work-around as it wasn’t listed on any of their protocols. I suspect the main issue is that the app and/or the device needs to be reprogrammed to accept 5 GHz Internet, which is quickly becoming the standard in many places. Right now, the app is restricted to 2.4 GHz. My Spectrum service says it can do both frequencies of 5 and 2.4 GHz, which may account for the app’s instability. You really do need the app to avail yourself of the great features like no-go zones and selective room cleaning. The Amazon representative did her best to rectify the situation, so no complaints with Amazon, but, unfortunately, the problem lies with Shark. I will post another review in two weeks to say whether we decide to keep the unit or not.
Roomba and Shark both have systems that can do all those things. We chose this Shark IQ system because there were lots of reviews saying they did a better job on hard floors and because the Shark vacuum is quite a bit less expensive.
We have no regrets. The Shark IQ is a great system for our needs. It will clean all six rooms on our main level and our two small hallways on a single charge, it efficiently navigates its way back to the self-empty charging base to empty its dustbin when it fills up, then returns to where it left off and finishes the job and returns to its base to empty again and recharge.
Alexa integration is pretty good, too. When my wife or I leave for a long walk or to run errands we ask Alexa to, "Tell Shark to start cleaning," then tell her, "Rosie Jetson" (the name we gave our Shark), when she asks, "Which robot?," and off Rosie goes. By the time we get back the vacuuming is done. Yay!
Some reviewers have claimed their Shark was not able to map out their home's floorplan. We didn't have that problem. After about a week of cleaning our home Rosie Jetson had mapped our floor plan. Once that was done I spent a few minutes outlining each of our rooms in the Shark Android app, gave the rooms names (kitchen, dining room, etc.), and that was it.
Once our floorplan was entered we could ask Alexa to, "Tell Shark to clean the kitchen." Then, after clinging to the left wall of our living and dining room and navigating around our dining room chair legs, Rosie makes it to the kitchen, vacuums, and returns to base. Job done. Awesome!
OK. Now it's time to tell you the sad stuff. Rosie was not our first Shark IQ robot. The first unit we received from Amazon was a refurbished unit, and it was defective. Our first Shark would not connect to our home WiFi, so it could not communicate with Alexa, my smartphone, or map out our floorplan. We called Shark for technical support and, after trying to troubleshoot our robot for 30 minutes, Shark Tech Support declared our original unit dead-on-arrival and sent us a brand-new replacement self-emptying Shark system. The replacement works like a charm and Shark's customer support was excellent.
There are also some things Rosie doesn't do well. She doesn't sweep nto and vaccume all the way into corners and other spaces she can't fit into including a cornet next to our sofa that has an end table with legs that are too close together for her, she gets tangled up in lamp and extension cords (more on that in a moment), we have a set of lightweight nesting occasional tables that she pushes around an inch or two each time she bumps into them,and my wife's tennis shoes, which live under our dresser, get re-arranged and pushed to the back against the wall when she vacuums.
I addressed the problem with lamp and extension cords by buying a cord protector/cover and will build a little wooden square of 1x2 furring strips to put under our dresser so my wife's shoes don't get pushed to the back. Simple fixes, but you should be aware that robot vacuums aren't smart enough (yet) to avoid these shortcomings.
So here's our bottom line: We're really happy with Rosie Jetson, our Shark IQ robot vacuum.
Pros:
* Does a great job of vacuuming our hardwood floors and the carpet mats at our two entries.
* Maps the floorplans and can be told to vacuum a specific room.
* Self empties its own dustbin into the charging base.
* Cleanings can be scheduled using the Shark app.
* Responds to voice commands to "start cleaning" via Alexa or Google Home.
Cons:
* Pushes lightweight things around sometimes.
* Cannot clean into corners or tight spaces, so you'll still need to vacuume manually now and them.
* Dirt doesn't just disappear. You have to empty the self-emptying base now and then. You also occasionally need to clean the floor brush, particularly if you have household members with long hair.
