The Best Shark Robot Vacuum
Shark's robo-vac ticks most of the features you'd expect from a midrange machine. It has dependable cleaning capability and an easy to use mobile application. It also creates precise maps of your home.
It also comes with Matrix Clean Navigation, a system that performs two passes back and forth before moving to the side for full coverage. Its base is bagless, unlike the majority of robot vacuums.
1. Roborock S4
This is a top-quality robot vacuum for bare floors that can take up debris and has a huge dirt compartment. The app lets you control cleaning and docking. Its intelligent pathing is extremely efficient. The app gives you an overview of cleaning, which includes maps showing where the S4 was cleaned, as well as cleaning time and battery life.
Its maximum suction of 2,000Pa can be enough to lift an AA battery off the floor. It also rivals the suction of larger vacuums. With 19CFM, the S4's side and combo brush is located closer to the front of the unit than in other Roborock models, which may be a way to cut down on clogging.
The S4's advanced navigation technology can digitally map a home up to four levels and will recall the areas it has already cleaned, making it easy to establish an agenda for cleaning without having to manually move the robot around rooms. You can designate certain areas as "no-go zones" to stop the S4 from cleaning those areas.
It was able to clean all floors of our house with ease, and was very efficient on bare floors. It had a tough to remove dog hair. This is a typical issue with robotic vacuums. The only 8.5% of the dog hair it picked up was kept in the dustbin and the majority was clumped in the suction inlet and brushes.
The S4 is lighter and smaller than other Shark vacuums. This improves its maneuverability. It is able to make more precise turns and avoid obstacles that slow down other robots. The low-profile design also allows it to be placed under furniture. It has improved climbability for navigating flooring transitions as well as different flooring heights. It is able to easily reach the bottom of the stairs and is a great choice for larger homes that have multiple floors. The app allows you to create a schedule and also includes the ability to control your vacuum manually. It can also return to its charging station to charge automatically between cleaning cycles. It is equipped with a 5200 mAh battery, which is rated to run for 150 minutes or 2691 square feet between charges in normal mode.
2. Shark Easy Robot Self-Empty
This Shark robot vacuum is a fantastic option for pet owners who want an efficient, user-friendly machine. Its bagless self-emptying base is a major plus particularly when compared to other vacuums that use disposable dirt bags on their bases. You can empty the bin over the trashcan by removing it. It's messy, but you save money on the replacement bags.
The bin itself is also quite large, which means that the EZ Robot is capable of handling a good amount of debris. It's also a great performer on bare floors, though it has some issues with embedded dirt on low-pile carpet. It has good navigational capabilities and a small footprint.
Although the EZ Robot isn't as good as the Roborock S4, it's still an excellent choice for those who want a good-performing affordable robot. It's built well, comes with a wide range of features for automation, and boasts impressive cleaning performance on both bare floors and high-pile carpet. Its maintenance requirements are high and its ongoing expenses are very high.
The Shark robot also has a great feature: it will automatically return to where it left off after it returns to the docking station. This is a very handy feature particularly if you own a large house.
The IQ XL also comes with a variety of other useful features. These include the ability to schedule entire-home cleanings remotely and review cleaning reports via the SharkClean good robot vacuum App. You can also control the device using voice via Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant to start, stop, and resume cleaning sessions. The row-by-row cleaning mode of the robot is a big plus and it also is able to clean your entire house in neat rows instead of the back-and-forth snake design of many other robots.
The IQ XL has a major disadvantage that is that it can't climb over obstacles like power cords. It could consider them to be solid barriers and therefore not try to climb over them. It's also not as quick or efficient in navigating the room when it's stuffed with pet hair, which could tangle its brushes and slow it down.
3. Shark AI Robot
This is a reliable robotic vacuum from Shark and offers a great combination of features. It comes with an elongated base that can hold up to 30 days' worth of debris, and it combines the cleaning power both of the robot vacuum cleaner and a mop. It comes with a matrix grid cleaning mode, and it features advanced smart home integration that supports Alexa and Google Assistant. You can schedule it to clean, activate it on demand, or set virtual boundaries to block the robot from entering rooms with fragile items or rugs.
The Shark AI Robot carries out a fairly thorough task of cleaning floors, removing debris like rice easily. It isn't able to removing large, bulky debris from carpets with low pile and is not able to move around furniture that is large. It does come with a do-not-disturb mode, so you can use it while you're at home and it won't interrupt your daily routine.
It also uses LiDAR to map your home. This allows it to detect and navigate obstructions more precisely than units that depend solely on gyroscopes or an infrared sensors. This helps it avoid collisions with fragile objects and optimize dirt pickup on different surfaces. The LiDAR system also performs faster than gyroscopes, which can cause the robot to slow down and lose control when it comes into contact with uneven surfaces.
Other features include the remote control, automated mopping, and various vacuum modes. It is able to charge and recharge while it's working. The biggest drawback is that it can only draw out one floor of your house, so if you have two stories, it will be necessary to manually carry it to the two floors at the beginning of the run, and then program it to repeat.
Another issue is that it can be quite loud, particularly in mopping mode. It also has a lot of parts that need to be cleaned or replaced frequently and this adds to the cost of maintenance. Fortunately, the base self-empty feature cuts down on certain expenses, and is compatible with bagless filters, which further lowers its annual costs.
4. Shark ION Robot RV700 series
The Shark ION Robot RV700 Series is a complete package that meets all the criteria you would expect from a mid-range robotic vacuum, with reliable cleaning performance and a superb mobile app that produces accurate maps of your home. The bagless base removes the need for dust bags to replace every year. In our cleaning performance test it was able to remove 97.8% of debris from carpeting and hardwood floors although it wasn't as effective with high-pile carpeting. Its maneuverability makes it simple to move between furniture and onto high-pile flooring. It can also traverse over objects like electrical cords and rug fringes without getting stuck.
The bristles that are high-tensile and in a helix pattern are strong enough to manage and untangle long hair, string, and other fibers. The brushroll has an extension side that can be used if it encounters an obstacle. Its thin design allows it to slide under furniture and proximity sensors monitor and adapt to surrounding obstacles. It can be set to start cleaning with a pressing of a button, or scheduled on a daily basis by using the app. Its noise levels are average however, it can be slowed down by using a do not disturb mode or a custom-designed scheduling.
The RV700 is more manual than the Roborock S4 and iRobot Roomba j7+ and iRobot Roomba j7+, which is to be expected from a non-self-emptying model. It's nonetheless more durable and easy to maintain. It charges faster and eliminates more dirt from high pile and unfinished floors. Its navigation system can also create virtual boundaries and detect obstacles making it the ideal option for "set it and forget it" robotic cleaners.
The RV700 Series does not have an incline sensor that could prevent it from falling down the stairs. This could be a problem for those who live in houses that are taller. It also can't mop and vacuum simultaneously and requires users to switch between two modes available in the application. The RV700 Series offers a cheaper alternative to more advanced Roborock and iRobot robots that come with self-emptying features and cliff detection. The most attractive feature is that it can be emptied and recharged while docked in its base, making it a good choice for those who do not want to go through the inconvenience of emptying the dustbin each time they use it.