Aquabot Spirit Above and Inground Robotic Pool Cleaner with Anti-Tangle 360° Swivel

I have a 16' x 32' x 54" above ground pool that is sunk 2 feet into the ground with a deck around it. It's our second pool like this and I've always fought the pool vacuum trying to keep the pool clean of debris as we have trees on the property. This Acquabot Spirit is the best of the best. I've tried everything but always ended up standing on the deck for at least an hour + vacuuming the pool with the hose attached to the pool filter.. Not since I found this baby! All I have to do now, besides keep the chemicals balanced. is dip the floating stuff off the top of the water. This Aquabot does the rest ... INCLUDING algae!!! When I uncovered the pool for the summer there was green algae for the first time. I spent weeks trying to vacuum it out (which you can't because it sticks to the pool unless you kill it first) dumping in chemicals, and trying another brand of vacuum that is battery operated and slides onto my pool pole. I finally sat down and researched and read reviews and decided on this Aquabot Spirit. When it is running, it has 2 filter bags inside of it that fill up with debris. They are easily attached with elastic necks. 2 sets of filter bags are included with this Aquabot Spirit - one set for ALGAE (!!!!) and another set for normal pool debris like leaves and such. The set for algae will pick up ANYTHING! But once I had the algae out of the pool I switched bags thinking the water flow would be easier on the machine and I have had no problems whatsoever with it keeping my pool clean. (The best thing is that you are NOT using the pool filter to clean the debris out, therefore eliminating the need to stand and vacuum for hours, in addition to having to keep cleaning the filter when the water flow subsides!) I run mine everyday because I have a line of trees next to our home and I am OCD about having nothing in my pool. My pool is ALWAYS clean. I can't give this thing enough praise. It has a 2 hour timer on it and it cleans almost the entire pool. I just go out after a couple of hours and push the on button again, and when it's done my pool is clean. There are directions included to tell you how to adjust it if it's not cleaning your entire pool. I did not have to adjust mine. It worked fine right out of the box. When you are finished with it, you just pull it out of the pool, it opens easily for you to remove the pair of bag filters, you rinse out the filters, and you are good to go! So glad I found this and never have to hook a pool vacuum to my pool filter again!! THANK YOU AQUABOT. I can finally enjoy my pool!

The good. The shipment was amazingly fast, ordered on Thursday arrived on Friday. Easy to assemble, had it in the pool in less than an hour. Have run 5 cycles so far, and it does vacuum very well. The center of my pool is amazingly clean. Easy to clean up and store.The Bad. Only the center of the pool and maybe another chunk of real estate gets hit on the two-hour, large pool cycle. I am in hour 3 right of the 2nd cycle as I write this and it the clean area has expanded, but I am definitely going to have to use the hand vacuum to do the edges. I tilted the wheels as the manual suggested, have tried them both to right and left, and it does not seem to make a difference. My pool is round and does drop to the middle, but the angle is not dramatic. One other thing, the bolts to tilt the wheels are awful. Plastic POS, you cannot get a flat head screwdriver in them to save your life.So it does clean, and it does a good job on the area it goes over, but not sure how to get full coverage without running it non-stop for a day or two. I have had a little luck moving it with a skimmer attachment while it was going over the same spot again and again, but it will eventually work its way back to the middle. Personally, I think its vertical runs are not long enough to make back to the edge, you see it start to move in a line that you think will be positive, but it stops short and backs up to an area it just covered. Eventually, I think it will hit most of the areas, but you will have to babysit it and manually move it during a few different cycles. I am undecided if I will keep as of today. I am thinking about sending it back, but if I can slam the sides out by hand in a few minutes, it may still be worth the money.

The cleaner itself is a nice one, well built and easy to access the debris bags. I like that the cord swivels not allowing it to tangle up and that it is not suction driven. That being said, I wish that the manufacturer had installed brushes on the bottom of the device that would sweep up the smaller dirt and debris and guide it towards the suction ports on the cleaner. I feel like this is the majority of what folks get in their pool and it would be beneficial to have a cleaner that picks it up. My Kreepy Krawly is good for that, but because it operates from a suction line into the skimmer basket it frequently tangles up and won’t operate properly. Long story short, in order to get the most common debris out of my pool I need to manually vacuum, which totally defeats the purpose of an automatic cleaner such as this one. If Aquabot would revamp this to address those issues I would give it 5 stars and definitely promote its use. Sadly right now I cannot do that. The cleaner was too pricey to just be a vacuum for use after a windstorm blows leaves into my pool.

With the larger mesh size bags (included with fine mesh bags also) this cleans up leaves and even small particles that rapidly blind other fancier pool vacuums. I basically throw the hand pole screen away. This gets it all. Haven't needed to use the fine mesh bags either - does a great cleaning job!The filter bags are a bit more trouble to clean than screen plates or boxes but they open up at the bottom for quick emptying and rinsing... and the amount they pick up and filter out, and how long they keep working MORE than makes up for the slight difference in cleaning procedure. Pretty basic directional control but reliably cleans the whole pool bottom too. If you don't need your walls done, this vac does the trick.