* Rosie Jetson, the Robot Maid from the Saturday Morning "Jetson" Cartoons I grew up with, could dust, too. Our Shark robot doesn't even try.
Maybe next year, Shark people?
We have a few friends with different brands and have watched them all. Most are at least a couple of years old or older. Most do not have the self empty dock. Most just run randomly around the house, miss spots,go over some other places multiple times and they don’t seem that efficient. Even most of the owners aren’t really impressed with their purchases.
Now comes the Shark IQ R1001AE. Oh and prime day!!
Bit the bullet and ordered one. I must say we are quite impressed!
Unboxing and setup is extremely easy. READ the directions and follow them and all goes well. Download app, set up dock and place the robot there. LET IT CHARGE to full THEN send it out for its maiden voyage. Ours hooked up the first time to WiFi and the interactive app is easy to setup and navigate. It has push notifications to alert you should it find that lost sock under the bed or dresser and suck it up. It allows you to send it to specific rooms should you choose or perform a total house cleaning. Also you can through the app, schedule days and/or times for it to rum.
The robot needs to run 3full runs to “map” the house. Then you can go in the app to the map and “make” and name the rooms. The more the robot runs the more efficient it gets. We’ve had our about a month and a half and now one day it will run the rooms north and south, the next time east and west. It make nice straight lines in the carpet and it’s easy to tell it’s not missing a strip. Our other vacuum is a Dyson Animal and a one a week cleaning with”it” yields a good amount of debris in the bin. We do have animals. Now with the robot running a couple time a week there is hardly anything in the Dyson.
There are 3 suction modes, eco, normal and “super suck”. Our house is 1400 sq ft and on normal it will head to the dock 3 times to empty and will have to recharge before it finishes. However after about 3-4 hours it will resume on its own to finish. We now run it in eco mode. It will finish the entire house easily with a single charge and still does a really great job.
The no clogging brush roll is a true. There are no “bristles “ on the brush roll and it so far has not had anything stuck to it except the occasional panty hoe or nerf dart or hair tie.
All in all we are really impressed with “this” robot vacuum and I do recommend it highly.
We ran it the day after we got it, after we had given it a full charge and a new home in the laundry room. The directions say 3 ft of space on either side and 5 ft in front, our definitely doesn't have 3 ft on either side (it does have 5 ft in front) and it seems to work just fine. The first day we ran it, it did a pretty stellar job of mapping our house. It got confused a few times but eventually figured it out (after cleaning my office 5 times, not complaining) and the map looks pretty spot on. We are working to break it out into rooms now.
We have run it TWICE so far, and the amount of dirt and hair it has picked up is absurd - good absurd in the sense that the vacuum is doing it's job, bad absurd in that ew.
I read some reviews that this machine was loud, which is a joke. Whoever thinks this vacuum is loud has clearly never used an actual vacuum before. It runs so quietly my cats don't even run away from it and as long as it's not in my office it doesn't disrupt my work calls at all.
I wanted all the features of the roomba i7 without the price and this definitely delivers. I wanted mapping as we have tons of furniture and stuff for it to navigate around and I didn't want a vacuum that would only clean my office forever, eventually it had to figure it out. I wanted one that would resume cleaning because our house can be tough to navigate and I didn't think it could cover the full floorplan in 90 minutes, and most of all I needed a stationary dust bin for it to return to and empty before it resumed cleaning as - given the amount of hair - I knew I would spend all of my time emptying out the vacuum bin if it didn't self empty. This vacuum hit all of those nails on the head and does a great job at all of them.
There are obviously some quirks to this vacuum, to assume it can be entirely self sufficient is getting a little too expectant of a robot vacuum - it doesn't have AI programmed into it. We have already had to clean out the vacuum once, as there is hair that gets wrapped around the spool and sometimes if the dust/hair clumps it has trouble sucking it up the bin station. The positives to this is the vacuum docked rather than me searching the house for it, and it immediately let me know there was a clog and I was able to very easily take the bin out, pull the hair out, and throw it away. I was expecting this and am completely okay with this, knowing we have an above average amount of hair and dirt in the house.
