The Best Shark Robot Vacuum
Shark's robovac ticks most of the boxes that you would expect from a machine of this price range. It has reliable cleaning performance as well as a mobile app that is easy to use and provides accurate home maps.
It also provides Matrix Clean navigation, a system that allows two passes that go back and forth before moving from side to side to provide complete coverage. Its base is not bagless like many other robot vacuums.
1. Roborock S4
This is a great robot vacuum for bare flooring with a large dirt container that can pick up debris. The app lets you manage cleaning and docking. Its intelligent pathing is very effective. The app also provides an easy overview of cleaning, including maps of the areas that the S4 has been cleaned, the cleaning time and battery life.
Its maximum suction of 2,000Pa is enough to lift an AA battery off the floor and rivals that of some full-sized vacuums. With 19CFM the S4's side as well as combo brush is situated more to the front than in other Roborock models, which may be a strategy to lessen clogging.
The S4's advanced navigation system can digitally map a house up to four levels. It will remember the areas it's cleaned, making it easy to create a cleaning schedule without having to manually move the robot around rooms. You can also mark off zones as no-go zones which will block the S4 from entering those areas during a cleaning session.
It was able to clean an entire level of our home easily and was very effective on bare flooring. It had a tough cleaning up dog hair. This is a common problem with robotic vacuums. The only 8.5% was captured in the dustbin. The remainder was clumped up around the brushes and the suction inlet.
Comparatively to other Shark vacuums, the S4 is noticeably smaller and lighter, which increases maneuverability. It can make tighter turning and avoid obstacles which slow other robots. The low-profile design makes it easier to fit under furniture. It also has a better ability to traverse flooring transitions and various heights of flooring. It can reach down to the bottom of the stairs, and is a great choice for homes with multiple levels. The app lets you create a schedule and includes a manual vacuum control. It can also return to its charging base to recharge between cleaning cycles. It has an enormous battery of 5200 mAh, which can run for 150 minutes in standard mode, or 2691 square feet between charges.
2. Shark Easy Robot Self-Empty
This Shark robot vacuum is an excellent choice for pet owners looking for an efficient, user-friendly machine. Its self-emptying bagless base is a fantastic feature, especially when compared to other vacuums that utilize disposable dirtbags in their bases. You can empty the bin in the trashcan by simply taking it off it. It can be messy, but it will save money on bags to replace.
The bin is also quite large, so the EZ Robot can handle a lot of garbage. It's also a great performer on floors that are clean, although it does struggle somewhat with embedded dirt on low-pile carpet. It also has decent navigation capabilities and a small dock footprint.
Although the EZ Robot isn't as good as the Roborock S4, it's still an excellent choice for those who are looking for a reliable and budget-friendly robot. It is well-built and offers a variety of automation features. It also boasts an impressive cleaning performance for floors with no carpet and carpets with high pile. Its maintenance requirements are high and the recurring costs are high.
Another excellent feature of this Shark robot is its capacity to recharge and resume automatically where it began when it returns to its docking station following a full cleaning session. This is a very handy feature particularly if you live in a large home.
The IQ XL is also equipped with a variety of useful features, like the capability to remotely schedule entire-home cleaning sessions and review the results through the SharkClean app. You can also use voice control via Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant to initiate and stop cleaning sessions. The row-by-row cleaning mode of the robot is a huge benefit as it cleans your entire home in neat rows, not a snake-like pattern that is back-andforth like many other robots.
The biggest drawback of the IQ XL is its inability to get over obstacles like power cords, which it may identify as solid barriers and not climb over. It's not as fast or efficient in navigating a room when it's filled with pet hair, which can make its brushes tangled and slow it down.
3. Shark AI Robot
This is a great robot vacuum from Shark that offers a combination of features. It comes with a base that can store up to 30 days of debris, and it blends the cleaning power both of an automated vacuum cleaner and a mop. It also comes with an exact matrix grid cleaning mode as well as advanced smart home integration, with support for Alexa and Google Assistant. You can schedule it to clean, turn on it on demand or set virtual boundaries to block the robot from entering rooms with delicate items or rugs.
The Shark AI Robot carries out an impressive job of cleaning bare floors, picking up dirt like rice with ease. It has a hard time removing large, bulky debris from carpets with low pile and is unable to maneuver around large furniture. It is in a do not disturb feature so you can use it at home without disrupting your daily routine.
It also makes use of LiDAR to map your home. This allows it to detect and navigate obstructions more precisely than devices that rely solely upon gyroscopes or infrared sensor. This lets it avoid crashing into delicate objects, and also optimize dirt collection on different surfaces. The LiDAR system also operates faster than gyroscopes. This could cause the robot to slow down and lose control when it encounters uneven surfaces.
Other features include a remote control, automatic mopping and multiple vacuum modes. It is able to charge and recharge while it's working. Its biggest flaw is that it only maps out one floor. If you have two floors, it's required to be manually moved to those areas and then programmed to repeat.
Another drawback is that it can be a bit loud, particularly in mopping mode. It also has many components which need to be changed or cleaned frequently, which adds to its cost per year. The self-empty feature is a basic function that helps to reduce the cost of these items. It's also compatible with a bagless filter, which can further reduce the cost per year.
4. Shark ION Robot RV700 Series
The Shark ION Robot RV700 Series fulfills all the requirements you'd expect from a mid-range robotic vacuum, offering reliable cleaning performance and a great mobile app that produces precise home maps. The bagless base makes it unnecessary to purchase new dust bags each year. In our test of cleaning performance it was able remove 97.8 percent of the debris from carpeting with low pile and hardwood floors however it was not as effective on high-pile carpeting. Its maneuverability is solid and it is able to maneuver through furniture, climb onto high-pile carpeting and go over things like rug tassels, electrical cords, and rug tassels 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 also features a retractable side which can be used in the event that it encounters an obstacle. Its slim design lets it glide over furniture and proximity sensors detect and adjust to the surrounding obstacles. It can be activated to begin cleaning with a click of a button or scheduled for a daily schedule using the app. It has a moderate noise level, but it can be slowed down using the do not disturb mode or a custom scheduling.
The RV700 is a little more manual than the Roborock S4 or iRobot Roomba J7+. This is to be expected from an item that doesn't self-empty. However, it still feels more robust and easy to maintain, and charges faster and clears more debris on both bare floors and high-pile carpeting. Its navigation system can create virtual boundaries, recognize and avoid obstacles, and also create virtual borders. This makes it the ideal option for robotic cleaners that you can "set and forget".
The RV700 Series does not have a cliff-sensor that would keep it from falling down stairs. This could pose a problem for people who live in homes that are taller. Additionally, it can't vacuum and mop at the same time and requires you to switch between two modes in its app. However, the RV700 Series is a less automatic vacuum and mop robot expensive alternative to the more sophisticated Roborock and iRobot models that have self-emptying capabilities and cliff detection. Its most appealing feature is that it can be emptied and recharged while at its base, making it an ideal choice for those who do not want to go through the burden of emptying the dustbin after every use.