Since we bought this in late November, which I suggest getting since it was newely half off its retail price of 600 (gotta love black Friday), I have only had to get out the old vacuum once. I was worried that we would have to get it out more than that to get under our cabinets in the kitchen, but that is luckily not a problem. If I see something under there now I just push it to the middle of the floor if I know shark is going to clean that day. 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.

Where to start? 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.

TLDR: Been a lifesaver on hard floors, not a replacement for vacuuming on carpets. You do have to clean the vacuum parts every once in a while. will get stuck on fabrics on the ground (clothes, dryer sheets, etc) After having this for about 6 months I would recommend the vacuum for someone who has a lot of hard floors or regular dry messes but not to someone with spills or a lot of carpet-to-wood floor changes if they have heavy shedders. It's helped tremendously with the dust in our house as long as we clean the dust filter regularly. With shedding: We have three almost 100 lb dogs which are heavy shedders and live in a very dusty place. We run it every day and even through shed season, our floors looked great! It doesn't get the hair as much off our carpet so we still vacuum the carpets once a week or every other week. If we had done that before it would have looked like a hair storm went through our house! The brush roll did get stuck quite a bit at first but some WD40 and popping both ends off the roller to clean them helped. One end of the roller does not want to come off at first but once you get it, it's easy to clean. With the 60-day tank, we dump it about twice a month so I think for a normal household it would last 60 days. Initial setup: it was frustrating because it didn't map the house how I wanted it to. I must've mapped the house 4 times before getting one that was similar to ours. It helps to push the manual button to clean and it helps it map much better. Carpet vs hard flooring: It functions great on all our tile, wood flooring, and even cement( escaped into our garage one day when on "clean mode" not mapped). The main issue we've had is the transition onto the carpet, the brush roll cleans off all the hair so all the rooms we have carpet in now have a line of dog hair entering the room. I think it would be pretty good for someone who has fewer dogs. Once it's on the carpet it works great, even makes those lines in the carpet. Picks up dirt very well on carpet and hard flooring. Noise: It's a background noise when vacuuming much like a dishwasher but when it's clearing the vacuum dustbin into the base it sounds like a normal vacuum. App: works great. I do wish there was a feature to run certain rooms every day or different areas on different schedules. I think it would help a lot with the carpet-to-hardwood hair issue.

It appears that a lot of the complaints people had about this may have been fixed with an update, because I am not having any issues. 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.

I'm no stranger to smart vacs - I have 4 robovacs, two of them self-emptying, mapping robots. My other self-emptying one is a Roomba i3+ (which by now is 3 or 4 year-old tech), so I naturally am comparing this Shark to that one. There's a lot to compare and report on, but I'll just quickly touch on some categories: - 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. ........................ 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. ............................ 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. ............................ *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!

