Shark - IQ Robot Self-Empty XL RV1001AE, Wi-Fi Connected, Robot Vacuum with Self-Cleaning Brushroll - Black

I have had a few other robotic vacuums, mainly Roombas and other branded versions. Now it’s been quite a while since we used one as they either didn’t last long, the battery died or got tired of having to find it somewhere because it became stuck. I really like Shark products and they’ve come a long way since their beginnings, so when I saw they had this full featured robotic vac that empties itself we had to give it a try and are we happy that we did. Unboxing: The robot came in a pretty good sized box all carefully packed and inside were the robot, base unit, dirt canister, power supply, side brushes, carpet tray, a roll of magnetic strip, and manual. The robot itself is surprisingly light, sort of took me by surprise, but it’s plenty sturdy. The top of the device doesn’t have a carry handle so you just have to pick it up by its sides. On top you there are two buttons, “Clean and Dock”, and between those there’s a circular lens that looks like a upward facing camera, the manual states that’s a room sensor for mapping the room out. On the side there’s a recessed power switch, and on the front a bumper section that pretty much like all the other bot vacs we’ve had. The back is the dust bin and a port for the docking base to suck out the dirt once it docks. The bottom has a somewhat small looking brush roll that looks completely different than any of the other one’s we’ve used, it has rubber strips along with brushes. There are two latches you depress to remove the brush for cleaning. There’s also a door for the battery, with one screw holding it closed, which makes for easy maintenance if you ever need to replace the battery. That’s pretty much it, the only assembly required was putting the dust bin on the base, snapping the side brushes on their posts on the underside and plugging it in. Since we were putting the base on carpet you place the docking tray down first then put the base on this. This is nice as it gives the robot a solid surface to dock itself on. Setting up: I went ahead and set everything up, switched the robot on and placed it on the dock where it beeped a couple times, the dust bin collector turned on, “quite loud an moved a surprising amount of air”, then the battery led came on and it started charging. While I was waiting for that I went ahead and installed the app from the Google Play Store on my phone and worked on setting that up. You have to follow the directions carefully on the app, and actually have the app connect to the robot so you can enter your WiFi password so it can connect to the internet, you’ll also have to set up an account with Shark for all of this to work. Took me a couple tries to get it right, and you have to make sure you give the app permissions to connect. My phone at first due to security didn’t want to connect to it as it stated that the there was no internet access available with this connection and would disconnect “I just had to ignore the popup and let it connect”. After that and some updates to the robot and the app everything works fine. You may have to let the system update the software on the robot and app as Shark is tweaking and working on getting everything right and ironing out all the small bugs. Once this is all done you can start cleaning, “although you could start cleaning without the app and just press the clan button on the robot but you miss out on all advanced features if you don’t set it up”. Actual use: Once you press the “clean” button on the app the unit takes right off cleaning. There is an option on the app that you can set for different cleaning modes “Eco, normal, and high”. Putting the robot on high you can definitely hear a difference in the vac and how much air it moves out of the side vent. I used the high setting right away as I wanted it to get as deep into the carpet as possible. We have a lot of carpet, 3 bedrooms, home office, living room and hallway, so probably right around 1400sqft of it. I had just used our carpet cleaner the day before on all the rooms and gave everything a very good sweeping with our trusty old Filter Queen “nothing we’ve owned can beat it yet for deep cleaning”, so I knew the carpet was clean before using the robot, and would be a good test to see if it found anything we may have missed. We let the robot do its thing, and it was fun to watch, this one instead of just crisscrossing around the room and no real set pattern like the other robots, this one was very careful, going back and forth like you would mowing your lawn. It made sure it overlapped where it had just cleaned and to my surprise would correct itself in little steps to make sure it was following the right path “impressive that it can do that”. You still have to pick up anything that may tangle the rollers “charging cords, clothes, anything small and loose” but this one did an excellent job of getting itself unstuck / untangled and only once in many days of use did I have to rescue it “my fault too”. You can set the app to “evacuate and resume” and “recharge and resume”, which are nice as the unit will go back, empty itself and start back up. It doesn’t just start over at the dock either; it went back to pretty close to where it left off so it wasn’t wasting cleaning. You can also set up schedules for cleaning and once it learns / maps out your house “which you can see in the app” you can then tell it where to go to clean “pretty cool”. Being that we had just “shampooed” and heavily vacuumed the carpet before using this I didn’t expect much at all. Well to my surprise it somehow found a lot more debris than either of us expected. We do have one dog that’s a prolific shedder and that hair gets everywhere so we do vacuum a lot. It was just surprising as to how much this little guy found, we are both very impressed. Final thoughts: Both of us were very impressed with how well this robot cleans and how meticulous it goes about doing it, “like it’s on a mission”, it’s nothing like the other one’s we’ve had where they just run around aimlessly crisscrossing a room till it’s hopefully hit everything, this one goes about it in a very orderly fashion. The