Aquabot Turbo T Jet In-Ground Robotic Pool Cleaner in White

I wish I had bought this 10 years ago. Since my teenage labor force has gone off to college I was forced to find other means to vacuum the pool. I love this Aquabot. It is a great value at the price and very simple in function. I have a very large, irregular shaped, free-formed in-ground plaster pool. I drop the Aquabot in the deep end turn it on and walk away. If you watch it run you will be frustrated because the pattern is so random and can be so repetitive. However, if you walk away and come back four hours later you will be happy and amazed. It cleans up 95-99%, which is good enough for me. Two hours is not enough for my pool, four hours gives me great results. For me, about 42 seconds is the correct cycle time to reverse. It uses very little electricity to run and since I usually turn off my pump for the four hours there actually is a net savings. I also like the fact that when I'm ready to open the pool for the season, I can throw in the Aquabot and run it days before I get the whole pool up and running. Some notes, I use the "coarse" bag which seems to throw the sand from my sand filter back to the bottom of the pool - I just sweep it back to the drain and it winds up back in the filter. I get a million acorns - it picks up all of them. Also, the Aquabot is great at picking up small sticks. Even if the sticks get caught half way in the bottom, the Aquabot still runs great. When it comes up to the top of the wall, my wife reaches in, pulls out the stick, pats the Aquabot on the head and says, "good boy". The bag is large and holds about the volume of a gallon jug. The most important thing to get the best performance is to get the floats/buoyancy correct so it will climb the walls and scoot across the bottom effectively. (Remember random is the opposite of efficient. It is effective not necessarily efficient.) To clean it up I just use one of my 5 gallon buckets full of water - dunk everything in the bucket and then dump the bucket, done. Getting the buoyancy and reverse time correct will dramatically improve your performance.

This was my second robotic pool cleaner in so many weeks. Bottom line: It did a horrible job in my fiberglass kidney-shaped pool with stairs and a cove and curved bottom to wall transition. I wouldn't every recommend it. I wanted this unit to work. It claims to be able to climb the walls. I have a salt system and curved edges between the floor and walls but without a nudge (being in the pool), this unit would not climb the walls. Maybe if the angle between the bottom and the sides was very tapered it might but it didn't work for me. I went on Aquabots customer service and a number of forums for tips but I couldn't get it to do what it says it will. Wall cleaning is important for my application so automatically this unit is a fail for me. On top of that, though, this unit did an absolutely abysmal job of cleaning the sand and dirt off the bottom of my pool. I bought this unit as a replacement for the Aqua Products ABJR Aquabot Junior In-Ground Robotic Pool Cleaner . Comparatively, this unit is terrible! The ABJR did a very good job of cleaning the bottom and lower 1/3 of the walls and actually made them feel clean. It didn't climb stairs but it cleaned the bottom very effectively in my odd shaped pool and I was happy. If it had climbed the walls I'd have kept that unit. This unit said it climbed the walls and claimed to be faster and more efficient and have less moving parts to replace, but for the way it works, I'd do better to get the hose and vacuum out and clean it myself. I actually bought the Watertech Aqua Broom Ultra Pool and Spa Battery Powered Spa Cleaner for spot cleaning and that was able to fix the missed areas in a few seconds! Still, despite the lack of moving parts and promises of lower operating costs compared to "Tank track" models, I can hardly recommend this unit.

This is our second Aquabot, and it is the only pool vacuum we would use. The first one we had was amazing, and there never was thought given to trying another type of pool vacuum. The first one we had did not break, rather it was broken by a relative that used it in our pool when we were away, but took it out of the water and left it running. There was some melting due to the heat from running so long when out of the water, and one seal on the motor housing was no longer water tight. It does still run, but eventually shorts and pops the GFI when enough water gets into the housing. I'm convinced I can fix it with a new seal (large o-ring) and some epoxy and reshaping of the area that melted, but my wife urged me to just buy a new one. I just wanted to make sure that folks who might read this didn't think the bot gave out after 7 or 8 seasons; the bot is well made and works like a champ in our pool. We used it in our 18 X 36 in-ground pool, which is surround by large trees, where the 9 foot deep end has about a 30 degree grade up into the shallow end and it always cleaned every inch of our pool. We have totally vertical walls, but every once and awhile we would catch the bot climbing the wall as there is a slight roundness where the walls meet the floor, but we think this more of a result of both the suction and propulsion power of the bot. The new one we bought has some enhancements and features our first one didn't and works great. If I had any negative comment it would be that it looks so easy to use that you shouldn't leave it out if you won't be home when folks are coming over to swim.