Shark Rocket TruePet Convertible Corded Vacuum
- Half shark-rocket, half man
- Five-Year warranty from Shark has you covered into the dawn of the era of Martian colonization, so long as Ol’ Musky stays on schedule
- Buzz off, cordless vac fans, for best power at lowest weight, corded is where it’s at
- (Sure, corded makes it harder to vacuum outdoors, but you should have thought of that before you carpeted your yard)
- We think there is a newer model out now, which is how we got a deal
- Big-ass dust cup
- Model: HV322 – great retro '80s quality to this model number, makes us want to emblazon it on the inside of our Trapper Keeper
Hey Robot, You Missed a Spot
It’s time we all faced facts: Robot vacuums don’t work very well.
We get it, the idea of delegating the sweeping to a little semi-autonomous machine is seductive. Boy, do we get it. We get it better than most. It seems like it should work. We want it to work!
But it doesn’t. Even under ideal conditions, which most of our homes and apartments do not provide, where rooms are regularly-shaped, and there’s clearance under all the furniture, and the place is tidy (no laptop power cords or doggy beds or unpaid bills on the floor, e.g.), a robot vacuum seems to have the same work ethic as the Meh staffer who wrote this: It takes forever, runs out of energy before the job is done, gets very little actual work accomplished.
But even if you’re satisfied with the half-assed job they do, they still don’t save you any labor. You’ll easily spend more time babysitting your robovac than it would take you to hoover up the old-fashioned way, and with worse results. In our sci-fi fantasies, you can trust a droid to carry out an espionage mission across the galaxy, even if he has to hack systems, repair damaged starfighters mid-dogfight, and commandeer an Imperial ship or two along the way. In reality, our domestic ‘bots are more like your four-year-old “helping” you paint a fence. It’s adorable, but you have to follow after her to clean up her shoddy work.
Which isn’t to say you shouldn’t buy one. Get a robot floor-sweeper if you want. There’s no more delightful or amusing implement to be found in the “Household Cleaning” product category. But get a real vacuum too, because there’s nothing delightful or amusing about a living room strewn with dust bunnies and graham cracker crumbs.
At the risk of sounding sales-y, this Shark Rocket vac is one bad sucker-upper. It boasts good power, a nice weight, and a “dust cup” that’s double the size from its predecessor model. The LEDs on it help you sweep debris from the darkest crannies of your abode, and also inspired one of our staffers to observe “oh yeah — I guess LEDs are just going to be on everything now.” (He’s right, but in this case they’re warranted.) All this and it’s covered by a five-year warranty from Shark, so you can be confident the vacuum you buy today will be around to sweep up the dirt you track in when you come home from seeing Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 3.
The vacuum cleaner marketplace is a deliberately crowded and confusing one, which frustrates consumers’ attempts at comparison shopping. But this one’s nicer than other vacuums we’ve sold before, and for our money — which, if you buy one of these from us, it will indeed be our money — it’s a great choice. Buy it to follow your cute-but-useless robot vacuum around, sweeping clean where it has merely bumbled around.
And then sweep this conversation clean from your memory too, because when we inevitably sell another robot vac soon, we’re going to pretend we never talked all this shit about them.
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Shark Rocket TruePet Convertible Corded Vacuum 141
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(You Gotta) Fight for Your Right (To Party!): Mad Ape Den Karaoke 6
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The problem with robot vacuums is: 47
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Anyone see 'The Shape of Water' yet? 81 -
Why you do this to me, Pizza Hut? 30 -
Hey Meh, what gives? 34 -
Meh request: Nightstand with Qi wireless charging support 19 -
How does Meh get these deals? 0