A robot is the only one of the three that works independently of your pool's pump and filter: it has its own motor, its own filter and its own power supply, so it catches debris on board instead of sending it to the skimmer basket and filter. Suction-side cleaners are the cheapest to buy and use the pump's suction; pressure-side cleaners use the pump's return flow, often with a booster pump, and carry a bag. If the pool filter is small or the pump is old, a robot takes load off both.
Read the full answer →Corded if the pool is large or you want the robot to run on a schedule for years without a battery to replace; cordless if the cable is the thing you hate. A corded robot never runs out mid-cycle and has no battery to wear out, but its cable twists over time. A cordless one has no cable to tangle, but its runtime is the hard limit on what it can clean, and its battery loses capacity every season.
Read the full answer →For a corded robot, roughly its cable length minus the depth of the deep end — a 60 ft cable reaches about a 52 ft pool. For a cordless one, as much floor and wall as its battery can cover: at 13 sq ft a minute, a full floor-and-wall pass of a 16 × 32 ft pool (about 992 sq ft) takes around 76 minutes. By that arithmetic, 11 of the 29 cordless robots here with a runtime to check claim a noticeably bigger pool than their battery covers.
Read the full answer →The micron rating is the smallest particle the robot's filter is rated to catch. Leaves and bugs are caught by anything; sand needs roughly 200 µm or finer; pollen and silt sit around 10–100 µm; the fine dust and early algae that cloud water are under 50 µm. Of the 24 robots here whose maker publishes a figure, the median is 150 µm — sand and grit, not dust. 28 publish none.
Read the full answer →Some do: 38 of the 52 robots here list waterline cleaning. But a robot that "climbs walls" does not necessarily scrub the waterline — it may turn back a few inches below it. Look for a waterline mode or waterline scrubbing by name, and for a horizontal pass along the tile line rather than a vertical climb to it.
Read the full answer →Yes, provided the maker lists vinyl. A robot has no hard wheels dragging on the liner the way some suction cleaners do, and most use rubber, PVC or foam brushes that are soft on vinyl. The things that damage liners are grit trapped under a brush, robots climbing onto vinyl-covered steps, and wrinkles that a robot catches on — none of which is specific to one brand.
Read the full answer →Yes. A salt pool runs at roughly a tenth of seawater's salinity, and robotic cleaners are built to work in it. What salt is hard on is anything metal and anything left wet: swivel bearings, fasteners and battery charging contacts. Take the robot out between cycles, rinse it in fresh water now and then, and store it out of direct sun.
Read the full answer →There is no single number, because what ends a robot's life is usually one part: a pump motor seal, a power supply, a battery, or a cable that has twisted beyond use. Brushes and drive belts wear out on a schedule and are cheap to replace. The warranty is the only lifespan figure a maker commits to, and here it runs from one year to three; 4 robots publish no term at all.
Read the full answer →For the specifications themselves — what each number on a robot’s spec sheet means and which of them can be compared — see reading a pool robot spec sheet, where every figure is computed from this catalog.