Robotic Pool Cleaner Saves Labor But Needs Some Tweaks

Decent cleaning in a substantial unit, but AC charging and battery life limit its usefulness as an “away-from-home” pool attendant.

Every so often I’m asked to review a new gadget or piece of gear, but this one was unusual: a pool cleaning robot from iGarden. The company’s slogan is that they have “a commitment to transforming pool maintenance into a stylishly effortless event.” For anyone who has owned a pool or two, as I have, what that translates into is “getting your Saturday afternoon back.”

This product is not meant to fade into your pool bottom. It’s quite heavy and substantial, about the size of a small shop-vac, with bright orange badges and a sleek, Darth Vader gloss black plastic shell.

I tested the iGarden Pool Cleaner K series in two types of pools, one above-ground and one in-ground fiberglass shell. It behaved somewhat differently in each, as I’ll detail.

An Interface Riddle

I spent several minutes trying to understand the unit’s touchscreen buttons. The manual is not especially helpful. It says that you have to partially submerge the chassis and fill it with water before the motor will power up. What I found, however, was that the buttons were mostly unresponsive when the unit was wet, or partly underwater. Ultimately, I tried starting it up dry. 

Once I figured out a pattern of button pushing that activated the motor, I let go of the whirring machine, and it crawled forward and sunk to the bottom, paused for a few seconds, then began “exploring” its surroundings. The company describes this scouting behavior as “smart navigation” with “advanced AI” technology. At this point the robot was not Internet-connected, so any so-called intelligence resides within the machine.

The method the cleaner uses to map its surroundings doesn’t always make sends. Sometimes it climbs a wall. Other times it spins in a 360. Unlike robotic house vacuums I’ve seen, It begins by roaming rather randomly around the pool bottom, “sniffing” its way around obstacles and steps.

In some cases, the iGarden will actually climb partly up curved pool walls. In the above ground pool, it climbed up the walls nearly 3 feet, then dropped back to the bottom.

But Does It Clean?

The level of cleaning is quite good, probably 90 percent effective. It picks up organic debris such as leaves, pollen and silt. It was less effective on algae (the above-ground pool had a thin layer of green algae on the floor), Also, in the case of the fiberglass pool, which has curved sides and a sloping depth, it left some debris along both edges where walls meet floor.

Once a cleaning is complete, in about an hour, you have to get the unit out of the pool, assumedly using the supplied plastic hook. That proved a difficult maneuver, and I ended up dumping the filter basket in one case. An easy improvement would be to put in a receiving loop for the hook, so users could grab the device easily with a pole.

Power Storage and Charging

This K Series version of this cleaner has an upgraded battery that’s supposed to last up to 6 hours. The idea is that you can leave it in the pool for up to 10 days, and it will clean every 3 days without needing a recharge. To charge it, you have to pull it out of the pool, dry it off, and plug it into an A/C outlet for about 4 hours. In my experience, I only got two cleanings out of it in the below ground pool before it became too weak for a third cleaning.

I left the cleaner at pool bottom for about a week, and it seemed to perform as advertised, coming to life as scheduled. In both below grade and above ground pools, the bottom was kept largely free of debris deposits. I don’t think I could have left it the full 10 days, however. The battery was too weak after cleaning #2.

That week-long window certainly beats vacuuming a pool by hand every 3 days, but what about longer “away” time, such as when you’re traveling? I was curious about whether the cleaning schedule could be extended by using the integrated WiFi APP to change the interval of cleanings but had trouble connecting the APP due to vague instructions regarding the interface.

Room for Improvement

While the IGarden K Series Pool Cleaner is definitely a labor saver, I would have liked to see more efforts to improve its sustainability. For future models, I’d recommend a few upgrades that would greatly improve its pedigree in terms of utility and eco-responsibility.

1. Integrate solar panels. As it stands, the heavy cleaner has to be removed from the pool and recharged at regular intervals. But it sits all day long most days in the full sun doing nothing. Why not add some solar cells to the shell that will replenish the battery? This would increase the interval between having to pull the whole unit out and recharge it.
2. Better hook and grab system. I struggled finding a way to pull the unit from the pool with the supplied hook. Better documentation and a stronger hook would be an easy fix.
3. Better control button documentation. As I mentioned, getting the unit to start up and behave the way you want is unnecessarily challenging. Spell out what each button does and how to activate it.

The IGarden K Series Robotic Pool Cleaner needs to be charged with an AC cord for several hours before it “roams” your pool bottom.

The iGarden Pool Cleaner managed to grab about 90 percent of the total debris in this in-ground pool.

The cleaner has a large capture basket that should be plenty for two or three autonomous cleanings.