Shark AI Robot Vacuum with Self Cleaning Brushroll

By way of full disclosure, we are using this primarily on hardwood and tile floors. Though it did reasonably well the one little room with a medium pile carpet. We bought this in full expectation of returning it because our need is challenging and the reviews were lackluster. We specifically got one of the smallest width ones because we wanted it to do under our dining room table and the chair rear legs have a narrow gap. I take the thing out of the box and find it is still and 1/8" too wide. Argh! I figure this thing is going back. I charge it up and read the manual. It looks pretty impressive. I figure give a little try, if it doesn't impress, clean it and return it. It heads out of the dock and works over to two dining room chairs backed up against a cabinet. It fiddles around a bit and finally works into the front of the chair and then proceeds to clean under both chairs and come out. I am thinking if I flip a chair up on the table at night it will get under the table and work fine. We have two major challenges that we want to solve with this thing. First, we suffered a rain/flood/mudslide doing $94K of damage to our home. We are in a constant construction zone with mud and gravel getting tracked in. It's embarassing. I am tired of going to get a cookie at night and stepping on a sharp little rock. Second one of us is a world class quilter/knitter/spinner. We have fiber and thread everywhere! So we want it for that every night. How does it work? Some people say the robots bang into everything. Well maybe, but this one is pretty gentle about it. It does touch but gingerly. It almost knocked over a verticle standing umbrella against the wall, but it didn't. While eating dinner it bumped my toes. The side brushes softly swirled over them, it touched and moved away. I sincerely doubt this could hurt any furniture or woodwork. I don't know what the algorithm they use, but it is pretty good. It wiggles back and forth, spins and turns and goes right through gaps barely larger than it is. It moves semi-randomly. The deal is it pretty much covers the whole 800 sq ft area we are using it on three times on a charge. I did find one space with a narrow entry and getting larger turning counter clockwise can form a trap as can chairs set with a simular opening. It required a little changing of room and furniture spacing. Generally it needs an exit opening the size of a door to exit on any floor space 4 feet square or larger. I am becoming optomistic. I follow it around. It got almost everything. When it went by a storage tub that our daughter's cat food got under it flipped out about 10 pieces, I figured game over. But no, it got all but one and caught that latter on. When I asked it to go back to the dock it fiddled around cleaning as it went. Finally it hadn't sensed the base, so it stopped and spun around 360°, moved forward and did it again. Finally it got a beam on the dock and did a little wiggle step accross the floor to the base. When you hit spot clean it does a circle around the spot where it is working. It gets a 2 foot circle. As for cleaning. I would say it get 98% of the dirt and fiber. It does poorly over rough door mats and gaps in the floor. I ran for an hour and docked it so I could finish other tasks. Then I let it run a full clean. The pictures show the results. It has no problems with small rocks, probably 1/2" long or less. It gets in all the fiber. The first pictures shows you how it packed the box. The second one is after removing the fiber leaving the rocks. It does an excellent job. At this point I am sold on it. Noise is an issue for some of you. We were stunned how quiet it is. I have never heard any vacuum, hand held or otherwise, that was this quiet. We are on the phone with our daughter telling her about it and she says, "I would be afraid to frighten my cat." I said, "Can you hear it?" She said, "No." It was working three feet from the phone. We had to hold the phone right over it for her to hear. It is noisier than our Bosch dishwasher at 45 db, quieter than our refrigerator ice maker, a little loader than the HVAC system and maybe half as loud as a sewing machine. It is so quiet we are going to schedule it for 3:00 AM every night and our bedroom door stays open. It worked fine in the dark. I guess the base homing could be better. Over all it was what QA people call, delighting the customer. Way above our expectations, and at this price a bargain. After two weeks you could not pay me to live without it. Clean floors every morning! We have created some narrow areas where it got trapped. Our soon to be replaced carpet turns out is shag carpet that is very matted. It started loosening it up and got one of the spinner brushes caught in it. We keep it out of there now. Long threads do wrap around the brush roll and have to be removed every few days.