Overall I think this vacuum is worth the extra $200 that sets it apart from it's lesser models for all the needs it fulfills as listed above. I think the cost benefit analysis of how many times i have to drag my clunky vacuum out and run it through the house (not even able to hit the tough to reach spots the shark is able to get) versus the $500 that this vacuum cost is no contest. I will update this review after a few months to comment on the longevity of the product, but as of now I'm absolutely ecstatic about my purchase and would highly recommend this vacuum to anyone who asks.
I have found the iRobot units to wear out their brush modules rather quickly requiring you to purchase their 'upgraded' module as a replacement. My question is why don't they include the 'upgraded' module from the start if it's so much better ??
Also, they seem to have a difficult time finding the docking station to recharge. Out latest iRpbot was maddening trying to get it in just the right position so it would charge. Moving it just a fraction of an inch one way or the other was an exercise in frustration so it would charge.
The Dyson Eye was a great unit which mapped the rooms and did a great job on cleaning. Always found the recharging base and the only reason we still don't have it is Dyson recalled them all as they feel there was a design flaw. They did a total refund including all taxes and shipping on the unit. I can't speak highly enough about their customer service and how we were treated as customers with Dyson. I was hoping that they would have introduced their next generation unit as we would have certainly purchased it.
That brings us to the Shark IQ. We've had it about a month now and are quite pleased with it. It has superior suction to the iRobot models we've owned, does a good job of creating a map of the house and NEVER has a problem finding its charging base.
The self cleaning feature of the base is great and totally removes all the debris from the robot. The base is easy to say the least to clean. Just press a button to release the canister, walk it over to the trash, press the 'open' button and out comes all the debris it picked up.
We have several dogs, A Husky which seems to shed year round and a German Shepherd and the robot keeps ALL of the loose fur cleaned up nicely. It transitions well from hard floor surfaces to carpet and does a better than iRobot job on carpets.
Best of all, the beater bar on the Shark IQ NEVER gets hair wrapped around it unlike the iRobot!! iRobot 'solves' the hair wrap problem by selling a tool which you have to use to clean the hair off of the bar. Why not just make a design change like Shark has ??
The Shark app is easy to use and set up schedules or manually start, stop, or instruct the robot to return to its base. We have also enabled the Shark skill on our Amazon Alexa devices which gives us full control over the unit as well. I have read reviews which state the Shark is too loud but I find it to be lower in volume than any of the other robots we have owned. There are different settings for the amount of vacuum suction power and even on the MAX setting, it's not loud at all.
All in all, I would definitely make the purchase again and highly recommend the unit over any other robot (except for maybe the next generation Dyson!)
Now, on to the actual review...
Firstly, this vacuum is great if you have back trouble. You don't have to get all the way down on the floor to empty the canister. There is a button at the top of the handle that disconnects it from the base of the docking station, so you can empty it much easier than if you had to bend all the way over to pick up the robot unit. The robot itself is not very heavy, but it is pretty low to the floor. I'm glad I won't have to mess with it very often.
Secondly, I am totally against having unsecured wi-fi connected devices in my home, AND I was concerned about some of the reviews complaining about the APP and the robot's mapping features. Personally, I didn't want to use a stupid APP anyway, so I was happy to find out you can just push the Clean button on the robot with your toe & it'll go clean the whole floor with no app necessary. Unfortunately, the robot has an 'open' wi-fi connection and I wish I could disable that - maybe I'll email customer service about it.
