The Shark PowerDetect UV Reveal Robot Vacuum Showed Me Hidden Stains I Couldn't See – Then Swiftly Sanitized Them

The Shark PowerDetect UV Reveal robot vacuum uses unique technology to show you just how dirty your floors really are. It's the dream for anybody passionate about immaculate floors.

It has many of the same capabilities as the best robot vacuums available, but the added UV light helps identify and clean even the toughest stains, and ones you might not have known were lingering on your floor.

The Shark PowerDetect UV Reveal is certainly one of the more expensive options out there, but its unique features are genuinely useful, and its cleaning power is outstanding. It’s certainly not without its flaws, however.

One-Minute Summary

The Shark PowerDetect UV Reveal is designed for those who have an extra passion for clean floors. Most robot vacuums will clean the floors well, but the PowerDetect UV Reveal will actually show you the dirt and stains you can’t see as it cleans them.

Like most high-end robot vacuum cleaners, it will both vacuum and mop your floors, but I particularly appreciate how the mop actually scrubs the floor instead of simply dragging the mop pad around, as many less expensive robots do. The mop pad on the PowerDetect UV Reveal vibrates back and forth and can even extend out to the sides for robust corner cleaning.

The docking station empties the dustbin and washes the mop automatically, and I enjoy the included odor neutralizer that keeps the dirty mop water from smelling too strong when it’s time to empty.

It navigates the house well after the initial mapping run, and I was impressed with how high the body lifts up to overcome obstacles like moving from my hardwood living room to the tile kitchen. Shark’s 'NeverStuck Technology' certainly lives up to its name.

It’s not perfect, though. It’s a bit noisier than other robot vacuums I’ve tested, and its performance on carpet is less than spectacular. It also can’t map more than one floor, so if you want a multi-level cleaner, I'd recommend the Dreame Aqua10 Ultra Roller.

It’s also expensive. $1,299 is a high price for a robot vacuum when there are plenty of other models, such as the eufy X10 Pro Omni, that will clean your floors well for much less. Features like the UV detection and NeverStuck are good for pet owners or young families with lots of spills, but you’ll have to decide if it's worth the investment.

Shark PowerDetect UV Reveal: Specifications

Shark PowerDetect UV Reveal: Setup

The setup process is similar to that of almost every robot vacuum. You take everything out of the box, assemble it all, and connect everything through the app.

The box was well packaged, but I was a bit disappointed in the lack of extra parts. Shark includes one bottle of cleaning solution, which is good for one water tank, and an extra side brush, but every other robot vacuum I’ve tested has come with several spare parts.

Setting up the app took a bit longer than I expected. It took three tries for it to find my Wi-Fi and connect to it, and I was quite close to the router during setup. The process is thankfully quite simple, with only a few screens to go through, and that was the only issue I experienced during setup, but it wasn’t quite as seamless as I’ve seen previously when adding a robot vacuum to my smart home setup.

Mapping my house was fairly straightforward, and I was impressed with how well it detected my furniture. Once it has a map, you can split or merge rooms, but I couldn’t find a way to manually adjust the borders once they're set, something I appreciate about the Roborock Saros Z70. Oddly, it did ask me to remove the mop pad before doing the initial mapping, but it’s easy to reattach, so it wasn't an issue.

Shark PowerDetect UV Reveal: Design and Features

As the name suggests, the flagship feature of the PowerDetect UV Reveal is the UV light included in the front sensors. This is the first robot vacuum in the industry we've seen with a built-in UV light and is the stark upgrade from the Shark PowerDetect 2-in-1 that we tested and loved last year.

The PowerDetect UV Reveal is a little taller than some others to accommodate the UV light. There are three touch buttons on top for sending it to vacuum, mop, or return to the dock, along with the housing for the mapping sensors.

The front is where the UV light, cameras, and other sensors live that help it detect stains and navigate the house. The back is where it docks to the station to self-empty water tank and dust bin.

Underneath the vacuum lies everything you’d expect – the brushes, wheels, and mop pad – and something you might not: LED lights. The PowerDetect UV Reveal has a set of LED lights underneath that change colors depending on what it’s doing. A blue light indicates that it’s detected a stain, purple means it’s increasing suction to pick up extra dirt, and white means it's operating as normal.

