Most robot vacuum improvements are iterative—how can we pack a few more software features into the app? Can we make it a little smaller, or make it run for a little longer? A self-emptying bin, on the other hand, is life-changing.
In my two-kid, one-dog house, I can fill a standard 0.6-liter robot vacuum dustbin in a matter of minutes. It doesn’t matter how powerful or smart the little machine is if it runs out of bin space to pick up dirt. Until now, to get a self-emptying bin in a robot vacuum, you had to shell out almost four figures for one of iRobot’s top-of-the-line models.
But not anymore! Shark recently debuted its first smart vacuum, the Shark IQ, which has a self-emptying base. At $550, it’s less than half of the Roomba’s price.
Shark has a reputation for making decent, affordable robot vacuums. However, this is its first "smart" vacuum, and it shows. While the robot itself is a decent piece of hardware, the mapping software it uses to traverse your house is bonkers slow. The first unit Shark sent failed to develop a map beyond 22 percent completion after 18 runs, and after several runs, the second unit's map is still incomplete. For comparison, my house is 1,000 square feet, and most smart robot vacuums develop a complete map after around 3-5 runs.
But what are you going to do? I'd rather have a self-emptying bin than a smart map, hands down. If you're okay with longer run times, I still think the Shark IQ is a great pick.
The Shark IQ is a medium-sized robot vacuum. It stands 3.5 inches tall and about a foot wide, about an inch taller than the slim Eufy RoboVac 11S Max. If you get the self-emptying base, you won’t be able to store the robot vacuum under a couch, since it stands at 16 inches tall.
It took five hours to charge from 30 to 100 percent. On its first few cleaning runs, it took 40 minutes and 50 percent of the battery to clean 480 square feet. Not included in that time were the multiple stops and starts as it carefully tested the drop from my kitchen step, and bumped over a 10-centimeter rise to get into my bathroom.
Like many robot vacuums, it navigates via one optical sensor, four cliff sensors, and four bump sensors that occasionally collided with a couch leg or two. Because optical light sensors require light to navigate, it’s best to not run it at night in a dark and sleeping house (because you might get startled from the loud thunks as it bumps into your garbage can).