Update 8: My robot has developed a leg fetish (see video), can someone recommend a good therapist for robots? Update 7: Cleans well except for any of the following when 1/4" to 1/2" long: thread, yarn, Doritos, felt, etc. I think it just needs a better brush. I'd trade the current tangle resistance brush for a brush that helped clean better any day. It is fun at parties though: Guest 1 drops a Dorito; Guest 2 steps on Dorito; I call: "Alexa, tell Shark to clean dining room"; Guests laugh hysterically as Shark IQ drives over Dorito fragments leaving them undisturbed. Update 6: When you press the Play (labeled Clean) button in the Shark app, if you pick the option to clean up to 3 specific rooms, you cannot clean the last room entered on the map, it won't let you scroll that far (they put the button over that option) so you can scroll it into view but you can't hold the scroll position in view with one finger while clicking the option with the other, if you let go of the position to click the option it goes back behind the button so you cannot click it. So make sure the last thing you add to the map is a no-go area so that all of the other rooms are options when sending Shark to clean manually (you can always clean the "hidden" room via Alexa though). Update 5: Mapping has completed. Labeling rooms is not intuitive, after you add each room, it makes you rename all of the previous rooms you already defined and labeled as follows: Define room 1, give it a name, define room 2, give room 1 a name, give room 2 a name, define room 3, give room 1 a name, give room 2 a name, give room 3 a name ... So I have my rooms defined, I have one Shark IQ set up, I can send my Shark to clean a specific room as follows (paraphrasing because I don't remember the exact wording): Me: "Alexa, ask Shark to clean the Family Room." Alexa: "Which Shark vacuum would you like me to use?" Me: "Shark". That's right, I have one Shark and I named it Shark, but every time I tell Alexa to do something with my Shark, it asks me to pick a Shark out of the following set of Sharks: [Shark]. Shark app will not let you schedule cleaning of a room or a set of rooms. You can schedule when to clean everything, you can't schedule when to clean something. I want Shark to start cleaning after everyone has left for school and work, and I want it to finish before anyone gets back. Unfortunately, because it takes about 2.5 hours to clean my house, between, emptying and charging it finishes around 6 pm. We start getting home from work and school around 2 pm. So, I tried scheduling rooms through Alexa Routines. The only way you can schedule the Shark skill in Alexa is to schedule Alexa to ask you what you want the Shark to do. I tried using Google Assistant as outlined in the documentation found in the Shark app but Google Assistant can't find the Shark ROBOT service as described in the Shark IQ documentation. But I was able to schedule cleaning of 3 rooms a day so that the robot is always dormant while we are at home and every room gets cleaned every 24 hours: I used Google Assistant Routines to have Google Assistant tell Alexa what to tell the Shark to do, it works flawlessly. The hard part was setting up 10 "Say something" commands for each schedule: First "Say something" command tells Alexa which room needs to be vacuumed, the next 8 "Say something" commands in each Routine I put four spaces in (not sure if quantity matters) that pause Google Assistant long enough for Alexa to ask which of my one robots I want it to use, and the last Say command says: "Shark". So to schedule my Shark IQ to clean specific rooms at specific times on specific days I put a Google Mini next to an Echo Dot and the Google Assistant takes care of the schedule, the Google Mini tells the Echo Dot what to do, the Echo Dot then tells the Shark what to do. Rube Goldberg would be proud. Update 4: Scheduled runs often fail complaining: "... cannot run because its dust cup is missing." So I may need to find the dust bin sensor and hard wire it to always report present since it often reports missing even though dust bin is properly inserted and latched. The only time I have ever removed the dust bin was to clear dust cup error. Update 3: New firmware today: V3.4.11-20191015V3.6.18-m149-Oct 26 2019MesaM1.8.20MesaB0.1.1S2.0.107 I wish they would publish change logs. Update 2: This is what I want before I give this product 5 stars (some of these features probably already exist for this product already but won't be enabled until mapping is complete): 1. Ability to get rid of BotBoundaries and instead draw boundaries on map. 2. Ability to give robot verbal hints about where a new dry spill is as in: Alexa, tell Shark to clean Kitchen Southwest. What I'd like that to do is imagine that each room has 9 dots: NW, N, NE, W, Center, E, SW, S, SE. Center is default. When you send it to a room it starts at the dot specified where W and E caused it to clean a third of the room first traveling N to S and S to N, N and S cleans a third traveling W to E and E to W, and NW, NE, SW, and SE start by cleaning a quarter of the room and sending to the center cleans third of the room first either traveling N to S or W to E, whatever it normally does when cleaning the whole floor. This way when you want to clean up a spill of dry goods you can send it to the point of nine closest to the spill in that room to start. 3. Ability to see location of robot on map in app. Helpful when you need to find robot for any reason but you can't hear in stereo. For me, using the existing find robot feature is like playing the game hotter colder as it only tells me if I'm getting closer or not each time it plays sound because I can't hear in stereo. Update 1: After I wrote my original review I noticed that the cleaning history was updating but the app said that it couldn't connect to my Shark. So I now think that there really was just an issue with Shark's servers. Day 1, no connectivity issues. Day after posting my review: no connectivity issues. The Shark has cleaned my house 25 times but says map is only 40% complete. The incomplete map that it won't let me edit yet looks 100% accurate and 100% complete. So I'm raising my rating from 1 star to 4 stars instead of 5. Next week if mapping still isn't finished I'll lower it to 2. After mapping is complete and I've been able to test all the features I might raise rating to five stars. So far, it has cleaned house well on schedule, alerts me at work when it gets stuck (now averages getting stuck less than once a day) so I can send one of my kids to get it up and running again. I wish it came with three times as much BotBoundary. Original: As soon as it installed firmware version V3.4.10-20190826V3.6.15-1321-Aug 27 2019MesaM1.8.2MesaB0.1.1S2.0.102 it could no longer stay connected to WiFi, so to control this vacuum by smartphone or voice you need a WiFi robot capable of turning the Shark IQ RV1001AE off, waiting 10 seconds, then turning it back on. I have two subnets/SSIDs, one mesh (Google WiFi), one not (Google Fiber's Built in WiFi). None of my other wifi devices at home have any trouble staying connected to either network. I've tried my Shark on both since the firmware upgrade, it disconnects from both. So it can still vacuum the whole house on a schedule, returning to base to empty and to charge on it's own. I just don't get notifications when it gets stuck, and I can't send it to go clean a specific room in my house without first walking over to the charging base, turning the vacuum off, waiting a few seconds, and then turning it back on. If the noisy vacuum interrupts a conversation, I can't pause it with my phone, I have to get up and press the Dock button or turn it off. Also, when it gets stuck, it usually gets stuck right when it starts working as one of it's wheels will slide off the side of the charging base ramp pad and somehow get stuck on the of the pad with the stuck wheel on the carpet but the ribbed side of the wheel stuck on the corner of the ramp.

