Shark AV993 IQ Robot Vacuum, Self Cleaning Brushroll, Advanced Navigation, Perfect for Pet Hair, Compatible with Alexa, Wi Fi , Black

Disclaimer: This is the first robot vacuum I’ve had, so I don’t have a lot of experience to compare to. That being said, this thing picks up all of the cat hair, all of the dog hair, all of the dust bunnies, and all of the random things that end up on the floor like dryer lint, grass from our shoes, crumbs…it hasn’t missed anything yet.

My expectations weren’t very high honestly, I mostly just wanted it because even if it did an awful job, I could still take a day off of swiffering…and there’s an off chance my cat might ride it, so those were my hopes and dreams for this. So far I’ve taken almost all of the days since we’ve had it off from swiffering, but no luck yet on the cat riding it 🙁

With two cats (medium hair) and two dogs (medium hair), one of which ‘stress sheds,’ there’s hair. On everything. Everywhere. It collects in all the corners and crannies into little hair tumbleweeds so that when you move something they go a’ rolling across the floor. No hair tumbleweeds with this thing.

My husband is really allergic to cats and we have 2 of them. He’s on a ridiculous regimen of allergy meds, inhalers, backup allergy meds, etc. It honestly didn’t occur to me when I bought this that it might really help alleviate his allergies by constantly picking up the pet hair and dander. We haven’t had it long enough to tell that for sure, but less hair/dander = less allergies? We’ll see.

We have one basically blind, basically deaf, manageable dementia, heart failure dog, then we have a very nervous tempered terrier mix, she’s scared of everything, then one cat that’s terrified of anything new and the other cat is an agent of chaos, he thrives when everything is haywire. Within just about a week, and running it once a day, everyone except our ‘terrified of everything’ cat, seems pretty used to it. It’s bumped into the dogs a few times and that freaks them out a little, and once it bumped the cat from behind when he wasn’t paying attention. Wish I had a video for that, he jumped straight up, landed touching the timid cat who then also jumped straight up, which prompted the original jumper to jump again. It was a 3-fer high jump. Hilarious. But overall they ignore it now, so hopefully he’ll ride it instead of getting goosed by it.

Last night our sick dog had an accident (pee) in the hallway. Well, we’d had the robot running prior to the peeing, so when the robot went to its dock, it went right over the puddle and then parked. I looked online for the make/model in troubleshooting articles and none listed my model number. I wanted to know how bad it was that it went through water, and how/what parts I needed to clean (since it was dog pee, not water), and if there was anything I should keep an eye on for issues related to it going through water. No luck because my model number isn’t included in any troubleshooting articles on their website. One of them that was similar to mine would most likely work, but it’s kinda crappy that there isn’t one that specifically includes mine. So we did the best job cleaning it and all of its exposed parts that we could, and hopefully that means it’ll be ok.

If it helps with my husbands tons of allergies, and gives me back hours a week that I should be spending napping/day drinking/playing , I’m ecstatic.

I’m already ordering more of the border strip, it really does work (!), it’s kind of great. Just unroll it, cut to measure (all the way to the edges), to clean it – just wipe it down with a moist paper towel, it’s just a heavy magnetic strip. The robot bumps into it, follows it for the length, ‘feeling’ the edges, then moves on.

It’s only gotten stuck twice, once on a cat toy, the other was when it got lost under the couch because the cat was blocking the exit.

Would definitely recommend and use again!

App is terrible, eg, you have to exit and re-enter to get notifications. And very little useful functionality. Mapping is very poor. I had to measure 2 rooms myself and add/merge them on to this machine’s map. Battery not great. But, it seems to vacuum very well, elevating it where it counts.