The Best Shark Robot Vacuum
Shark's robot vacuum checks many of the boxes you'd expect from a product in this price range. It offers a reliable cleaning performance and an easy-to use mobile application. It also creates precise maps of your home.
It also provides Matrix Clean navigation, a system that performs two passes that go back and forth, before moving from side to side for total coverage. The base is also unbagged, which is different from other robot vacuums.
1. Roborock S4
This is a top-notch robot vacuum for bare floors that sucks up debris and has a massive dirt storage compartment. The app lets you control cleaning and docking. Its intelligent pathing is very effective. The app provides you with an overview of cleaning, including a map showing where the S4 was cleaned, the cleaning time and battery life.
Its maximum suction of 2,000Pa is high enough to lift an AA battery off the floor, and is comparable to those of full-sized vacuums. The side brush and combo brush are located closer to the front of the machine than the other Roborock models. This could be to prevent clogging.
The S4's advanced mapping system can map a house up to four levels deep and keep track of areas it has already cleaned. This makes it simple to design a cleaning schedule without the need to manually move robots around rooms. You can mark certain areas as "no-go zones" to deter the S4 from cleaning these areas.
It was able of cleaning the entire floor of our home with ease and was very efficient on bare flooring. However, it struggled with picking up dog hair, which is a common problem for many robotic vacuums. The only 8.5 percent of the hair was collected in the dustbin. The remainder was clumped around the brushes and suction inlet.
In comparison to other Shark vacuums, The S4 is noticeably more compact and lighter, which enhances maneuverability. It can make tighter turning and avoid obstacles which slow other robots. The low-profile design also makes it easier to place under furniture. It has improved climbability for navigating flooring transitions and different flooring heights. It can easily get to the bottom of the stairs and is a great option for homes with a lot of floors. The application lets you set a schedule and also includes an automatic control for vacuuming. It can also return to its charging base to charge between cleaning cycles. It is equipped with an enormous battery of 5200 mAh that can run for 150 minutes in the standard mode, or 2691 square feet between charges.
2. Shark EZ Robot Self-Empty
This Shark robot vacuum is a great choice for pet owners looking for a machine that is easy to use and smart. Its bagless self-emptying base is a major benefit in comparison to competitors that use disposable dirt bags in their bases. It is easy to remove the bin and then empty it over a trash container. This may be messy, but it also saves you money on new bags.
The bin itself is quite large, which means the EZ Robot is capable of taking care of a lot of debris. It also works well on floors that are unfinished. However, it is unable to deal with dirt embedded in low-pile carpet. It has excellent navigation capabilities and a tiny footprint.
While the EZ Robot isn't as good as the Roborock S4, it's still an excellent option for those who want a good-performing affordable robot. It's well-built and comes with many automation options. It also boasts an impressive cleaning capability for floors with no carpet and carpets with high pile. Its maintenance requirements are very high and the recurring costs are high.
Another great feature of this Shark robot is its ability to recharge and automatically resume where it began when it returns to its docking station after the full cleaning. This is an excellent feature, particularly if your home is large.
The IQ XL also comes with here a variety of other useful features. This includes the ability to schedule whole-home cleanings remotely and review cleaning reports using the SharkClean App. You can also use voice commands through Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant to begin, stop, and resume cleaning sessions. Its row-by-row cleaning mode is a big plus, too - it will clean your entire home in neat rows instead of a back-and-forth snake pattern like many other robots.
The IQ XL has a major disadvantage that is that it can't climb over obstacles such as power cords. It could mistake them for solid barriers and therefore not try to climb over them. It's also not as efficient or efficient in navigating space that is cluttered with pet hair. This can tangle the brushes and slow it down.
3. Shark AI Robot
This is a great robotic vacuum from Shark that offers a solid combination of features. It has a self-emptying bottom that can hold up to 30 days of debris and combine the cleaning power of both a robot vacuum and a mop. It comes with a matrix grid cleaning mode, and it has advanced smart home integration that can work with Alexa and Google Assistant. You can set it up to clean on a schedule or activate at any time, or create virtual boundaries to keep it from entering rooms that contain rugs or fragile items.
The Shark AI Robot carries out an impressive task of cleaning floors, picking up dirt like rice with ease. It has a hard time taking large, bulky debris from carpets with low pile and isn't able to maneuver around furniture that is large. It does have a do-not-disturb mode, so you can set it to work while you're at home and it won't disrupt your routine.
It also makes use of LiDAR to identify your home. This lets it locate and navigate around obstructions more precisely than units which rely solely upon gyroscopes or infrared sensors. This allows it to avoid hitting fragile objects and to optimize dirt collection on different surfaces. The LiDAR system also operates more quickly than gyroscopes, which could cause the robot to slow down and lose control when it encounters uneven surfaces.
It comes with a variety of other options, including an automatic mopping feature, a remote and various vacuum modes. It is able to charge and recharge itself while it is working. Its biggest drawback is that it can only map out one floor of your house If you have two stories it will be necessary to manually carry it to the two floors on the first run and then program it to repeat.
Another negative is that it could be a bit loud, especially during mopping mode. It also has a number of components that must be cleaned or replaced regularly and this adds to its recurring costs. The self-empty feature is a basic function that can help reduce some of these costs. It is also compatible with bagless filter, which can further reduce the cost annually.
4. Shark ION Robot RV700 series
The Shark ION Robot RV700 Series is a complete package that you'd expect from a midrange robotic vacuum. It offers dependable cleaning performance, a superb mobile application that produces accurate maps of your home, and a great cleaning performance. The bagless base makes it unnecessary to purchase new dust bags each year. In our cleaning test it was able to eliminate 97.8 percent of debris from hardwood and low-pile flooring, but wasn't quite as effective with high-pile carpeting. Its maneuverability is sturdy and it is able to move through furniture, climb onto high-pile carpeting and go over objects such as rug tassels and electrical cords without getting stuck.
The bristles with high-tensile in a helix pattern are strong enough to untangle and manage long hair, string, and other fibers. The brushroll also features an extension side which can be used in the event that it comes across an obstacle. Its thin design allows it to glide over furniture, and proximity sensors assess and adapt to surrounding obstacles. It can be activated to begin cleaning at the pressing of a button, or scheduled on a daily basis through the app. Its noise levels are average however, it is possible to reduce the noise by using a do not disturb mode or custom scheduling.
The RV700 is a bit more manual than the Roborock S4 and iRobot Roomba j7+, which is to be expected from a self-emptying model. However, it still feels more robust and easy to maintain, is faster in charging and gets rid of more debris on floors that are not bare and carpets with high pile. Its navigation system is able to create virtual boundaries, identify and avoid obstacles and can also create virtual boundaries. This makes it the ideal choice for robotic cleaners you can "set and forget".
The RV700 Series doesn't have a cliff sensor that prevents it from falling down a flight of stairs, which can be a problem for those living in taller homes. It also can't mop and vacuum at the same time and requires you to switch between the two modes available in the application. However it is the RV700 Series is a less expensive alternative to the more sophisticated Roborock and iRobot models that have self-emptying capabilities and cliff detection. Its biggest selling point is that it can be emptied and recharged while docked at its base, which makes it an ideal choice for those who do not want to go through the burden of emptying the dustbin after each use.