Alright, so this is my first VSLAM (Visual Simultaneous Location and Mapping) robotic vacuum. Usually when i see "shark" i see "as seen on tv/beware". That being said, this guy works super well! Right out of the box, it picked out the direction of the walls and started running running lawnmower stripes on the carpet. Cleaning is great, i've so far run on Eco and Normal suction, have yet to try full power, but results are great. This thing's gotten into nooks and crannies i did not expect it to cover with very few missed spots. The only gripe about actual cleaning that I have is the device's tenacity towards missed spots. There's a fireplace in my house with a raise stone surface just in front of the mouth of the fireplace with an angled wooden trim surrounding. This is raised just enough so the section that is on carpet is marginally low enough for the robot to get onto in the right instance, and the section adjacent to a wooden floor is too high, causing the machine to loudly hump the stone for a few minutes as it backs off, look for another way to the spot, and fail/succeed. Also of note is the general noise. Because of Shark's de-tangle system, there's a clicking noise in time with the brush spinning. 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

Update to the update... 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.

We just received the robot yesterday, February 3, 2023, so this is a preliminary review. Setup was straightforward as was connection to wifi and the app on my phone. My biggest concerns are with the app, not the Robot itself. 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.

I don’t normally write a lot of reviews, but when I take the time to write one, it exceeded my expectations. This is no different. As many have probably done, I picked this up on sale. And with the 10% cash back on the prime card, it was an easy decision. I’ve researched these for years, but the tech never felt “ready” yet. For me, the wait is over. The setup out of the box was simple, and it did’t take long for the unit to map our house. After mapping, you can clean the whole house, or select which rooms. I watched it for its first mission. I was amazed how it reached every crevasse. It really tries hard to reach each corner, and my experience is that it did just that. At times, it looked like it missed some areas, but it reached every section before returning to the base. Others commented on how it’s not as loud as other units. Definitely quieter than a standard vacuum. We have pets, so you can select a setting to return to the base to empty every 30 minutes. It then returns to the exact location to resume. If it’s cleaning, and the battery is running low, it will return to the base to charge up, then it returns to where it left off. When evacuating the robot, that’s the loudest part, but the base has a hepa filter to avoid the dirt causing odor, or re-entering your floors. The receptacle releases from the base with the push of a button, then one little switch to dump in the trash. Take a look at the pic. That was from only 2 rooms. It was able to easily navigate under the bed, which is always hard to clean. If you have pets, this is a must have. Outside of just turning it on to clean your floors, you can schedule your cleanings daily while you’re away. Nothing like coming home to see clean floors, and the robot back on it’s base charging, and see the trash it picked up through the little peephole. I also linked it to Alexa. Another cool feature is naming the robot. We named ours “Karen”. If you’ve ever watched SpongeBob, you’ll know why. 😀. If an area in your house has an immediate cleaning need, you can say, “Alexa, ask Karen to clean the Kitchen”, then off she goes. Easier than getting a broom or vacuum for sure, and don’t have to leave your couch. Probably not good for exercise, but for someone with mobility issues, I see this as mandatory. It even has a “spot-clean” feature. For high traffic areas that need extra attention, you can select spot-clean on the app, zoom into the area on the map your robot outlined, then off she goes to only clean the section you zoomed in on. Pretty cool. I’ve seen older versions operate, and I was never impressed. I’m glad I took the plunge with this Shark Unit. If you’re on the fence like I was for years, this is your unit (Especially if on sale again). My thought was, if it didn’t get the amount of pet hair I would expect, I would return it. Well, that’s not going to happen. Karen is now part of the family, and we’re considering bringing in a brother or sister to mop the floors. I’ll be researching what Shark has in this arena, you can believe that. Well done, Shark. Well done.