You can turn both the UV light and the colored light modes off if you want, change how frequently it washes the mop pad, and set how long the mop pad should dry between uses.

While cleaning, the PowerDetect UV Reveal did an outstanding job of avoiding obstacles and cleaning the floors quickly and efficiently. It moves a bit faster than some other vacuums I’ve tested, but I didn’t notice it leaving behind dust.

The stain targeting features on the PowerDetect UV Reveal are quite impressive. When cleaning stains, it will ramp up the mopping power and circle around to target the stain area head-on. It essentially draws a box around the stain and traverses back and forth across it to make sure it’s thoroughly cleaned. The only downside is that it has to return to the dock before it comes to target the stain, but it still does a great job of it.

While vacuuming, the DecibelX app showed 66 decibels and when cleaning in the dock it showed 72 – a similar noise level to standing on a quiet street. I recommend running it during the day when everyone is out of the house.

The Shark Clean app is fairly straightforward and easy to use. You can start and end cleans across the whole house, specific rooms, or even individual stains. You can create schedules and edit the map, too.

I do wish it gave you more options for editing the map of your home, for instance, you can’t identify furniture or curtains or even adjust the room boundaries once they're set, but it still works well.

I also didn’t see anything in the app to indicate water levels or conditions of the brushes, which is a little disappointing. Even trying to purchase extra accessories through the app can be frustrating because the Shop tab takes you to the Shark homepage. I struggled to find any of the accessories, like an extra cleaning solution, anywhere on the site.

The app is also lacking some key features, such as forcing a cleaning of the vacuum or manually checking for software updates. I never experienced any issues with the app, but it's a little light on features. The Dreame Aqua10 Ultra Roller, however, provides more customization in comparison.

The docking station houses the two water tanks, along with the air freshener capsule, which is a welcome touch to reduce odors that emanate from the dirty tank.

As with most high-end robot vacuums, the dock handles emptying and cleaning the vacuum, so you shouldn’t have to interact with it until it's time for any robot vacuum maintenance.

Speaking of the dock, another unique feature of the PowerDetect UV Reveal is that, unlike most other self-cleaning robot vacuums, it does not use bags to collect the dust and dirt. There's just a large bin on the side of the dock where all the grime collects that you empty straight into the trash can. I appreciate it because while you might have to rinse it out every so often, it's one less extra accessory you have to buy.

Shark PowerDetect UV Reveal: Vacuuming

I ran our standardized vacuuming tests on the PowerDetect UV Reveal to try to get a good feel for its vacuuming capabilities. I ran the tests on hardwood and thick rugs. I tested the vacuuming capabilities using sugar, lentils, and cereal to represent fine, medium, and large debris.

The PowerDetect UV Reveal had no problems picking up the sugar, although there was some left over in the grooves of my tile floors, however every robot vacuum I've tested has had the same issue.

When I went back over it on a higher suction mode, it picked it up. Sadly, there is no option to choose a higher suction mode for spot cleanings; you can only do so for room or whole-home cleanings.

The lentils were picked up just as easily as the sugar. And, of course, since they are larger, they didn't get stuck in the grooves of the tile. The PowerDetect UV Reveal was able to pick up all the lentils along the edge of the wall with no problems as well.

The cereal was the hardest one to get, but it still performed better than I expected. It missed a few on the first pass, but picked up the rest on a second pass. It did also drop a small bunch of crushed up cereal in front of the dock as it was returning, but picked it up as it went for the second pass.

Vacuuming the same materials on soft flooring demonstrated similarly strong performance. I was impressed with how easily it picked up all three materials. It picked up the sugar on the first pass with no issues.

The lentils were picked up easily on the first pass, too. None were pushed around or spread out as it vacuumed, and it only took a couple of minutes to clean the whole area. For cleaning carpets daily, this is outstanding performance.

The PowerDetect UV Reveal also did an impressive job with the cereal. I was expecting it to push more of them around and leave quite a few more on the first pass than it did. It still took two passes to get all of it, but for smaller messes or just a few pieces it will do quite well.

In my two weeks of testing, I never had to manually clean the rollers due to pet hair or human hair being stuck in them and it certainly cut my need to manually vacuum by 80-90%.

