At a glanceExpert`s Rating Pros Solar charging means that, in theory, you never need to plug in this robot Very effective cleaning (at least while its battery lasts) Lots of operating modes Cons The effectiveness of solar charging varies with the weather, and it can take days even in optimal conditions Couldn’t clean my entire pool on a single charge, due to an undersized battery App is prone to disconnects Our Verdict A solar-powered pool robot sounds like a perfect cleaning solution, but it turns out the sun can provide only so much juice in a day. Price When Reviewed This value will show the geolocated pricing text for product undefined Best Pricing Today Best Prices Today: Wybot S2 Solar Retailer Price $1,999.99 View Deal Price comparison from over 24,000 stores worldwide Product Price Price comparison from Backmarket Best Prices Today: Check today’s prices The dream of every swimming pool owner is that some device will come along that will clean the pool without requiring much—or any—interaction. Pump-powered robots are obtrusive and unsightly thanks to their snaking cables. Battery-powered robots must be manually retrieved after a few hours, cleaned out, and recharged. The holy grail remains elusive. With its S2 Solar Vision, Wybot takes at least one baby step in the right direction, outfitting a modified version of its existing Wybot S2 robot with a solar-powered docking and charging station. In simple terms, a solar panel sits on the edge of the pool, charging the robot through an inductive plate that sits below the waterline. Better still, the docking station can communicate with the robot while it’s in the water, so it can find its way back to the dock when its battery is getting low. The Wybot S2 Solar Vision does an amazing job on walls and the waterline—it really churns up the water with its front-mounted scrubbers. Specifications The Wybot S2 Solar Vision’s docking station features a solar panel that sits at the edge of the pool, where careless–or malicious–kids might step on it and damage it.Christopher Null/Foundry A few specifics may help fill out the picture. The entire system comes in two boxes. The robot and docking station fill one, the solar panel occupies another. The solar panel and docking station must be connected through a simple, albeit not immediately intuitive, process, and the assembled dock can then be (roughly) adjusted and balanced on the edge of your pool. (The goal is to get the dock reasonably flush with the pool wall, so the robot can easily climb into it unaided.) The 20-pound, treaded robot includes a battery with a 5200mAh capacity. The docking station has a capacity of 2600mAh. The 30-watt solar panel itself has no battery of its own. Both robot and docking station include standard A/C adapters if you want to charge them more quickly, though this, of course, defeats the point of the setup to some degree. The unit promises a running time of 2.5 hours (or longer in its low-speed “eco” floor mode) and an “ideal pool size” of up to 3,230 square feet. My test runs generally ended after closer to two hours. A careful reading of the battery capacity numbers cited above might reveal one of the biggest problems I had with the Wybot S2 Solar Vision: The solar panel charges the docking station’s battery, and the docking station’s battery in turn charges the robot. This is necessarily inefficient and, because the dock’s capacity is half that of the robot, something of a mismatch. The Wybot S2 Solar Vision’s poolside docking station and solar panel.Christopher Null/Foundry Even if 100 percent of the energy in the dock made it to the robot, it would still only be half full. In theory, the sun should recharge the dock while it is discharging into the robot, but even eight hours of sunlight wasn’t enough to recharge the robot in a timely fashion in my tests. In the dead of the Texas summer, it took more than 2.5 days to take the robot from a 19 percent charge level up to 100 percent. That’s bad news if you have a particularly dirty pool and want to run the robot every day—and it’s worse news if the weather isn’t cooperating. You can always revert to removing the robot from the pool and manually recharging it, of course, but if that’s going to be a regular occurrence, you can save $1,000 by forgoing the docking station and solar panel and buying the non-solar Wybot S2—with a larger, 7800mAh battery—for $800. Daily usage testing The Wybot S2 Solar Vision features three operating modes on its touch-sensitive control panel— floor only, walls only, or floor/walls/waterline—but it quickly became apparent in my testing that the unit just doesn’t have a big enough battery to do the entire job effectively. Test runs under the “everything” mode invariably left me with a pool floor that had barely been touched. The Wybot S2 Solar Vision does an amazing job on walls and the waterline—it really churns up the water with its front-mounted scrubbers—but it just didn’t have anything left in my testing to finish the job after all that action. On one occasion it didn’t even have enough power left to return to the dock, and I had to manually rescue it from a corner of the pool with a pole. The Wybot S2 Solar Vision did an excellent job cleaning my pool’s waterline.Christopher Null/Foundry The good news is that in floor-only mode, bypassing the walls and waterline, it also did exceptional work, cleaning up 100 percent of my synthetic test leaves before returning successfully to the dock. The Wybot stores debris in a simple hinged basket, and it comes with an additional filter for finer-grained material. That said, the basket itself, which does a plenty good job on its own. It’s also easy to pop out and clean when needed. When the robot is docked, however, you’ll need to reach about a foot into the pool to grab its handle, which won’t be ideal in the winter months. (A pole is also an option, of course.) The solar panel includes two physical buttons that are usable for impromptu operations. A Play button starts the robot on whatever mode it’s currently in, and a Home button calls it back to base. Both of these worked fine in my testing, although the robot can be quite slow to get back to base when called, and I would often press the home button multiple times to be sure the command was received. The Wybot S2 Solar Vision’s app offers lots