As far as the mapping goes, I have no interest in telling it to only clean one room - I'll just let it do the whole place. I have only had my robot for a day, but it has already learned my 1,000 ft downstairs area. It finds its docking base very easily & it has only been stuck twice, because I underestimated its tenacity and it got past a threshold I thought would stop it. The trick for helping it learn the area is to pick it up if it ever gets stuck and bring it back to the docking station, so it can start over from a location it knows. If you pick it up and put it down a foot away, it will be confused and the internal map will get messed up. Same thing if you move your furniture around - it'll have to relearn the layout of the room every time something gets moved. I have learned to leave it alone for best results. Even if it 'appears' to be lost, it isn't. If you just leave it alone, it'll eventually clean the whole place - it just makes decisions differently than a human being and it's also limited by its battery life. Unless it spouting error messages, just leave it alone. Even if you think it's stuck, don't bother it until it actually stops & gives an error. I watched it get itself into and back out of some pretty weird places under my office chairs. It took about a 103 point turn to get out, but eventually it figured it out.
The robot goes right over thresholds, from carpet to tile and back with no problems at all. It's slightly louder on the tile than the carpet, but it is MUCH quieter than a regular hand-operated vacuum cleaner no matter what surface it's on. I can hear the TV over it without needing to adjust the volume. That's not to say I would want it running right behind the sofa while I'm in the middle of a suspenseful movie, but it means that normal life doesn't have to stop just because the vacuum is going. I can continue doing whatever I want, while the robot works around me. The vacuum of the base unit is much louder than the robot itself, but it only lasts for a few seconds.
As far as cleaning power, this is not a Bissel nor a classic Rainbo vacuum that can pick up a bowling ball - it's a lightweight vacuum, just like any other. If you're a cement worker, it's probably not going to do the job for you. However, in my thoroughly cattified home, it has been doing a great job. It picks up Swheat Scoop litter that my cats track all over (so gross). It grabs dust bunnies from under the edge of the sofa, and it does NOT try to eat cat toys or shoes. I was just as impressed by the things this vacuum doesn't try to pick up as I am with the things it does. It's smart enough not to eat cat toys. Great!
After doing the math for the cost of a cleaning company, and considering how much it hurts to vacuum manually, I figure this robot has already paid for itself, and it's only been one day. Personally, I don't care if other reviews say it "isn't as good" as the Roomba. I didn't want to risk fifteen hundred bucks. I am glad I didn't, because this Shark is perfectly serviceable. It's well designed, reasonably 'smart', reasonably quiet, picks up the types of dirt present in my home, and seems sturdily built. So far, I am extremely happy with it! Now, I don't have to choose between a dirty floor or a terrible back ache from using the regular vacuum cleaner. What a relief!
The base and charge-and-resume functions are also incredibly cool. I put my base on the pad in a carpeted living room, and the shark reliably finds home, drives up, pulls a 180 and backs in. The vacuum base is pretty slick, and takes about 8-10s to clean out the bot, which it does twice in a cleaning cycle for me, once at the 30 min mark to empty the bin, and once when its been running for an hour to re-charge. The resume was a tad annoying the first time I ran it however, as the machine had previously been run around 5pm, and stopped its run at 6. By the time it recharged at 10pm, it was ready to go back to humping the fireplace, which would have been nice to have known in the app. And yes, a full battery charge takes roughly 4 hours, which is fine. While LI-ION batteries should be able to charge faster, a slower charge will preserve functionality.
On the software side of things, the app is nothing to write home about. It works fine, but you have to refresh the app (close and open) to get data to update sometimes, like charge percents. A refresh button would be nice for those of us sitting there watching the battery charge.. Get used to the little GIF of the shark bot making three passes, and the circular loading icon. Even with a Note 8, it still takes about 10s for initial load. The thing definitely knows where its going, but it takes a while to draw the map! So far i'm on run number 4, and its at 20% drawn, though the history gives me a very accurate idea of where it has been. As for scheduling, it works, and it will start exactly when you ask. the bot will run for an hour and stop, and as far as i can tell, you can't change how long it runs for. You also can't change power levels for scheduled cleanings, only while the cleaning is occuring, which is a huge gripe. I'd love to be able to tell it to clean the carpeted rooms in the house with extra power, but i'd have to be watching the app from home to do that.
