Shark – AI Ultra 2-in-1 Robot Vacuum & Mop with Sonic Mopping, Matrix Clean, Home Mapping, WiFi Connected – Black

I’ve owned several different models of robot vacuums. They’ve all let me down. Granted, they…

I’ve owned several different models of robot vacuums. They’ve all let me down. Granted, they were all dumb robots, meaning they weren’t guided by lasers. I was hoping this Shark vacuum with it’s AI and laser mapping would be the one to change my mind on robot vacuums. While this one impresses me in its capabilities and smarts, it is still plagued by issues – some of which come with owning a wide variety of smart home products and having 5 GHz internet. But make no mistake, as a vacuum or even mop, it’s pretty darn good. So long as you come in with tempered expectations, I think you’ll enjoy this vacuum/mop. But if you think this will replace all vacuuming/mopping and you can just let this vacuum do its thing without any intervention from you, you’ll be disappointed. IN THE BOX Inside the package you get the base station, which plugs into the wall, a circular plastic disc that attaches to the base station and is what the vacuum sits on when it’s charging. You’ll get the vacuum, of course, two side brushes (one is extra), the water tank and two mopping pads as well as a small bottle of floor cleaner. SETUP AND GETTING READY TO VACUUM AND MOP The first thing to do is to set up where you want the base station. There’s no warning that “X” amount of space is between the charging station and a wall. (some have such requirements). The charging station plate snaps into the charger, and then you plug that into the wall and that’s about it. There’s a lot of blue tape to remove before getting started, but the dustbin is already inside. You do have to snap on the side brush, which is easy to do. That’s the easy part of the setup. The next step is to download the Shark app and register an account. Finding and registering the robot was easy. And I thought the app did a terrific job walking you through all these steps. MAPPING YOUR HOUSE AND “NO GO” ZONES After the robot is registered and charged, the first step (which you can skip) is to let it roam around your house and map it. It took about 30 minutes, but when it was done, I was shocked at how accurate the map was. After that’s done, you can assign rooms which permits you to clean one or two rooms at a time (using your voice and/or app). From there, the next step is to setup “no-go zones”. These are areas like cords on the ground, maybe a pet food container, basically everywhere you don’t want a robot banging into things. You do this by creating boxes on the app, using the map it created. I found the process pretty easy, it’s a little finicky as you have to zoom in when adjusting the size of a box in some instances to really fine tune it. From there, now you have to map out where your carpets are so when your mopping, the robot doesn’t drag a wet scrubbing pad on your carpet. The process is similar to creating no go zones – with the difference being that when vacuuming, your robot will still go over your carpets vs. no go zones, where the robot will never go. However, after you create the carpet zones, you have to (again, you could skip it, but I advise against doing so) let the robot go around the areas you blocked off to make sure it follows along the rug, not driving over it. For rooms with carpet this is simple, but area rugs are finicky. I found this to be a long process. I’d create the zone of a runner rug, and then have the vacuum drive around it. It would be too far away sometimes, and drive over the edge of the rug on other instances. I’d have to wait for it to be done exploring, then redo the box based on what I saw, and try again. It’s definitely a process of trial and error. Multiply that by several area rugs, and you have a time intensive process. After that’s done, you’re pretty much ready to go. I recommend scheduling your robot to run on it’s own – that’s what it’s for, to automate your life. And that is pretty easy to do on the app. VACUUMING I don’t have any complaints with the vacuuming power. First, it’s not very loud, compared to other robots I’ve used. Second, it does a great job of picking things up, even along baseboards. It still will get caught up with cords, I had a couple errors that required me to create no go zones where it kept sucking up cords near one wall in my house, but that was expected for me in figuring out what works best. The dust bin isn’t too too big, and I admit, I had to empty it every few days, so I was wishing I had the automatic emptying bin. But nonetheless, every few days isn’t that bad. And honestly, after the first few runs, it picks up less and less as it does a good job of maintenance vs. letting a lot of dust and pet hair accumulate. MOPPING I had the impression that I could hit a button and this thing would either mop or vacuum or even both at the same