amount of debris it has picked up is really amazing, and not having to go hunt it down constantly “because I no longer hear it” is really nice. As an experiment I let the robot go around and clean the whole house, and then we took our Shark APEX upright, “about as much suction cleaning as the Filter Queen” and went over the areas the robot had cleaned. To our surprise there was very little dirt in the APEX canister, just a small balls worth of hair/fuzz and not even a ¼ tsp of dirt. This was after going over everything, carpet, tile, everything the robot covered. I would normally have a completely full canister on the APEX, instead it was all in the docks collection container, “super impressed”. The app itself gives you a lot of control over the robot, “just can’t drive it” and makes using it so much easier than ones we’ve owned over the years. We haven’t been able to get Alexa to connect to this yet but I know Shark is working on this and will get it working soon. You do have to remember to empty the dust bin, “it was very full” after 4 days, and have to make sure to clean out the filters every so often. These are very easily accessed and cleaning them only takes a few minutes. There’s also a filter on the dust bin in the robot itself, it’s easy to access after removing the bin, but it’s easy to overlook since the unit empties itself, just have to remember it’s there. We were also very impressed that after all this cleaning the brush roll is doesn’t have any hair in it to clean off. Normally this is a problem as I have long hair and always find it wrapped around the brush rolls of everything, the APEX is the only exception. The only thing is the dust bin on the dock does get messy inside and not everything comes out easily “especially hair” so you may have to reach in and pull a big clump off the filter screen inside, but for us it’s no big deal as cleaning out our filter queen or one of many other vacuums is messier. We also found that the power switch on the side,” if you happen to find your unit turned off and sitting there for no reason”, take a look and see if you have any door stops close to the floor “we have the little 3” rubber tipped springs”. When the robot is going around these, and in the right direction they may be the right height to press the power switch. This happened to us and as a solution he made a little door over it with some plastic and gorilla tape, simple solution and something engineering didn’t even notice. Ours just happen to be at the exact height to press it but it’s no longer an issue with the flap installed. If you want a really good robotic vac that costs a lot less than the other ones that also empty themselves then get this shark, you’ll really enjoy how well it cleans and now much less vacuuming you will have to be doing yourself. Shark keeps improving the app and software so over time this one’s going to be a real winner in our book.

---SETUP--- The setup of the Shark IQ Robot vacuum was simple. You just plug the base making sure that it is against a wall and that on the left and right it has 3 feet of clearance and 5 feet in front of it. If you are installing it on a carpet, it comes with a plastic base extension. I installed it on hardwood floor, so I didn’t use the extension. The robot itself is ready to go except for installing 2 bristles by snapping them. Additionally, if there is a place you don’t want your robot to travel to, you can install a special tape that prevents the robot from going into a room or a section of a room, like under a couch or to a place that may be riddled with cables. ---FEATURES--- The key feature of this vacuum unit is that upon docking itself, the dock will suck up whatever the robot vacuumed. This is a neat feature because you don’t have to constantly empty the robot vacuum. It’s meant to store 30 days of dirt, but based on how much there is in your home, that may vary. For people with big houses, theres a feature that allows the robot vacuum to clean until close to battery drain, return to base to recharge for 4 hours, then resume cleaning where it last stopped. ---PERFORMANCE--- The performance of the vacuum was excellent. If you watch it for the duration of the time, which you probably will because it’s entertaining, you will be amazed at how carefully it rounds corners to make sure it gets everything. Two bristles will circle debri towards the center so that it can really get things in corners. The one thing I wasn’t able to do was to connect it to Alexa. I used the Alexa app and added the Shark Skill as explained in the Shark IQ app, but it would refuse to recognize the vacuum. Regardless, the Shark IQ app itself is easy to understand and use, so I don’t mind using the app to start and stop it if necessary. That being said, it is a touted feature and it a bit unfortunate that it didn’t work. It is supposed to work with Google Home as well, but I didn’t try it with that device. ---EXPECTATIONS--- The product exceeds my expectations. Using the Shark IQ app, the robot will begin to map your house. It may take several days of mapping the house. For me, it has done 32% in 5 days and it seems to have been stuck there for a while now. However, it still cleans my entire home, and its easy to tell because the base has a visible level of collected dust, debris, and cat hair. It does a wonderful job collecting cat hair that I couldn’t even see was on the floor as well as daily cleaning the litter that the cats kick out of the litter box. That is heaven for me because when I get home from work, I can be barefoot and not step on the litter. I schedule cleaning to happen an hour before I arrive home during the weekdays and Saturday and Sunday an hour before I wake up. The daily vacuuming is noticeable and very enjoyable. ---VALUE--- The price for the Shark Vacuum in terms of value may sound steep, but if you do the math, it’s like paying someone 1.23 cents daily to clean your entire home! That’s worth the investment. ---APPROVAL--- I highly recommend this product for people who may want extra time to do things they enjoy instead of vacuuming their home. I also recommend this product for people who own pets that shed and want to deal less with the fur on the floor.