If you're buying this for the Alexa integration, don't! Its just a skill. so you can tell Alexa to make the shark start, stop, and go to base, but thats about it. Grouping via the Alexa app, to turn on the applicable lights when the robot is out of the dock? nope. Scheduling via Alexa? nope. I don't have mapping done yet, but i could assume telling alexa to ask the shark to clean a certain room doesn't exist.
So yeah, the robot does a great job at cleaning, the base does its thing well, but the app is meh, and alexa integration is a joke. If you don't have a smart home and want a robot that cleans well without having to disassemble the bot daily, this is a good contender.
Pro/con list:
+Great cleaning
+VSLAM works great,
+Vacuum base is awesome
+finds home and docks reliably
+App allows you to control bot from anywhere
+maps of cleaned area even before an official map is generated
Battery life of 60-90 minutes
four hour charging
a little noisy, audible clicking
-lack of scheduling options
-amazon Alexa integration is a joke
-app takes a while to load, close/open sometimes faster than waiting for charge and status data to update
With the bad, let us get that right out of the way. The mapping is abysmal, truly, we have run Bruce (if you can name a Shark branded robot vacuum, what other name than Bruce would you choose) 25 times, he is nowhere near mapping our house, compared to my brothers robot from a competitor who rhymes with BOOMBA, which did it in three runs. This Shark does not even play the same sport....this prevents me from doing room specific vacuuming. And that is it. Unless you have a multi story house, where this feature is a must have, set Bruce and he will clean you house. Wonderfully. Next, the not so great, Bruce is so mentally challenged. For a smart device, he is pretty dumb, but you want to know something, Bruce is determined. He will get the job done. He may have to fumble and bumble his way about, but he will get it done, and, if you watch, he does get a little smarter each time, just a little, but it is noticeable. Bruce used to do the house in large, long swaths, now he breaks it into one half of the house, then the other, and just the today, a new feature, he went around the perimeter of the house, cleaning the base boards. Small steps.
As for his vacuum, top notch, perhaps too good. Bit of advice, if you get your own Bruce, run the beast on low suction for at least the first 4 or 5 runs....another con, Bruce does not know when he has eaten too much, and like a greedy guppy, he dies...locks up and cries for help... remember, I told you Bruce is not bright, but he is a work horse. When this happens, you cannot tell Bruce to restart, he has to start over, and hopefully one of Bruce's engineers will fix this, since Bruce will never know how much he has consumed, he has not the ability. Perhaps a command to send him to his base to empty himself, or a shorter duration than the 30 or so minutes it defaults to.
Oh, and the base, the self empty….I am sure robot vacuums before the base were fine, if tedious, since you had to clean them every time….but the base, oh the base is pure genius. Bruce’s base is perfect, we take up with a button, and open it with a button, and never have to touch the refuse. No bag to buy, just push a button, the bottom opens and all that stuff drops out.
If you have not noticed, but this family loves Bruce, we are now looking at getting Bruce a skin, to spruce Bruce up a bit…We have had Bruce for a week now, barely, but already Bruce has made an impact. I absolute honesty I cannot recommend this product enough, it works, it has quirks, but it works, and very well.
Bit of advice
Turn on all your lights until your Bruce gets a good map of the area, he is a camera based robot and needs to “see" the ceiling, mostly, for landmarks.
Run it on low the first few tries, while Bruce bounces around the first few runs, then move to medium and so on. Remember, Bruce has no sesnor in his bin, he uses a set algorithm that tells him to go back to his base and dump his load. It is terrible. But his vacuum is great, so he gets too full too fast. I can manage it a little for the quality of his cleanup.
Because our house is neither toddler nor robot ready, we did not have all our rooms ready, and so we began mapping with the bedrooms and bathrooms doors closed. This turned out to be a blessing in disguise, the mapping is not great, but it does move forward, slowly. Bruce stared being more efficient in our great rooms’ right about the time we added the bedrooms and bathrooms. Our house, 3 bedroom, 2 bath, 2 great rooms and a heart kitchen, Bruce can do it on one charge now, I think because we basically added one room a day after his initial runs.