time. Wrong. In order to activate the mopping, you have to fill up the water canister (and add the floor cleaning solution) and then slide it into the back of the vacuum. Not the biggest deal in the world, but a bit of a letdown. Now I have to have a place to keep the water tank and remember to put it on. The mopping on my hardwood floors was great though. No complaints. And it avoided my carpets after putting in the time and effort to create carpet zones. It can’t mop the entire first floor of my house, however, with one fill up. That was another slight disappointment. The bigger concern for me, at least in terms of costs, was knowing that I would need more cleaning solution. I always knew I would have to buy more, but I feel like it’s more than I anticipated. But I would also be spending money on other floor cleaning solutions so honestly it’s a bit of a wash. (pun intended). QUIRKS AND ISSUES As I said, as a vacuum and mop, it performs well. But I’ve run into issues, some of which might be specific to me, but I don’t know. I find the app to be unresponsive, it doesn’t send me notifications when the vacuum gets stuck or needs to be emptied. I have to open the app and then it refreshes, then I can check all my notifications. I have a Samsung phone and every other app sends me more notifications than I can stand, so I don’t know why this doesn’t work. It doesn’t have obstacle detection – which I think only the really high end models have – which means that you have to keep the house relatively clean and not leaving things around for it to get caught on. I also had problems with the bumper – the app told me the bumper was stuck. At that time, it had only ran once or twice so I was a bit flummoxed. It’s happened twice and I don’t know what caused it or how to stop it from happening. And the vacuum will just stop what it’s doing. And I don’t get a notification to tell me when it happens (most of the time it runs when I’m at work, so it’s not like I could have done anything about it when it does happen, but still). I use Google Home. I, for the life of me, cannot get the vacuum recognized on Google Home. The Shark Clean app is there, but the Home app tells me I don’t have any devices. This isn’t a huge deal since I schedule cleanings within the app, but it does take away the ability to say “Hey Google, clean the kitchen.” Not the end of the world, but still annoying as I like to sync all my many different type of smart home products in the Home app. CONCLUSION This is one of the best performing robot vacuum and mops I’ve used. The AI smarts and laser mapping is awesome, and accurate. It allows you to really fine tune your cleaning to help avoid issues like running into things it shouldn’t, or getting caught on things. But it requires a lot of upfront work. It also requires additional work for the mopping and cleaning out the dustbin regularly. It’s things you likely do when using traditional vacuums and mops, but I’ve always wanted robot vacuums to be autonomous and require little maintenance. For the day-to-day cleaning, and say, mopping on the weekend, it’s pretty great.

The Shark AI Ultra Robot Vacuum and Mop with Matrix Clean Navigation is my newest tech investment. I currently have another robot vac/mop with self empty bin (Deebot brand). I love my first one, but it has a couple limitations. First, the empty bin has a vacuum bag that it empties into. All my upright vacs are bagless, so it was very disappointing to have the cumbersome vacuum bag come back into the picture, not to mention the added cost to replace the bags. The second limitation is the battery life. I felt that having a second robot vacuum/mop would finally allow me to clean up the whole house in one day. Back to the Shark AI Ultra Robot Vacuum and Mop…this machine has a lot of impressive qualities and some room for improvement. The pros: -The mapping process for the house is faster than my other vac. It probably took a third of the time as my other. -The Shark vac robot has a spot clean feature that you can activate by taking the bot to a location and pressing the clean button on the robot and it will clean a 5′ x 5′ area. It will mop or vac. If the mop plate is on, it will mop. I love this because spaces like water closets and laundry rooms (that are an inch or two lower in elevation) can now be cleaned too! Yay! I just set it down and viola. My laundry room is not on either map for my 2 robot vacs because it drops a small step down. – It comes with two quality reusable mopping pads. The attachment design is sturdy too. -The mopping performance is actually really good compared to other robot vac/mops. It does more than one pass on the standard-clean and on the ultraclean it does even more passes. The mopping feature won me over. -The battery charges quickly. -The battery life is extensive. I can vacuum 3 rooms, a hallway, and 2 bathrooms and still have charge left for other areas. – The self cleaning