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Customer Review
Reviewed in the United States on February 6, 2020
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
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