I think you can tell, Bruce has been a wonderful addition to our home, truly, a robot vacuum was a luxury I didn’t think worked. It works and now I know what gift I will give every new home owner I know. There a lot of options out there, some a lot cheaper, and if those meet your needs, get them, some a lot more expensive, and aside from one specific feature Bruce does not have,( multi floor mapping) I cannot imagine they are better.
UPDATED 2/19/20
Mapping works now, had to delete the map once , run it three times, and bang! house mapped. Room specific vacuuming unlocked! Suggestions to others having issues. Delete the map and ( and I think this part is important) run the vac with every light you can on. The robot "see" and makes its map on your ceiling, the more light, the better it see's.
To reiterate, my little robot, Bruce, has literally changed my house...cannot recommend enough.
Updated 2/5/21
A year later and no regrets. One of, if not, the best purchases I have made for my home. I will state again Bruce is an addition to the house and family, he is almost a pet....a very dumb, but very hard working pet....he is like a toddler...he seems to always want to be where you are... He cleans your floors and carpets...If you are on the fence about buying a robot vacuum...let me put you at ease...buy one, this is no longer a luxury to my home, they are a requirement, utterly worth every penny. As for a Shark...I love mine. Works great, does what it is supposed to do. The only house I wouldn't think this is perfect for is multi floor homes. Short of that... a must have.
4/28/23 Still the best purchase we have made for our home cleaning. No change there...but a small observation...recently replaced some furniture and changed the layout of our home. We had to move the dock from a north to south orientation to an east to west...and, I swear, it now navigates even better than before.
The Shark set-up was pretty easy and after charging I began operations. I knew that it would take many runs to map my floor plan and it certainly has. After about sixteen hours run time, it shows only 22% mapped. Part of this I caused by picking the unit up and moving it to another room. I probably confused the heck out of it. I have had two conversations with tech support about the firmware version and dropping WIFI connection. The tech support was very helpful and with my MAC address, they updated the firmware. When you get your robot, you should check the version of firmware and have them update if necessary. Mine cave with version 1. The current is (V3.4.11-20191015). The WIFI issue was addressed by simply deleting the robot from the app. and reinstalling it. The Tech advisor told me that the map is stored in the cloud and I would not loose it, but I'm not sure that that has not increased the mapping time.
The robot is well built, operates well and is not any louder than my other robot, not bad. Although the base does a good job of evacuating the robot dirt container, there is still a need to clean the screens that are in the robot dust container occasionally as they do get lint covering them. I don't know the impact of the this but it seems to me that keeping it clean helps the suction of the vacuum. The Shark is good about navigating itself back to base when the battery is low. It is my opinion that the battery should have longer duration capacity. In my house, the robot can not complete cleaning the house before needing a recharge. It takes about four hours to recharge before resuming where it left off for cleaning. We like to run it while we are away from the house so this creates an annoyance for us. I have not yet determined how well it finds the location to continue the cleaning. The robot has done a very good job at finding it's way back to base and rarely does it get stuck between chairs or under cabinets etc. I do like this the Shark very much and I do recommend it to friends. My assumption is that the unit will only improve with software updates as it seems to be built well and does a good job cleaning.
UPDATE: I have been operating this robot for about 3 months now. There has been a recent improvement to the mapping capabilities and I could not be more pleased. I knew that it had some deficiencies mapping when I purchased it. I was anticipating improvement and I am very pleased to report that Shatk came through. My robot is performing almost without flaw. It cleans very well, cleans selected rooms, rarely gets stuck and always returns to base. Good job Shark!!
Update: I have now been operating this robot for about eight months. It is operating flawlessly. The mapping has been great, defining the rooms works very well, I am so impressed that hair does not wind-up on the brush. I generally send it out to do a couple of rooms each day. I do not make any adjustments in furniture, chairs etc. I feel that the robot should work without forcing me to make any adjustments and it has worked very well. It finds it way back to base every time and just doesn't seem to ever get stuck. This has is a great asset and would not want to be without it. I have not been using it at night. I don't know if it would be able to navigate without light, I should try it.
