Cordless Robotic Pool Cleaner

I gotta say, I'm impressed with this little monster. I've had it just over a week now and used it several times to clean my 16' x 32' rectangular pool. The pool is 3' deep at both ends and 5' deep in the middle, making the slope well within the specified 15 degree limit. My wife named the little guy Herbie, because he looks like the Love Bug from the movie. About the performance: my pool litter is mainly comprised of ash tree leaves, pine needles and fine desert dust. This robot picks it all up, no problem. I've always owned pressure-side cleaners from Ray Vac to Polaris 360. This robot cleans at least as well as they did within its 90 minute cycle. It helps if I use the pole brush to push the silt out of the corners of the pool before it runs, as when the Paxcess gets to the radius at the base of the walls its suction gates are sometimes raised too far from the plaster to pick up everything. But I can't say for sure that it wouldn't eventually scatter the dust and pick it up. I need to try without the brushing to know for sure. But as for leaves and pine needles on the floor of the pool, they're all gone within 90 minutes. What Paxcess doesn't do: It doesn't climb walls, more than just the radius at the base. It also won't get onto steps or ledges. It doesn't brush the surface. It has a single, stationary, brush that's used to help it pick up debris, not to scrub the surface. It doesn't have intelligence to map the pool, its movements are guided by the directional settings you set on its two jets, and it will take some experimentation to get them set right to cover the entire pool. Mine was spending 90% of its time in one half of my pool until I spent an hour or so watching it and fiddling with settings on the jets.. not unlike the pressure-side cleaners I've owned. But once dialed in, it covers every part of the pool. It doesn't stay in the pool and run in the background or on a timer. When you need the pool cleaned, you turn it on, drop it in and let it run, then pull it out after 90 minutes (it stops near the side of the pool where you can grab its string/handle, but sometimes I need to use a pole to reach it, no big issue). Then hose it out and put it back on the charger. It will be ready to go again in about 4 hours. At about half the price of a pressure-side cleaner and about a third the cost of a plug-in robotic cleaner, I think this performs at least as well as the former, and probably nearly as good as the latter, if you don't mind starting and stopping it each time. And cleaning it out is easy. Other reviewers have included photos of the screen and holding area. Both are the size of the entire chassis of the unit, so there is plenty of screen and capacity. As with all rechargeable things, I'm sure the battery will degrade over time, and I'm hopeful that replacement batteries will be available (maybe they already are, I haven't looked). But overall for the price, and if you don't mind manually brushing the walls and steps once in a while, this is a great cleaner. I'm very satisfied with my purchase.