Shark AV2501AE AI Robot Vacuum with XL HEPA Self-Empty Base, Bagless, 60-Day Capacity, LIDAR Navigation, Perfect for Pet Hair, Compatible with Alexa, Wi-Fi Connected, Carpet & Hard Floor, Black

The robot just finished mapping the two rooms where it will be used and is now doing its first cleaning. It is considerably quieter than any vacuum I have ever owned. Its ability to navigate the house is better than my own; Im old. We got it because our two long hair, indoor cats somehow got fleas and an important part of the considerable effort required to rid the house of them is frequent vacuuming. I will update this review as I gain experience. So far, as I watch it clean, it has picked up every bit of visible cat hair and dirt. Fabulous so far.

I love that it empties itself out. It maps out the area and cleans anything it can get under. This has a hepa filter which is also a bonus. I have a service dog that does not shed and wears boots... she has a friend that always sheds. This shark picks up all the sand and fur that her friend drags in with her. This dont replace vacuums (get a mop and vac combo) but it is great for getting under the bed!

We have had this vacuum for awhile now and it works pretty well. Its a great alternitive for sweeping. The mopping function also works well and even with having to swap out parts and adding water its still better than traditional mopping. We have two cats that make hair a constant problem. Running this every other day makes the hair go away. It works better on tile than carpet but still not bad on carpet

The app isn’t as nice as the roomba app, you can’t schedule cleaning multiple times a day. Or use it in other levels of a home. Hopefully Shark will improve the app soon. But other than that this beats my roomba in every other way. Quieter, more efficient, better mapping, less bumping and scuffing. It never gets lost, stuck or quits at a cliff. The whiskers spin slower so they don’t fling things around. The rollers don’t fill with dog hair and need cleaned every week and I have yet to come home and find it uncharged, hidden under a sofa and not on the dock. I did not think I’d like the auto empty feature but I do, very much. And I like that it’ll empty midway thru cleaning and go back to work. So much less dust when I don’t have to empty the tiny bin daily. I just wish these things cleaned pet hair just a little bit better and it’d almost replace my upright or stick vac….but that’s just not the case. But it helps.

This robot arrived a few days ago and I promptly set it up. It had no problem connecting to my eero mesh wifi, which supports 2.4 ghz as well as higher bands. The app setup was easy, and it did a good job mapping the floor. Then I sent it off to clean. The first time through I had to manually pull out all the hair and dust that it accumulated, despite using the setting to evacuate and resume which is supposed to empty itself more frequently. After that it has empted itself fine, and collected a TON of debris. One issue with the robot itself, I picked this model because the self cleaning brushroll was supposed to avoid getting tangled with hair, which is the bane of my existence with my upright vacuum. But no, I have to manually remove hair from the brushroll. Fortunately this is fairly easy to do. Other issue is with the app. There is an extended clean setting where it is supposed to just keep going and going until it has to recharge itself. But this setting would not turn on. I contacted support and they said they would have to perform a firmware update. This happened automagically and the next afternoon the setting worked fine. I wish there was a simple option to relocate the dock in case we decide to move it, but it appears that I will have to delete the map and run through the explore cycle again to do so. I think it is very dumb that you cant map multiple floors with different home locations if you want to relocate the dock to another floor and have it focus on that floor for a day or so. I put it in my basement but the layout is very different and it will clean awhile but eventually get lost. Also that carpet is pretty new and theres a lot of carpet fibers that need to be vacuumed, and it keeps getting clogged and the brushroll is covered in hair and carpet. Once I go through it a few times it should be easy to maintain, but its a pain to start, especially without an accurate map. Why not give the ability to map different floors? Seems like a reasonable feature to add. Overall giving it 4/5 because of the issues noted above, but it seems to work very well and the self-emptying feature is pretty great.

I had bought a similar knockoff robovac and it worked well. The problem is that we have a dog, a Corgi to be precise. She sheds like shes allergic to fur. The other vac had a tiny compartment for holding waste, the dog hair would clog it up quickly. The new one is much better. Not only can it hold more, it can empty itself. We also have the Shark NV752 Rotator upright vacuum. The combination of the two is very effective at handling pet hair. The old robovac is now cleaning my garage shop. The kind of waste it has to handle makes it well suited for the task, and I dont have to sweep the garage and laundry area out every weekend. Update - 7-3-2022. This is the second time the robot has been bumped away from its base charger. After allowing it to charge overnight it now has forgotten its Map, Rooms, and Zones. Whats the point of having this thing connect to a phone or iPad if it cant reload those things once it reconnects? It should also have a non-volatile memory on board to store that information. I also have to have an account with Shark to use the app. Apparently its just too much trouble to store the setting on the company servers. Its a tedious process having this thing explore the house again. I have to let it go everywhere in the house (in one trip) except in rooms we dont want it to go (like the bathrooms for instance). Then, I get to create the Rooms all over again and create the No-Go areas again. Overall its still worth having the vacuum, but not at its current price. You should be able to fix this issue through programming and a firmware update (if it even does that).

Love the features in the app. You can label rooms, map out “no-go” areas. You can set it up to empty when it’s full, even if it’s in the middle of a cleaning; if the battery runs low in the middle of a cleaning, it will return to the base to charge and pick up where it left off as soon as it’s charged. Very hands off! The only down side is you can only select specific rooms if you manually start. You can’t set a schedule by room. I would love to run it every day and do certain rooms on certain days. But in the scheduler, you can’t choose certain rooms, but a time and it’s runs all of the rooms.

I love this robot. It is less noisy than a regular vacuum except when it empties (which is a short amount of time). I couldn’t believe all the dirt it picked up the first time I used it.

I have mixed feelings about this robot, who we named Hank (you are supposed to name him for the app). I find him to be quieter than a regular vacuum, and the suction in normal mode is very good. Our carpets and hardwood floors get very clean. However, he seems to suffer from some form of dementia. We have had him map our very small 1-story home twice, have labeled the rooms that we want cleaned. He starts out great. Does the living room, moves on to the bedroom, and begins the kitchen. So far so good. At around this point he goes back to the dock to empty himself. He then returns to where he was in the kitchen.....and then quits the kitchen and meanders into the living room and goes back over a section he has already done, wanders over by the front door and spends a minute or two going over that area again, goes in circles for a short time, and returns to do the kitchen again. About 10 minutes after emptying, he apparently remembers that there is a dining room. He does the dining room. He then returns to the living room for the third time and moves with a lack of pattern over areas he has already done twice. He may revisit the kitchen for a third time. Left alone, he will eventually return to the dock and be done, but we get tired of avoiding him (if we stand in front of him he apparently thinks his map now has a new wall, and he is clueless enough without adding that) and we just say ok good enough Hank, and instruct him via the app to go back to the dock and stop. This robot would likely work well if he were run while nobody was home so he can backtrack and circle and redo till his battery runs out (assuming he doesnt have some sort of error code at some point). I am not sure what the AI in his name refers to, but the I is presumably not for intelligence. I might suggest looking elsewhere.

So far Im loving this. It does a much better job than I expected it to. Its mapped the house and just goes about its business. It does take awhile, but worth it.