of cleaning options.Christopher Null/Foundry Note that homes with small children might want to rethink the S2 Solar Vision altogether, as the panel would likely be destroyed if anyone accidentally—or intentionally—steps on it. The Wybot S2 Solar Vision offers both Bluetooth and 2.4GHz Wi-Fi connectivity and a mobile app, but I had such trouble with the app that Wybot sent me a full replacement robot, docking station, and solar panel after a firmware update killed the system’s wireless connectivity entirely. Wybot’s app is fine, but quite limited. Four additional operating modes are available here, as is a simple remote to manually control the robot for spot cleaning. As with the Wybot F1 skimmer I reviewed on June 18, the app’s battery status reports—one for the robot and a second for the docking station—are prone to inaccuracy unless you force-quit an restart the app. The Wybot S2 Solar Vision’s large debris basket captured a large amount of material during my tests.Christopher Null/Foundry A “weekly cleaning” feature lets you set a daily schedule for operations, including both time of day and type of run; and like the original Wybot S2, you can set options for pool shape and the way you want the robot to go about its work, although I can’t imagine why you’d care whether it cleans in an S pattern, cross pattern, or star pattern. Should you buy the Wybot S2 Solar Vision? One hiccup of note: If the docking station battery dies—which it did frequently, often overnight, in my testing—the system will lose its wireless connectivity during robot recharges. The only solution I’ve found for this is manually turning the base station back on by tapping the home button once it has a small amount of charge on it. But that means another physical trip to the pool. Problems like that further obviate the S2 Solar Vision’s best feature, which is the promise of convenience. Between cleaning out the filter basket, retrieving a wayward robot from the pool floor, waiting for recharges, and rebooting the dock, I found myself trekking out to the pool nearly as much as I would do with a standard pool robot—all while enjoying only a third of the availability due to slow recharging. And for that, you’ll pay $1,800 after using a coupon on Amazon, making this one of the more expensive robotic pool cleaning systems on the market. If you have a small pool, lots of sun, minimal debris to clean up, and infinite patience, the Wybot S2 Solar Vision might work well for you. But for my circumstance, I simply didn’t see enough savings in time or effort to justify the expense. Read...

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“I just can’t wait to clean the swimming pool!” said no one ever, because few maintenance tasks are as tedious and time-consuming. The good news is that robots can now perform that job, leaving you more leisure time to actually swim in your pool, because dirty swimming pools are disgusting. We’ve spotted some great deals during Amazon’s Prime Day sale this week, and we’ll add more as they become available. We’ve listed the deals in order of price, so you’ll want to scroll down the page a bit to find the most full-featured models. There’s nothing wrong with the budget-priced near the top, they just perform fewer functions. If you’re working with a tight budget, the Aiper SE packs a lot of value for $150, a 17% discount of its list price. This machine functions more like an underwater vacuum cleaner than something that will scrub your pool’s floor and walls, but those features will quickly drive up a robotic pool cleaner’s price tag. The recently reviewed Airrobo PC10 is a mid-range robotic pool cleaner that did a very good job on our test pool, and Amazon has knocked 47% off its list price, taking it down to $320. Snag an Airrobo PC10 with a steep discount ahead of Prime Day.Christopher Null/Foundry The Aiper Scuba S1 is at the price where you can expect to find robotic pool cleaners that will scrub your pool’s walls and floor in addition to vacuuming up debris that falls to the bottom. Aiper indicates it carries a $770 MSRP on its website, but Amazon has slashed its price to $498 for its Prime Day sale–that’s a 30% discount. While we haven’t had an opportunity to review the Wybot C1 robotic pool cleaner, we have obtained good results with some of the company’s other products. Ahead of Prime Day, you can pick up the Wybot C1 at Wybot.com for $420. The new-for-2025 Wybot C1 Vision (named for its onboard AI camera) gets a 30% discount for Prime Day, reducing its price from $999 to $629. Meanwhile, the equally new Wybot S2 Solar, which comes with a solar-panel-equipped docking station that recharges its battery, sees its price slashed to $1,199, a 40% discount from its $1,999 MSRP. You can pick up the Aiper Scuba X1 for $900—a 40% discount. Amazon is also offering a great deal on the Aiper Seagull Pro (model ZT6002) bundled with the Aiper Surfer S2 robotic pool skimmer for $720 a 20% discount from the usual price for the two bots. Beatbot is another large-scale manufacturer of robotic pool cleaners with a wide range of models, and you can get the 2024 AquaSense with a 26% discount off MSRP that brings its sale price down to $959. Amazon has slapped a 20 percent discount on the Beatbot Aquasense Pro.Christopher Null/Foundry Prime Day deals on robotic pool cleaners for larger pools If you have a larger pool—or you just want a more sophisticated bot to clean it—Amazon is offering great deals on several higher-end robotic pool cleaners. The Beatbot iSkim Ultra is a solar-powered bot that skims the surface of your pool, sucking up floating debris. Amazon has knocked a whopping 46% off its $1,499 MSRP to bring its final price down to $799. The Beatbot AquaSense 2 is going for for $999, a 38% discount. Or you can pick up the brand-new Aiper Scuba X1 Pro Max and caddy (pictured up top) for $1,849, a 29% discount off its $2,600 MSRP. Meanwhile, Beatbot’s top-of-the-line AquaSense 2 Ultra is getting a 20% discount, bringing its final price down to $2,839. We’ll update this list article as we find new deals during Amazon’s Prime Day 2025 sale. And if you’re looking to save money on more of the latest technology, visit PCWorld’s Amazon Prime Day Tech Deals 2025 hub. This story is part of TechHive’s in-depth coverage of the best robotic pool cleaners. Read...