For the size of this vacuum, it does a great job of keeping the floors clean.It's not as powerful as most high end upright vacuums, but it does a really good job.It picks up about 90% of the debris on my floor with it's first run. Some things pushed down into the carpet are a little tougher for it to get, and obviously items that are stuck to rugs or hard floors are going to need an actual hand to scrub and remove. Our rugs get pretty dirty with the pets, and kids constantly tracking debris into the house. Plus, they are always dropping bits of whatever they are eating everywhere. I let the Shark Robot loose in the house, and it did a great job for such a small vacuum. I was actually amazed at the size of some of the objects this robot vacuumed up,..ie. peanut M&M's, Nerf bullets, pieces of toys, and chunks of papers. I didn't go through the house before I set it free, because I wanted to see how far it would make it before getting stuck somewhere. It actually vacuumed for a while before needing assistance. A few times it was from tissues getting stuck in the wheels, the other times were from Nerf bullets getting stuck in the roller housing, or large pieces of plastic wrappers (my kids are slobs just half the time). The roller housing pops out very easy, and obstructions can be removed in seconds. The tissues in the wheels were just as easy to remove. Overall the maintenance is pretty easy, and once all the oddball obstacles are off the floor, the robot can do it's job without incident.I actually have 4 types of flooring in my house; high carpets, low carpets, hardwood and tiles. The Shark robot does a great job with all the floors, and can even move between them with relative ease.(see pic of different floor types) The "side brushes" actually do a great job at cleaning to the edges of the rooms. Most of the edges got pretty clean, but some small items still remained in a few locations. (I'm including pictures of one of my tiled floors near the edge. As you can see almost all of the loose debris was collected) This model boasts more suction power than the "best-selling" other robots, and I'm inclined to believe it, after seeing everything that this has picked up. I also love the fact that this little robot cleans itself. Right after it docks, you can hear the base kick on it's suction power, and pull all the debris from the robot. Everything is bagless, so just cleaning the filters and emptying the base on occasion, is all that is really needed under normal operation.The app is pretty essential, as it lets you set up an automatic cleaning schedule, and lets you pick the power setting (either standard, economy, and powerful). It also lets you tell the robot which room to clean. It's pretty easy to connect the robot to the wifi, using the app. Then it can even be voice controlled through the Alexa or Google assistant apps. So far it looks like you can get about an hour of cleaning per charge, and once the battery is low, or the dirt reservoir is full, it automatically docks to take care of that.The robot is actually pretty good about navigating around most areas, but can get stuck in narrow areas that it enters, and can't turn around. It's low profile lets it crawl under most of our end tables and different types of furniture. The robot also makes very tight turns around small obstacles, maximizing it's cleaning area. The self cleaning brush roller actually does a great job of not getting tangled up with all the pet hair it collects. Overall this Shark IQ robot, is a very smart self cleaning automatic vacuum. It may not be as powerful as some upright vacuums, but it does a great job for it's size. Plus it can do all the vacuuming in the house, while I'm out doing other things. I am very happy with it's capabilities and performance!