Shark PowerDetect UV Reveal: Mopping

I used our standardized ketchup and mustard tests to vet the PowerDetect UV Reveal's mopping abilities across messes with different properties.

I used the spot cleaning mode for both messes, and the first thing I noticed was that there is no option to increase the intensity of the mopping during spot cleaning. When the vacuum first got to the stain, it seemed to evaluate the mess, then began cleaning very methodically.

It would roll over part of the mess, then stop and proceed to scrub the mop pad back and forth over where it sat to ensure the ketchup was cleaned up. It repeated this process across the entire area where the ketchup was.

It took about 20 minutes to clean the entire area, but it was done incredibly thoroughly. There was no ketchup or smears anywhere in the area.

The mustard was a bit tougher. Mustard is a thicker and oilier substance than ketchup, and it took two attempts to get it fully cleaned.

One thing to note is that sometimes the dock may not automatically wash the mop pad after a clean, particularly if it was a spot clean. The dock doesn't seem to be able to detect if the pad is dirty enough to require cleaning; it seems to judge it based on the time spent mopping.

In order to force the dock to wash the mop pad, I had to send it to mop an entire room and refill the clean water tank to full. As of publish time, an option to force the mop to the dock to clean it in the app was not available, although there may be software updates to allow that option in the future.

Overall, this is a thorough solution to mopping your floors daily, without having to do so yourself.

Shark PowerDetect UV Reveal: Maintenance

One of the benefits of paying for a higher-end robot vacuum is that they come with self-cleaning features that minimize your maintenance effort.

After each clean, the PowerDetect UV Reveal returns to the dock where it empties the dustbin and thoroughly cleans the mop pad. You can even customize how often the mop pad gets washed during a cleaning cycle and how long you want it to dry between cleans.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t automatically sense when the mop needs cleaning, which is why you need to set those cleaning cycles yourself, but that’s not a deal breaker for me. The default interval is 15 minutes, and I found that to be adequate during my testing.

The tanks are easy to empty and fill, and it manages water use well. When emptying the mop water and the dust bin, the integrated odor neutralizer was very welcome as it kept them from ever acquiring foul smells from all the dirt and grime.

The Shark Clean app seems to be somewhat unreliable when it comes to notifying you when parts are wearing out. Regularly checking the brushes when cleaning your robot vacuum is a good habit to get into.

Overall, as with most self-cleaning robot vacuums, the maintenance is minimal. You’ll need to empty and refill the water bins every two weeks or so, depending on how often you clean, while Shark claims the dustbin can go up to 60 days without emptying. After two weeks of testing, there’s still plenty of room left in my bin, so Shark's claims appear to be accurate.

How Does the Shark PowerDetect UV Reveal Compare?

The Shark PowerDetect UV Reveal proved highly effective at vacuuming and mopping, outperforming many robots we've vetted at Homes & Gardens. Its unique UV feature is genuinely useful, even if it isn't necessarily essential. It costs $1,299 at SharkNinja at full price, but is often discounted to around $950.

Our best-on-test robot, the Dreame Aqua10 Roller, does a better job at mopping and navigating, it’s quieter, and it can handle multiple levels in your home, but it costs $1,599.99 at Dreame at full price.

At the more affordable end of the spectrum, the eufy Omni S1 Pro is one of our favorite robot vacuums, and as it's been succeeded, it's often available for as low as $699.99 at eufy. It's the best we've tested on pet hair, pulling more from carpets than a full-sized canister vacuum.

The Yeedi S20 Infinity isn’t the most durable vacuum out there, but for $999.99 on Amazon (and often discounted to as low as $799.99), it has some of the strongest cleaning capabilities for the price.

How I Tested the Shark PowerDetect UV Reveal

We have a rigorous approach to how we test vacuums to ensure that every review is thorough, honest, and comprehensive.

I tested the Shark PowerDetect UV Reveal in my home, which I share with my partner, two small children, and a dog, for about two weeks. I used it daily to vacuum and mop my floors, in addition to testing specifically with sugar, lentils, cereal, ketchup, and mustard.

Next, discover which vacuums top our guides of the best vacuums for pet hair and the best Miele vacuums, after our robust testing sessions.

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