Can A Pool Cleaning Robot Really Eliminate Having To Vacuum Your Pool?

Forbes

5 days ago

My family is fortunate enough to have an in-ground pool in our back yard. It was a project that started just as the pandemic hit and so the construction got dragged out for more than a year longer than expected (concrete shortages, no liners, work stoppages), but it was officially complete just in time for the 2022 swimming season to kick off. As a pool 'newbie' the two things that caught me off guard about owning one were the incredibly short swimming season (we live in Canada so we're lucky to get four months of use in a year), and the amount of work involved in vacuuming out the pool. Combine those two–wanting to make the most of every warm day and not enjoying the time required for maintenance–and I quickly jumped on the offer to test out a robotic pool vacuum.
Over the past several years I've put a half dozen or so robotic pool cleaners through their paces. Many pool owners I've talked to ask me if a robotic pool cleaner is really capable enough to eliminate the chore of manually vacuuming a swimming pool.
Day-To-Day Use
Our back yard is surrounded by towering pines and an assortment of other trees, including a crabapple. There are birds flying around and a lot of debris that inevitably finds its way into the pool, including leaves, needles, cones, crabapples and bugs. Every morning, that means the bottom of the pool most definitely needs vacuuming. No-one wants to swim until that is cleaned.
Manually vacuuming to waste (to avoid clogging the filter) was taking me a good 30-45 minutes from start to finish. Every day. It was a slog. And it was sending a lot of pool water down the driveway, which meant topping up the water level, which in turn meant more heating required and additional chemicals.
With a good cordless robotic pool cleaner, this daily task is eliminated. I charge the robot over night, drop it in the pool when I get up, and two hours later I empty the robot's filter basket. The pool bottom looks pristine, there is no water waste and there is far less of an issue around topping up water levels or adjusting pool chemicals. On average, I spend maybe five minutes a day on maintenance. I've tested one cordless robot that also skims the pool surface!
There Are Still Times When You Need To Manually Vacuum
That being said, there are still times I have to break out the hose and equipment and manually vacuum the pool. The season opening? With the amount of sediment that has settled to the bottom of the pool over the winter, there is no way I would throw a robot in. That gunk needs to be fired out en masse and the water is being topped up anyway at this point.
I also ran into a situation this year for the first time where there would be a bunch of very fine silt on the pool bottom and two hours after pulling the robot out, there would be more. I manually vacuumed, but it would still come back. Our pool guy was around working on the salt cell and I asked him about the silt and he pointed out that a house a few doors down was having a new driveway put in, with exposed dirt on the front lawn. Sure enough, when the pavement went in and the dirt was removed, the silt stopped its daily appearance in our pool.
That being said, manually vacuuming was definitely more effective than the robot in this case, which brings me to my next point: limitations.
Limitations
I have found that even the best robotic pool cleaner can be defeated by fine silt, which can escape the mesh filter basket. Similarly, really big stuff can be a problem. Full-sized pine cones, for example, can fall under that umbrella. Battery life has never been an issue for me (in our modest 28 x 14 pool most robots manage at least 1.5 hours), but some chargers for cordless models can be large and you need to find a spot to plug in that is protected from the elements.
Being underwater and exposed to chlorine, salt water and chemicals can take a toll on the mechanicals of a robot and exposure to summer sun has an impact on plastics. Shiny plastic shells start to fade by the end of the season and dials start to move less smoothly. After one robot worked flawlessly for a summer, but seized up so its wheels wouldn't even turn after a winter in the basement, I started to pay more attention to making sure to quickly rinse the machines off with the hose after use.
Not All Robotic Pool Cleaners Are Equal
In my time testing pool robots I have had some winners and some real clunkers. I take claims of AI pool bottom mapping with a grain of salt–after (too many) hours watching these things, I've only seen one that actually seems to approach the task methodically. However, with the battery life most have, even a completely random pattern almost always delivers a clean pool bottom.
I've leaned that a good robotic pool cleaner can effectively climb walls to scrub the waterline. Others try, but just slide off. Surprisingly, I found some pool robots that have difficulty with stairs, getting stuck butting into the stairs endlessly and one that would hit the stairs and flip onto its back. Generally speaking, pool robots that use touch controls with LED status indicators can be frustrating, unless you use them in the evening when the sun doesn't wash out the display. I definitely prefer a dial setting so you aren't relying on an LED indicator.
I'm also not a big fan of gimmicks. For example, solar charging as it's working? The battery life of any pool cleaner I've used is more than sufficient–I don't see the point of having a charge panel on the robot; it's just something to go wrong. Wi-Fi connectivity and apps can be useful, but I'm fine with just tossing the robot in and letting it do its thing.
Look for a manufacturer that has been around for a while and, ideally, one that has a lineup of pool robots for different budgets and one that offers replacement parts. In particular, you want to be able to replace the filter basket in case it gets a tear. Batteries and scrubbers will also eventually need replacement.
Here's a list of Forbes Vetted best models for 2025.
Hate Pool Maintenance? Get A Robot…
The bottom line is that investing in a pool robot does have a big payoff in terms of dramatically reducing the amount of time and effort spent in pool maintenance. It doesn't mean the end of manual vacuuming, but it makes that chore a several times a season exercise instead of something you need to do daily. There is a cost, but looking around these days, models like the Aiper Seagull Pro that performed flawlessly in testing several years ago can be had for around $500. Even if you only get two or three years out of the robot (and you may get more), that's only a few hundred dollars a year. I figure I've probably saved that much in water use, heating and chemicals compared to manually vacuuming our pool, so the hours of saved labor each week is a bonus.