Had the Shark IQ Robot for almost 3 weeks (cleaned 8 times so far). I watched her run around my house while I got lazy. My reviews on this robotic vacuum are based on my experience in comparison with 4 other robotic vacuums (2 different brands: 2 sensor based ones and 2 camera system based ones with wifi) that I currently own. Set-up and App functionality: Set up was a breeze, took about 5 minutes to get it up and running. Downloaded the shark app and got it connected to home Wifi, and set up a cleaning schedule. The app also shows the past cleaning history and when you click the past event it opens up the floor map to show what locations were cleaned. The app also sends you notification on the phone if its gets stuck and you can also command the robo cleaner to clean from the app. Love the app so far, it's simple to use and has the necessary functionality built in it. Haven't linked it to my google home and alexa app yet. This is a camera based robotic vacuum cleaner and is much lighter than the ones I currently own. How smart is it ? It is still learning its ways around. I have way too much furniture in my living area on the first floor and I have her programmed to clean my first floor (~1000 sq ft) along with my previous robotic vacuum. It did spend quite a bit of time learning the floor plan (4 rooms on first floor) and it got smarter every time it cleaned. It is optimizing its path by picking the longest path with the shortest cleaning time. It doesn’t bump hard against the furniture like my other ones do and it now started to slow down when its gets close to my furniture and I am guessing it will stop bumping into them eventually ones it learns the floor plan and the furniture locations. I am impressed by its learning capability and it never got stuck at any location so far. It did get a little disorientated (lol) when it tried to climb on the pedestal fan but it now stops when it gets closer. The map function got updated after 4 cleaning sessions and it's still learning. Unlike my other one, she follows a vertical path plan (row by row) to clean which I think is the efficient way to cover the entire floor plan. I used the supplied botboundary strips to mark the "no-go" zone and it worked pretty good and planning to order more to mark off the areas near my furniture. Functionality: It has 3 operation modes: Quite, Medium and High Suction mode. I tried only medium suction mode and It cleans for about an hour and the battery still had about 40% charge. You can program which mode you want it to clean on the app's daily schedule. You have to turn ON "Recharge and Resume ON" functionality for big floor plan by holding the clean button on the vacuum for about 15 secs and this will recharge for about 4 hours and cleans from where it left off. It’s a good function to have for big homes. Also, if you have pets there is a neat function (Evacuate and Resume) that you can turn ON that lets the vacuum return to the dock to empty its bin more often. I like the "self-empty" function on the base that sucks the dirt from the vacuum into the base unit when it docks and you don't have to worry about a cleaning the robo vacuum's dust bin - one more reason to be more lazy ;-). The base dustbin has a visible indicator (holds 30 days of dust) that tells how much dust it has collected so far. The self-cleaning brush is amazing and you don't have to worry about hair wrap and stuff getting on the brush head. My older one needed the brushes to be cleaned every month :-( and I love the self-cleaning brush idea. It also has 2 dual corner edge brushes which is neat for cleaning along the wall base boards where most of the dust accumulates. It has a power on/off button which I like as I can turn it off when I am gone on extended vacation. This is a very good function to have and not have to worry about turning off the cleaning schedule which I currently do on my other ones as they don’t have power off button. I have medium thick carpet, hardwood and ceramic tiles on the main floor and didn’t see any cleaning issues with the vacuum so far. The suction is good so far and I can't comment on how good it will be after a year so. I had my other ones between 2 to 7 years and I had to replace battery on one after 5 years and suction power was low on the one of them after 3 years of use (3 times/week). My only complaint on this is the power cord being short (3 ft) and I had to use an extension cord to get it the location I wanted. Overall, I like the features on shark IQ robot (R101AE) and would highly recommend it based on my experience of owning 5 robotic vacuums (price range $600-$1200) from 2 different brands. This definitely offers more features - more bang for your buck, and comes at a lower price point. Can't comment on its durability yet as I only had it for 3 weeks

Like the reviewer Lynda stated, beware of the same SKU and model number!!! I bought this and returned it because it had the older revision of the self emptying part which doesn’t release from the top, but releases from a side messy cup! Be sure you get the revised one which releases from top! Same SKU and part number though so check the pics on box carefully! Otherwise I love the shark iq robot and found the “correctly revised” model in my local Bed Bath Beyond

Received the Shark IQ Robot and have enjoyed it. Very nice features with the self empty feature. Can schedule the days and times it'll auto clean. My only 2 issues are the mapping, it has done a few runs and hasn't mapped my home yet so maybe after 10 or so cleanings it'll get it. Also, it comes with the barrier strips to stop the vacuum from going in the areas blocked off but the strips don't have adhesive backing to make it a permanent off limits area. This honestly wouldn't be an issue but I have three cats and the they won't stay in position for long lol.

