Shark IQ Robot with Self-Empty Base

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 adviceTurn 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 2/19/20Mapping 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 2/5/21A 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.

I have about 2,550 sq. ft. in a single level home. mostly tile with carpet in bedrooms. Through out the living area we have three different tables with chairs, couches, bar stools and other normal furniture. This is a challenging home for any robot vacuum. I have used the "I Robot Rumba 700 series" for about five years before purchasing this Shark IQ vacuum robot.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.

UPDATE 1: In my original review, I complained that you couldn’t see a map of where the vacuum actually went while cleaning. I figured out how to find this feature in the app. When you click on “History” a calendar pops up with all the days the vacuum cleaned highlighted. Click on one of those days and you will get a detailed report with a map coloring in the parts of your house the vacuum cleaned (see attached photo). I am still keeping it at 4 stars because it will not pick up some objects like coins and legos. Otherwise, we are very happy with 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.

[update May 18, 2024] I'm even more pleased after Buddy has been on the job for six months. He's just a joy to have around. Yes, he has a name now. Buddy has gotten stuck no more than four times while cleaning at least part of the house every few days. I'm still amazed at how much stuff (mostly cat fur) is in the base station when I check it every month or two, because to me the house looks like it's mostly clean all the time now so I don't expect that much "invisible" debris to be collected.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!

***Third UPDATE---READ THISI've had this Shark robot for a little over a year, having bought it last year as a part of the Black Friday sale that went on for this vaccuum. I am very sad and disappointed to say that it died on me. It refuses to charge as of last week, gives no errors, and there's nothing I can do.What a shoddy piece of craftsmanship that barely worked for the year I owned it then died inexplicably after. DO NOT BUY IT unless you enjoy being constantly frustrated and disappointed by a terrible machine that will stop working right after the warranty runs out. One more time to make it clear: THIS PRODUCT IS TERRIBLE AND YOU SHOULD NOT BUY IT.**Second Update: Nearly a year of ownership on, and I have YET to be able to get this robot to produce a map that even remotely resembles my house so I can clean room by room on a daily/weekly basis. It just does not work, and I have no idea how to change it. I've heard that camera based robots like this one do require the lights on, so I've scheduled it to run at 12 every day and I purposefully open up the curtains to ensure natural light comes in. In areas where this isn't possible, I turn the lights on. Despite this, and months and months of trying and deleting maps over and over again, I can't get it to work. Seriously, get the Roomba i7. It's got a lot fewer problems, and admittedly is more expensive, but at least that one works! Don't get stuck with this barely functional robot like I did!*Alright, this is an update from my previous review based on about 9 months of experience with this Robot. It's pretty good at actually cleaning the carpets and getting rid of the dust around our home, but it comes with quite a few major caveats. It's convenient and functional, but problematic. If you want a GOOD robot vacuum, you'll need to go at least with the Roomba i7.To start off let me say that we got this robot after watching the video recommendation from the youtube channel vaccuum wars. I bought this because he said the robot was one he worked on, and he gives very thorough and great reviews. I wish I hadn't listened to him and gotten the Roomba instead.The single biggest problem I have with this Robot is the mapping feature. The app says it takes 10 runs to get a feel for your house. I have no idea how the feature actually works because... well, I've been through 5 maps at least and the robot has yet to get an accurate picture of my house that enables me to tell it to clean room by room. It's never worked, and this is supposedly a marquee feature of this bot. Usually, the map I get is some weird partial abomination of the front room and part of the hallway. It regularly enters the bedroom on accident and I have no idea why it seems to struggle with putting that into a map. Shark clearly has very little experience working with robot vacuums and it shows.For context, our house is 2300 Square feet, with a mostly open floorplan layout with a large front room that consists of the kitchen, living room, and dining area, with a long hallway off to the side that connects to all the other rooms in the house. One of the reasons we picked this bot over others was because it's a fairly large house and we didn't want to have to constantly empty the vacuum. We have a dog who sheds a decent amount and this robot does manage to keep the pet hair under control. I leave all the doors open while it cleans so it can build a proper picture. I did eventually learn that VSLAM (camera-based navigation) robots NEED to have the lights on or a source of ambient light when they're navigating so they can find their way back to the base so I began leaving the curtains and blinds open, along with a couple of lights on. Seeing as 3PM is the middle of the day there's plenty of natural light so we can save on our electricity bill by not having to keep the lights on, which I highly recommend you do if you can.The Robot runs every day at 3PM to do a cleaning of the house. Since I'm at home all the time now due to the pandemic I can catch it if it gets stuck, and boy does that happen often. We have furniture with metal bases that it sometimes manages to get itself into and stuck on. Also, heaven forbid you ever leave a single sock or dog toy on the floor before it runs---it will absolutely find them and get stuck. It also just adores eating our long drapey curtains in the bedroom even though I've positioned the magnet strip in front of it. The magnet strip has to be there because the App doesn't include no-go zones like for a Roomba or a Neato vacuum, not that I ever got the map to work anyway. It frequently just pushes the magnet boundary and gets stuck on the curtains. It's such a pain.The vacuum base where it collects the dust and debris after cleaning is very useful. I love not having to deal with emptying the robot constantly like I would need to with basically any other robot vacuum. It's not really possible to have them work in a big house like ours. It holds several cleanings worth of dust and I have to empty it about once a month (the robot will tell you that it's full). The robot does not consistently struggle to find its way back to the base or get lost in our house. Usually when it fails to return it's because it got stuck on a dog toy, not because it can't find its way back. Although based on other reviews, your mileage may vary.

I have friend that is selling his house. I visited him as he was doing some finishing touches before sale. He had a robot vacuum tidying up as he worked. I mentioned to him that it was pretty neat to have a cleaner following his work around the house.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.

We’ve had our shark for just about 48 hours now and could not be happier. It is still painting the map of our house, but it is getting really close.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!

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.

My Usage and Overall Comments:============================== 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:============================== - 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:============================== 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:============================== 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 (???)

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.