Shark AV2001 AI Robot Vacuum with Self-Cleaning Brushroll, Object Detection, Advanced Navigation, Home Mapping, Perfect for Pet Hair, Compatible…

The app is horrible. Only works on 2.4g wireless. Both phone and shark on same ssid. And even then the app loses the map, intermittent loss of communication to the shark and mostly won’t even be able to connect to the shark. I don’t have my original box and am now stuck with the product. Absolutely worthless pile of electronics now sitting in my closet with no use.

Absolutely a waste of my time and money. Significant issues getting set up and not sure it ever set up correctly through the app. Worked a couple times with good suction. Very quiet compared to other robot vacs. But the app then lost it’s map. I could not get it to “explore” again even though the app kept saying it needed to. Called customer non support and reset it, reloaded the app, and still nothing worked. They “escalated it” and said they would call back in a few hours….a week later I called them back and again got put on hold for 20 minutes just to be hung up on. Called back and was told again they will call back within four hours. Last chance. If they don’t call back I’m returning it for a refund. Not sure I want to keep it regardless after this horrible customer service experience. I give it one star for a decent clean the couple times it worked. Otherwise, it’s junk and I would recommend another brand but not Shark.

I’ve never had a robot vacuum cleaner before this one. Frankly, they never made a lot of sense to me and they seem to have a lot of negative reviews. Oh, and they’re expensive. But, what the heck. I figured I’d give this one a try.

Setting it up was easy. I scanned the QR code and downloaded the app, put the vacuum on the dock and it started to charge the battery. After a few hours the vacuum was fully charged so I opened the app and got going.

It found my wifi without any problems so I proceeded to mapping out my house. It went about its business which made no sense at all to me. It got totally hung up at a stairway (going down). It tried and tried to figure out the “cliff” but finally gave up. I got a message on my phone that the mapping was interrupted and I had to try again. So, I returned it to the dock and gave it another go. This time it went fine but it never went near the “cliff” – maybe it learned its lesson. The app doesn’t seem to know about this model yet. It thought I had the vacuum that also wet mopped the floor and it wanted to do another scan for carpeting. Fortunately I was able to skip this step but I do wonder why they’re selling the vac before they’ve updated the app and wondering what I might be missing.

It mapped out just over 1,200 square feet. I wasn’t sure what to expect but that wasn’t it. No where in the user manual does it talk about a maximum square footage. I looked on their website and, so far, this model isn’t even listed so there wasn’t any information. I called their support line and I was told that I must be mistaken about the model number. Apparently customer service will get updated when the website and the app are updated. Problem is, it didn’t map out about half of the area I wanted vacuumed.

Forging ahead, I looked over the map and wanted to make a few changes. While the app is pretty easy to use this part of it can use some improvement. I finally gave up because I was anxious to try the vacuum out. I’ll get back to it some day. OK, probably not until they update the app.

I used the app to get things going. When you tell it to clean you can pick “rooms” (really just areas that it decided were rooms – it broke my kitchen into 2 rooms for example) or do everything. That’s nice because if you spill something in the kitchen you can just focus on that area. I told it to clean everything and off it went. At first the pattern didn’t make much sense to me but I determined that it was dealing with odd angles first and then it went into a row by row pattern. Reminded me of using a lawn mower – it even overlapped a bit. I did put some rice on a carpeted area and on a tile floor. It got under a curio cabinet that was just wide enough and tall enough for it to fit. I thought I was going to have to rescue it but, after a few minutes it finally inched its way out of the tight space.

It did a decent job. It picked up all of the rice on the tile and almost all of it on the carpet. I thought maybe the rice it didn’t pick up was entangled in the carpet fibers but I was able to easily pick the grains up with my fingers. It lifted up the corner of an area rug that’s on top of the carpet in the great room but it powered through it. It did avoid areas (like the sofa) that it discovered when it mapped the room. I did notice that there was some debris next to the baseboard. Although there are side brushes it didn’t pick that up. Briefly, back to the app. After the vacuum was going for about 15 minutes the app said it was going for just over 3. That then changed to 20, then it came down to 10. None of those were correct. I don’t know why I care how long it has been going but maybe someone does – hopefully this will be fixed when the app is updated.

Toward the end of cleaning my floor the vacuum started making a clicking noise. I was concerned that maybe something broke on its trial run. But, after it was finished I turned it over and saw that it picked up a bent paper clip and it got stuck on the brushes and would click every time it came around. Problem solved. Speaking of noise, this vacuum is reasonably quiet. Certainly much quieter than a regular vacuum. I could hear it but I didn’t have to turn up the volume on the television.

On the battery – the failed attempt at mapping, the successful attempt at mapping, and cleaning consumed about 65% of the charge. I don’t think that’s bad at all. It does take a while to recharge but it’s not like I want to vacuum my floor again after it finished.

I was surprised by a few things in the roller area. First, it picked up much more than I thought it would have. Second there was a fair amount of dog hair wrapped around the roller – the brushes were fine but the roller itself had dog hair wrapped on it. I removed the roller and had to cut the hair off the roller, cleaned everything else and returned it to the dock.

Bottom line – is it as good as my ancient Electrolux? No it’s not. I think it picks up as much as the old canister vacuum but the Electrolux does a very good job of getting against the baseboards and the vacuum head is short enough that it fits under most of my furniture. But, my Electrolux has a much more powerful motor, is much louder and, oh yea – I have to do the pushing. This vacuum won’t replace the Electrolux (I have stairs and more than 1,200 square feet of space) All in all, I’m pretty happy with this vacuum. The few issues I have with it will hopefully be addressed by Shark when they’ve trained customer service and updated the app.

I have had this for 1 month and it’s stopped communicating with the app twice; therefore I’ve needed to call customer service 4 times. A waste of time and money.