brush roll for the most part really does stay free of hair. -The charging dock has a small footprint and fits well in tighter areas. -Since it does not self empty, I don’t need to worry about buying more vacuum bags. -It navigates around my piano keyboard stand without any issues. (My other vac is vexxed by that stand.) -The vacuuming performance is acceptable and since it does multiple passes, it feels very thorough. The Cons: -It’s height does not allow it to go under my china cabinet, but my other vac can. -It avoids cleaning under my bar stools, even though there is plenty of clearance. **To compensate, I do the 5′ x 5′ spot clean trick. -During the mapping process, the vac fell down into my laundry room. It could not decect the two inch drop in elevation, my other one does detect this. **I now have it mapped as a “no-go” zone. -The Mapping feature can’t tell between carpet and hardwood to automatically plot it. -The Map allows you to place borders to section off rooms, BUT the smallest section you’re allowed to work with 14.5′ x 14.5′. I HATE THIS!!! If you want to designate carpeted areas (Yes, you need to put them on the map if you want it accurate), it often runs into other rooms. So my master bedroom is carpeted and the bathroom isn’t. If I put carpet on my master bedroom it messes up the mopping for the bathroom because it overlaps in one corner. So I have my master bedroom marked as NO carpet which is incorrect. This is a software issue. PLEASE FIX IT. I have an area rug 5’x 8′ that I can’t mark down because it’s too small. My other vac does not limit custom sizes at all. -No-Go zones can’t be any smaller than 14.5 feet x 14.5 feet (like the carpet zones). That is the size of a room! If want just one corner or section, forget it. A square that big bleeds over into other rooms. -I can’t start a new cleaning command on the app until the vac is back at the doc. So for example, if I vacuum my bathroom first and then I attach the mopping plate after it’s done vacuuming, there is not an “end task” option. It has to go back to the dock before another command can be given. Then, because my master bathroom attaches to my carpeted master bedroom, I have to attach the mopping plate after it crosses the carpeted area to then begin mopping. -The filter is set into the dust bin in a difficult position to clean its outer protective screen. -No cleaning tools are included to reach the tight spaces in the dust bin. **I have found that on old paintbrush does some of the job removing the dust from the dust bin. This must be performed outside because dust flies everywhere using this method. To really get it clean though, I had to remove the hepa filter first and then rinse the dust bin with tap water and let it air dry. I decided to don’t his on my own, I didn’t see deatiled directions on how to clean it thoroughly. The instructions need improvement! -Opening the dust bin is awkward because dirt can spill out of such a large surface area and the large entry hole. I prefer an easy open door type design. -After mopping, the dust bin was damp so it was hard to discard the dirt. (Make sure to empty bin before mopping or dirt gets caked in there.) -Another software disappointment is that you can’t watch the robot’s cleaning progress in real time. I have to access the history to see what was cleaned (only after it’s all done). And then I’m let down further because you still don’t see the path, you see only a colored room or wide colored path. -The side brush is sort of laughable. It has ONE brush projection sticking out on only one side. My other robot vac has 2 brushes, one on each side and 3 brush projections on each brush (like a windmill). -The instructions are limited in the box and also on the website. I couldn’t figure out how to put the mop plate on. I took off the dust bin first to put on the mop plate. No wonder I couldn’t get it to work. I called tech support because the mop option wouldn’t even show up on the map. -The brush roll flap (a piece of the black rubber flap that is behind the main brush wheel) already ripped. Called tech support to find out if it’s covered under warranty. It is considered a “wearable part” and is my cost to replace. I’d need to replace the brush wheel door for $7.95 but they don’t have that part yet because it’s so new. Not sure how much shipping will cost if I had ordered the part. I will not replace any time soon. It will just bust again until they find a better material to use instead of that cheap one that’s on there now. Having laid out all the pros and cons, I will say that I still like the Shark vac/mop. On day one and two I only saw all the software flaws. However, as I used it more its performance won me over. This means there is hope that the software can improve and thus make the experience a lot more enjoyable. If they want to compete with the other brands, I think making those adjustments would easily accomplish that.