The good: I really wanted to give this little guy 5 stars. Because we have a couple of very vulnerable people in our family I dismissed our former cleaning service when COVID came to town and never started them up again. I purchased this bot from Amazon on sale during the pre-Christmas sales. It replaced a cheaper robot, which failed miserably. This robot may not get every single bit of crumb and hair on its first go-around, but it works very well. The routes it creates are logical, making parallel sweeps that align to the walls. It neatly goes around the legs of furniture, returning accurately to the path it was on before it met the obstacle. It does a reasonably good job each time it is run. I found that by running it daily for a few weeks and then 2 or 3 times per week it kept my floors looking quite nice. (I have no pets or small children. If I did have either one I would probably maintain the daily use.) The good: The bot has no problem getting up close to the irregular line of our natural stone basalt fireplace. It wiggles along the edge going in and out and cleans this area of dust and such very well. In fact, the bot does better than I did with the vacuum and better than the housekeepers did. It doesn't care how long it takes. Obviously, people-based cleaning involves beings that do care how long this process takes. Same for other irregular surfaces. The bot goes in and out as long as it takes. For our finely crafted mid-century house, this is a really big deal. The Good: The built in cliff-avoidance works very well. In 4 months the bot has not gone over an edge even once. In our mid-century house there are not only stairs, but also other drop-offs that look really nice but would probably not be allowed with current codes. The good: This little bot is much quieter than expected. Naturally there is the noise created by the air going through it, but there is very little actual motor noise. Usually when it is working I am working at something else in a nearby room. It makes just enough noise that I can tell where it is, but not enough that it distracts me from what I am doing, and not enough noise to wake those sleeping in the next room. The good: I did not bother with the app because I have oriental rugs with fringes that must be picked up prior to running the robot. I also choose to put the chairs up out of the way so the dining room floor gets really clean. In bedrooms I do a quick check to be sure there are no socks on the floor, etc. Scheduling therefore makes little sense. However, the bot works very nicely without the app. For those who want no app, this will work beautifully. I find that it was best to use the bot to clean half of our main floor, let it recharge, then clean the other half. This is something that the app would not support. If you have a larger house, or multiple levels, this is a really good thing. I actually have 3 very separate areas that are cleaned by the bot and the app would only be useful for one of them, as it only stores 1 map. The app-less cleaning is done quite logically and the entire floor in each room of each area is cleaned reasonably well. As noted below, small bits may be missed, but with regular use my floors are clean to look at. A fairly significant amount of dust and debris are picked up every time the bot is run. The bad and the ugly: Corners are a real problem for the bot. Once in a while you need to get your finger into a wet paper towel to clean out the accumulating guck in the corners. However, the same is true when I vacuum with a conventional vacuum. It was also true when I had maid service clean the floors monthly (only then it was their fingers in the paper towel, rather than mine.) Also there is sometimes a bit of stuff left. For instance, after cookie making with small children, if the bot is put in the kitchen and the doors closed so it can clean up the flour on the floor, there may be a place or two where a bit of flour remains. Run the bot again and it will get that last bit, or just wipe it up. I see this as a minor issue, but a real one. The really bad and ugly: Unfortunately, Shark has dozens of models that are very similar with different model numbers. Even more unfortunately, your model number reflects the place where you purchased the bot, not the bot itself. Your model number is virtually useless in trying to find the right replacement parts. Third party parts are often ill-fitting or poorly made and the shark site is of no help in locating your actual model from the model on the bottom of the machine. However, the online chat person or the call-back support are quite helpful and very fast. More bad and ugly: The model number on the box of the one we purchased was different from the model number on the bot and also different from the model number on the enclosed documentation. The instructions in the manual did not match actual parts on the bot. Even the instructions on the bot did not match the configuration of the bot. For instance, there is a figure on the bot suggesting that a circular filter be cleaned regularly. Problem? Filter does not exist, and no place it could fit. If one were to attempt putting a filter into the area adjacent to the figure it would cover the window where you are supposed to be able to see the level of the dirt in the collector. (Not that big a deal, though, because the plastic "window" is so darkly tinted that nothing can be seen through it anyway.) Using the mis-matched manual requires a bit of flexibility. If, for instance, you know that you need to pinch something and pull, the fact that the tabs mentioned do not exist, you can find something else to grab and pull. This has worked fairly well, though not without a bit of annoyance on my part. It would be nice if there was a bit of labeling to indicate just where something should be grabbed to dis-assemble for cleaning or replacing filters. Putting the actual part number on the replaceable parts would also be a really great idea. More bad and ugly: This is probably a petty gripe. However, for those of us who must use the bot without the app, a key part of this process is to turn the machine off while moving it, then on again to begin cleaning or to send the bot to its port. It would be a really nice convenience if the on/off switch were put on the top where it would be visible and easily reached rather than recessed on the side. Turning off the moving bot is a bit of a chore. If it were recessed on the top it would be quite easy to use a cane or broomstick to knock the rocker switch one way or the other. The instruction manual clearly states that one should not pick up the bot until after it is turned off, but turning it off first requires a bit of a circus act, following the bot, locating the switch and pushing it without triggering the thing to take off in another direction (the camera sees you and that alters the path). Overall, I would recommend this product for a person who is willing to live with its flaws. I am happy with the cleanliness of my floors, it takes less than 4 minutes for me to ready the dining room for cleaning (12 chairs, 2 oriental carpets to move) and less than a minute to check other rooms for cords, dropped items, etc. Then it takes the bot about 30 to 45 minutes for each of the separate areas. During its cleaning time I almost never need to do anything related to the cleaning process. I do clean the dust bin every time I clean, a process that takes only seconds. About once a month I clean the dust trap on the bot itself. That process can take anywhere from 2 minutes to 5 minutes depending on what is there. If the bot picks up a straw or paper clip, more stuff gets stuck to that obstruction and the lint can pile up. At any rate, I spend considerably less time on this process than I would spend cleaning with a vacuum (which has its own quirks) and the bot is actually more thorough than I would be, spending about 2 to 3 times as long in actual cleaning than I would.
