Best Robotic Pool Cleaner 2023 for Inground Pools

Selecting the Best Robotic Pool Cleaner

If you don’t have a ton of money to pay for a professional pool cleaner, taking care of your own pool by removing dead leaves, insects, algae, and cleaning the walls and floor of pool contaminants takes a lot of time and is very inconvenient, especially if you’re busy. What if you could simply have a pool boy that can do all of these things for comparatively nothing?

This is where robotic pool cleaners shine. Robotic pool cleaners, as you might expect, are mechanical devices that will clean your pool in a way that is somewhat similar to how a Roomba can clean your carpet. Traditional automatic, non-robotic pool cleaners can come in three varieties that use suction-side and pressure-side styles to fully clean your pool’s inner surfaces. Robotic pool cleaners, on the other hand, can effectively combine these two methods for a more thorough pool cleaning.

There are quite a few of these products on the market, and they all seem to do an excellent job when you need your pool cleaned, but which is the best robotic pool cleaner? I did a lot of research on this topic and found that the 2016 Dolphin Premier is the best product of its type currently on the market for cleaning your inground pool. I came to this realization in my research by taking the value, features, and quality build into account.

We should state the obvious, this pool cleaner isn’t intended for use in above-ground vinyl pools.

How it Works

The Dolphin Premier is a fairly simple device when you really consider what it’s doing. After you plug it in, you just place the little robot into your pool and let it take on water and sink to the bottom. Once activated, the robot will then pull water into itself and push it out of its top, providing enough downforce to let it clean all of your pool’s horizontal and vertical surfaces.

To scrub these surfaces, the device has a front wheel that will remove any gunk and grime from the vinyl. Additionally, as water is pushed through its body, there is an internal filter that will pick up any pool junk so that it can easily be removed from the robot later. It can be left in the pool for extended periods, but the manufacturer does indicate that it should be taken out at least once a day for maintenance and checks.

Many of the automatic and robotic pool cleaners on the market can get their power cables tangled as they do their job. This particular pool cleaner avoids this inconvenience by using a swivel. This swivel ensures that even when the robot needs to double back or make a turn that it’s designed for the cable not to tangle.

Warranty

Another place where this product is uncommon is in its warranty. Many of the competing products in this space don’t have very long warranties. As a matter of fact, along with the typical two-year warranties that come with these other devices, there are provisos that limit the total amount of uses per year that you can utilize them for cleaning.

After you go out of these pre-stated ranges, their manufacturers will try to charge you for an additional warranty extension. Fortunately, the Dolphin Premier doesn’t have this type of annoying warranty, and the manufacturer backs the product for a full three years.

Key Features of the Dolphin Premier

Clogged Filter Indicator – For pool owners, the fall is one of the most annoying times for pool maintenance. During this season, our pools become choked with fallen leaves, and these conditions will quickly fill up the Dolphin Premier and reduce its efficiency. When it starts to get overly full, a light on its top will illuminate; this way, you know that you’ll need to clean the filter and remove any detritus from the body of the Dolphin Premier.
Timers – Sometimes, you don’t have time to micromanage the functionality of your robotic pool cleaner. With this in mind, the Dolphin Premier can use a built-in timer to clean your pool when you want it to.

The timer automatically is set to clean the pool for three hours and then cease, but it can be programmed to clean at a set time or for various periods. This customizability is perfect for saving you time when setting up your Dolphin Premier.

Dual Float System

To a degree, these types of devices will need to have the ability to float so that you can easily remove them from the water and so that they can also maneuver on the vertical surfaces of your pool. This dual float system allows the Dolphin Premier to have much more control than many of the other devices of its type.

Additional Accessories

As with any product, you can purchase a few additional accessories to enhance your Dolphin Premier experience. Some useful ones are:
Manual Control
This is perfect if you want to control the device yourself. This is simply a remote control that lets you decide where, in your pool, the 2016 Dolphin Premier is going to go next.
For those who don’t want to constantly set off the clogged filter indicator when there’s a lot of material in their pools, you can purchase a bag that will give a boost to the 2016 Dolphin Premier’s capacity. This is perfect for the fall season.
Filter Choices
The 2016 Dolphin Premier comes with a great filter that will hold on to the majority of pool contaminants, but if you want a more fine-tuned filter experience, the manufacturer does have additional filters with much finer filtration systems.

Considerations

The Dolphin Premier is definitely a fine device that will work for years. That being said, there are a few considerations that you should into account. Firstly, this isn’t a device that you should keep out in the sun for extended periods. The sun can thoroughly damage the external areas of the robot and cause internal issues as well. To avoid this, you could simply place the Dolphin Premier inside a shed or inside your house.

Secondly, even though the Dolphin Premier is waterproof, you don’t want to get the power supply dry, as this can cause damage. Fortunately, the cabling has plenty of slack so that you can keep your power supply out of the elements and away from splashing pool water.

The Dolphin Premier is a great little pool cleaner that will make pool maintenance much more convenient. It’s built tough and learns your pool’s internal shape for a more efficient experience. This little guy is in our opinion is the Best Robotic Pool Cleaner and is just waiting to do a spectacular job cleaning your pool, you just have to pick him up.