Shark PowerDetect UV Reveal review: A robot that hunts hidden stains

Price When Reviewed

$1,299.99

Best Prices Today: Shark PowerDetect UV Reveal

$1,299.99

$1299.99

$1299.99

In my house, we clean our hard floors in two different ways. Spills and stains get handled right away by hand, usually with a paper towel or rag and some all-purpose cleaner. For the grime of daily living, we use a Swiffer-style mop to keep the laminate looking presentable.

The problem is both these methods tend to leave behind residue that you don’t realize is there until you feel it underfoot or notice it collecting dust, crumbs, and pet hair.

This is exactly the problem the Shark PowerDetect UV Reveal 2-In-1 Vac & Mop is designed to solve. Its UV Stain Detect feature uses UV light to find those messes you can’t see with the naked eye. If you feel your best floor-cleaning efforts still leave something to be desired, it’s an invaluable helper to have on hand.

Shark PowerDetect UV Reveal: Design and setup

The Shark PowerDetect UV Reveal comes with an 18.15 x 14.3 x 17.5-inch dock, which Shark calls the NeverTouch Pro Base. It empties the robot’s dustbin into a bagless debris container, refills its water tank, and washes its mop pad between runs. The clean-water tank holds 2.74 liters, while the dirty-water tank holds 1.18 liters, and the robot itself carries 0.21 liters of clean water at a time. That gives the system enough capacity to clean and refresh the mop pad without constant refilling, but it also means the base needs an ample parking spot with enough clearance for the robot to come and go.

Michael Ansaldo/Foundry

The UV Reveal won’t disappear into your décor, but Shark has at least made it easier to leave in the open. The Luxe Collection color options — Espresso, Evergreen, Deep Harbor, and Ivory — help the base look warmer and less appliance-like than the glossy black-and-white docks that usually accompany robot vacuums, although Shark offers the UV Reveal in black and white models as well.

Once you find a spot for the base, you connect the robot to your Wi-Fi via the SharkClean app, fill the clean-water tank, and send it on a mapping run so it can learn the layout of your home. The map it created of my space was mostly accurate. I just had to split a couple of rooms and then add room names, which took only a minute or two.

The SharkClean app keeps operation simple. Your home’s map is displayed on the home screen, with clear tabs for whole-home cleaning, room cleaning, and spot cleaning, and a big Clean button. Map editing, no-go zones, and scheduling are all easy to find, and the settings menu gives you control over things like Stain Lights, pad wash frequency, robot sounds, notification volume, and Do Not Disturb. The app isn’t packed with charts or deep cleaning data, but I didn’t miss them much.

Shark PowerDetect UV Reveal: Performance

Most robot mops clean by coverage. They drag a damp pad or scrubbing brushes across the floor and count on repeated passes to loosen whatever is stuck there. Some do that better than others, but they mostly treat the floor as one uniform surface rather than actively looking for stains that need extra attention.

Michael Ansaldo/Foundry

The PowerDetect UV Reveal hunts for hidden stains using UV light and its built-in camera to find the gunk that may not be visible under normal lighting. But the robot doesn’t immediately stop and clean every spot it finds. It finishes the primary up-and-down mopping run first, returns to the base station to rinse and refresh the mop pad, and then heads back out for targeted stain cleaning. Shark calls the elbow-grease it applies to these jobs HyperSonic Mopping—the broad mop pad on the underside of the robot scrubs 100 times per minute, providing more agitation than a mop pad that simply trails behind the vacuum.

In my house, the Shark found stains in all the places I expected, including the cooking areas, around the pet food dishes, and by the kitchen trash can. But it also found a stain I didn’t know about, behind a living room end table, where someone had apparently spilled a drink recently. After each targeted stain-cleaning pass, the visible residue was gone, and I couldn’t feel anything left behind when I ran my hand over the spot.

Given that the PowerDetect UV Reveal’s marquee feature is built for hard floors, it wasn’t surprising that this is where the robot performed best as a vacuum, too. It removed most of the crumbs, tracked-in dirt, and other loose messes without much trouble. It also did well along baseboards, where robot vacuums sometimes leave a thin line of debris.

Michael Ansaldo/Foundry

The results on the area rug in my living room were more mixed. The robot was able to clear it of crumbs and a few tufts of cat hair, but I could still see individual strands of hair clinging to the rug fibers when it was done.

It was rare that I had to rescue the PowerDetect UV Reveal during my testing. It slipped easily under couches and beds, between chair legs, and around obstacles. Small floor transitions like the edge of a rug or the strip between two rooms can stall or upend a robot vacuum, but Shark’s NeverStuck technology enables the robot to lift itself over these. Its floor-detection system also helps it avoid dragging a wet mop pad across carpets. Stray socks and loose wires were the only items that consistently caused trouble for the robot.

Should you buy the Shark PowerDetect UV Reveal 2-In-1 Vac & Mop?

The PowerDetect UV Reveal lists for $1,299.99, but as of this writing, Shark is selling it for $899.99. At that price, the UV Reveal makes sense for homes with lots of hard flooring and regular kitchen, pet, or kid messes. I wouldn’t buy it for a mostly carpeted home. You’re paying for the automated mopping system, self-cleaning dock, and UV stain detection that gives the robot a more specific job than simply running through the house on a schedule.