Review on Shark AV2001WD Self Cleaning Brushroll Navigation by Michael Staton

I bought the Shark Vacmop Pro RV2001WD after a not so positive experience with the Roborock S6 Pure (see my separate review of this device). These two devices have comparable characteristics. I didn't like the setup of the Shark app. I ended up calling their tech support multiple times. I received the wrong information, I was transferred to the wrong department and so on. One thing was true though: I was told the application was "in development" and it shows. This is very similar to the 1.0 product. (For later reference, if you need to remove the card, please factory reset the robot cleaner. I had to do this several times.) I confess that I was spoiled by the Roborock app and the card function. Shark has nothing like it. Although the Shark app eventually works, it shows everything in monochromatic gray. I was told I had about 18 rooms (ha ha ha!) but some of them were only three square meters. This is the first run. The second pass was designed to detect carpets, but the resulting samples didn't look like rooms and looked like a crazy X-acto robotic knife had broken out! The resulting map was completely gray with all sorts of labels/tags and no indication of what they meant. I ended up removing all the room and carpeting and doing it again by hand. Although the cards can be edited, the editing function is sensitive and not intuitive. It is possible to create no-go zones, and they are necessary because the shark's object detection/avoidance is not as good as that of the cleaning robot. roborock. First look at the size of the suction opening in the first two pictures. While Shark extends the length of the roller brush and sweeps debris horizontally in a suction airflow, the Roborock suction port is located at the top of the roller brush cavity and is so small it could be covered by three quarters of a George Washington! It also means the Roborock has to lift dirt an inch or two vertically, which requires a lot more power (and it doesn't work very well). I did a performance test comparing Shark Vacmop Pro RV2001WD and Roborock S6 Pure. . Both devices were set to maximum for the test. I used both devices alternately for a week before starting this test. In one day I ran four cleaning cycles, Roborock-Shark-Roborock-Shark, one after the other to allow the batteries to recharge before the second cleaning cycle started. The results were shocking. I weighed the dirt in each vacuum's dust box with a bar scale and weighed the chamber before and after vacuuming (both cleaned before each test). See photos showing dirt collected with each cleaning pass. Walkthrough #1 Roborock: 2.6 grams #2 Shark: 6.0 grams Pass #3 Roborock: 1.3 grams Pass #4 Shark: 3.0 grams Even though Shark was removed right *after* Roborock, Shark drew in both cases twice as much dirt as the roborock before! The next morning I did a third pair of passes and the pattern repeated (there was so little dirt in the roborock I couldn't weigh it). to sweep the dirt horizontally into the suction air flow (vertical lifting of the dirt is not possible). This is a Roborock design flaw that cannot be fixed with a battery powered vacuum cleaner. Wall mounted vacuums produce a massive amount of vacuum compared to these robot vacuums, and the cleaning brushes are larger and powered by much more powerful motors. The Shark has a fine plastic mesh in front of the air filter. This filter catches most of the fine dust particles so they don't clog the air filter. It's good. See photos. The bad news, however, is that the screen is attached with a screw, so you'll either need a tool to remove it to clean it, or use compressed air to blow off the dust/dirt. Use your fingers (or whatever) to pry out the carpet lint/pet hair stuck above the mesh screen. Unlike the Roborock, you can simply tap the small dust chamber on the side of the bin to remove most of the dirt. Finally, the Shark battery is only 2600mAh compared to Roborock's 5200mAh battery. The shark barely had time to finish cleaning (10% left). On a positive note, the Shark has the ability to charge up and continue. So when it runs out of charge, it returns to the dock, charges up, and then continues cleaning where it left off. I tried this and it seemed to work when the battery level was around 30%. So the Shark Vacmop Pro RV2001WD is a solidly constructed device with very poor software. It needs a larger battery and an improved dust box design to make it easier to empty.