This is an easy to program model, very mush like the Roomba we had in the past but much more high tech than the older models were. We live that we can program it to vacuum at a set time each day. A pitfall is that we sometimes forget to close a door to a room that has some cords on the floor and scatter rugs and the machine has gotten stuck several times. We haven’t tried the strip that came with it that tells it not to enter. Overall, we really love the convenience of this machine with 2 cats and a dog to pick up after. Our home has laminate flooring throughout. It does a great job at picking up, emptying as many times as needed and recharging. We haven’t needed to empty the big tank that everything gets sucked into yet.

Popping the IQ Robot out of the box found the IQ, Docking Station, side brushes and BotBoundry. Setup of the docking station and the IQ unit was remarkable easy, and APP installed smoothly. The APP is intuitive and straightforward, well writing program. Spoiler Alert – Running and watching the IQ was both fascinating and highly entertaining for the family. Reminded me of the movie “Batteries not Included” watching the robot run its program with the side brushes swishing round and round. Wife says it is cute, our Beagle much to my surprise could have cared less and did not give a second look. This being a Beagle who is highly vocal to anyone or anything around our home. Really Like: - Very gentle against the furniture and walls. - Quiet, very quiet does not interrupt watching TV like every other vacuum I have owned. - Efficient. - “Find Robot” button if you lose track of the IQ press the Find Robot button on the APP – will Jingle. 1st Run: Prepared home for the IQ by moving a few items and placing boundary strips where needed and started up IQ. Watched the IQ start its routine and was fascinated observing the progress as the IQ was “learning” the environment. At times it would pause, and I am sure it was running the program/algorithm analyzing collected data as it began to create its internal map. Could see right away that the IQ is a Smart device and from my observations the program appears to be well written and quickly adapting to the boundaries of the home. Each consecutive run the IQ has become quicker and the route becomes more efficient. For a techie this is cool stuff. On the first run the IQ filled up fairly quickly and returned to base and emptied debris, very “cute” watching the IQ return to base and dock. Subsequent runs did not require emptying until cleaning was completed. When empty moved off the dock played a musical jingle like it is letting you know and proud of itself then returned to finish vacuuming. In one room there is a large golf putting mat which the IQ navigated and cleaned as well as rugs throughout the home. Slowed and bumped into a couple larger Lego units gently, stored data point turned and went on its merry way. See Sand Crawler in Pic’s. Forgot about IQ while busy writing when I realized that I couldn’t hear or find the unit. Found it between a recliner and a wall with the use of the Find Robot button. Subsequent vacuuming the IQ apparently recalled the area and was able to vacuum the narrow angled area and continue. After completing first run and returning to docking base it did complete the docking but was slightly off. Next runs the dockings were accomplished successfully. 2nd run Much more familiar with the floor/obstacles with increased efficiency over 1st run. Forgot to block access to behind couch, where the IQ ran over wires and onto a spider glue trap. Wires survived but glue trap finally stopped IQ which audibly announced an error five. Pulled the very sticky spider trap easily away from the drive wheel and IQ was back on its way. A BotBoundry Strip corrected that issue. Cleaning Run two ran smoothly as well as the third run and the IQ continue to find more efficient paths. Cleaning; visually can see that both carpeted and hard floors have been well cleaned. For deeper carpets suggest running traditional vacuum occasionally for deeper cleaning of the carpet and edges along walls. If you run the IQ on a regular basis should find the need for deeper cleaning to lessen considerably. Docking Station: - Evacuates all debris from the IQ with each docking. - Charging ports located on either side of station base. - Clear side window for viewing debris in the container. - Base Dust Bin detaches easily and is very handy. No big surprise the IQ Robot being a current version of autonomous vacuums that it performs its tasks smoothly end efficiently utilizing advanced sensors data processing capabilities. Bottom-line, the IQ cleans exceptionally well and recommend it to all who like me would rather be doing something other than vacuuming. It is “Highly” Wife approved!