When I saw the self-empty option was available (Shark Infomercial), I went out to the site to check out the specs. It was just so quiet in the videos. There had to be some trickery going on. Robot vacuums are loud, clunky and slam into things constantly. At least that is what I had come to expect from vacuum products from a certain robotics company. Prior to getting the R101AE, I would either have to suffer through a very loud robot cleaning vacuum session to get mediocre results or if I was brave, start the cleaning process, leave the house and NOT enable my alarm. You see, my previous robot vacuums would set off my alarm banging into things and just generally being obnoxiously loud in general.
Say hello to the Shark IQ R101AE (specifically: I have the R1001AE). Its a game changer! Being the inpatient type, I had pre-installed the app on my phone and waited anxiously for the robot to be delivered. I unboxed it, took off the protective wrap, placed it on the charger for a good 20 seconds before starting the setup process. I got it connected to wifi, scanned its code, enabled the 'Recharge and Resume' and 'Evacuate and Resume' features, set it up with my Alexa and Google Home, and then sat and stared at the robot - consciously willing the battery to charge!
"Alexa, ask Shark the status of Sharky..."
"Your robot is at its dock and has 45% battery."
OK. I've been patient enough. Time to see thing in action! Mixing things up a little, I used the app to tell the robot to start cleaning. I thought for a moment that something must be wrong. It doesn't sound like the vacuum is running. But, it was working. Placing my hand along the left side of the robot, I could feel an impressive amount of exhaust air blowing at a slightly upward angle. Nice Job Shark! Vent upwards so you don't blow dirt and dust around in areas that haven't been cleaned yet.
The robot started awkwardly finding its way around my house - in nice North/South lines. It ran for about 30 mins when I saw the battery light turn red. It was physically only about 10ft from the base but, it was blocked by a couch and loveseat configured in an "L' shape with the base being at on the other side (outside) of the "L' where the horizontal and vertical lines meet. This was going to be interesting.
The bot tried its best to squeeze through the slightly-too-small gap between the couch and loveseat. It could 'see' the base. It just couldn't get to it! Drat! Well, after a moment, it turned off its vacuum and turned around and started in the opposite direction. Low and behold, it drove out of the "L" trap, made half a lap around the dining-room table and then made a bee-line towards the base.
It lined up and backed itself into the base. A few seconds later, it self-emptied into the base. I thought, thats a useless exercise. I had run my other robot vacuum only an hour or so before the Shark IQ arrived. The floors were already clean. Well, apparently not! It had picked up an impressive amount of stuff that the bot from that robotics company had missed! Nice!
I sat down and turned on the TV, knowing that the bot needed to charge for a while - hoping that the 'resume' feature worked as advertised. A while later, engrossed in some prime-time thriller on TV, (that's code for asleep on the couch) I was startled when the bot bumped into my foot that was dangling off the couch.
Not only had it resumed but, it had come right back to the spot it had left off at... It was obvious that some 'Ninja' had also been added to the design because although I am an extremely light sleeper, it had managed to sneak up on me! It really is that quiet!
Today is day #2 with the bot. When I got up this morning, I asked Google Home what the status of the bot was and when it responded it was on its base with 100% battery, I told it to start cleaning. I just want to accelerate the mapping process.
The bot cleaned for about 30mins, returned to base and emptied, resumed cleaning for another ~50mins, returned to base to empty and charge, resumed cleaning for another 50mins and returned to base to empty and recharge, declaring the job complete. I checked the app and although it says the map is not complete, it has covered 100% of the area I expect it to cover.
It was impressive to watch it delicately navigate its way through the maze of chair and table legs to clean under every chair at the table in a very methodical manner. It did the same thing with the bar stools, coffee tables and end tables. There was no slamming into furniture, no getting stuck at the fireplace threshold, no getting lost at some random corner of the house and giving up on life itself. It just works! This is a game changer!