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This summer, as you finally start taking advantage of your pool again, it’s high time to get someone else to clean it for you by getting a robot pool cleaner. There are three amazing options from Beatbot that can greatly improve your summer by taking one of the most annoying chores off your plate. The Beatbot AquaSense 2 Ultra, AquaSense 2 Pro, and AquaSense 2 are all robotic pool cleaners that will carefully clean the floor, wall and waterline, while the Pro and Ultra models can even skim the water surface and purify water. Unlike some other traditional models, these are all cordless cleaners, so you can forget about tangled wires, difficult robot recovery, or safety issues that stem from worn cords. Whether you already have a wired pool cleaner or this is your first purchase of this kind, you’ll end up absolutely loving the Beatbot SquaSense 2 series. And that’s before you even factor the long 3-year full replacement warranty. Beatbot will send you a new machine, saving you time waiting for repairs. If you have an older AquaSense or even a rival brand, there’s good news as you can get a trade-in discount up to $200, which is stackable with these Prime Day deals. It’s as simple as uploading a photo. Save $930 on a BeatBot pool cleaner BeatBot Less cleaning, more relaxing Setting up the Beatbot AquaSense 2 Ultra robot only requires hooking it up to the app and then letting it do its thing. By using AI pool mapping with an AI camera, the robot starts mapping your pool the second it slips into the water. The multiple sensors it deploys manage to quickly create an accurate map. Once that’s done, AI helps it plan the most efficient cleaning path, no matter how complex your pool’s layout is. There are four different cleaning modes available, and you can send the robot to only clean the floor of the pool, for instance, or you can go for the “standard mode” where it cleans the floor, the walls and the waterline. Alternatively, you can send it to clean only a single area. The MultiZone Mode is perfect for complex pools with large steps or multi-level layouts. It doesn’t matter what material you used for the pool, either, because the 200W brushless motor and 5,500 GPH suction enable the robot to scale walls of concrete, tiles, vinyl, or fibreglass with ease. The robot cleaner can capture large debris and super fine particles alike, ensuring that the water is clean. Even better, the Beatbot pool cleaners use a ClearWater clarification system that breaks down oils, dirt, and metal residues to ensure safe swimming. Once the cleaning job is complete, the AquaSense 2 parks itself just above the water surface near the wall for effortless retrieval. Immiment guests? No problem A new feature, if you opt for the AquaSense 2 Ultra, is called AI Quick Mode and it’s perfect for when you’ve forgotten to clean the pool and guests are arriving soon. Activate this mode in the app before putting the machine in the pool and it can cut cleaning time in half by intelligently detecting and removing leaves and plant debris. With this handy mode, the Ultra will have your pool sparkling in the sun, ready for fun in no time. Beatbot Big savings in early Prime Day deals The Beatbot AquaSense 2 Ultra comes with a $710 discount ahead of Prime Day, so you can get it for $2,840. The Beatbot AquaSense 2 Pro (which comes with the same 5-in-1 cleaning skills) gets a $820 discount, so you can get it for $2,078 ahead of Prime Day. The Beatbot AquaSense 2, which was built for smaller pools and only cleans the floors, walls, and waterline (without skimming or clarifying the water), is also on sale, coming with a $400 discount. This means you can get one of these for a mere $1,099. Whichever one you choose to get, it’s going to greatly improve your summer, allowing you to enjoy your weekends and your pool. Buy now at Amazon Read...

At a glanceExpert`s Rating Pros I’ve never seen a lamp that can provide more types of lighting on a single device Easy setup and installation Massive number of preloaded scenes Cons Ripple effect can be polarizing Overall hardware design feels a bit dated Not cheap Our Verdict The Govee Uplighter Floor Lamp is nothing if not an acquired taste. The rippling uplight effect won’t be for everyone, but it can be dazzling in the right environment. Price When Reviewed This value will show the geolocated pricing text for product undefined Best Pricing Today Best Prices Today: Check today’s prices Do-it-all smart home outfit Govee seemingly will not rest until every square inch of your home has light cast upon it. Its latest floor lamp/torchiere joins at least four previous freestanding lamp designs, along with two new floor lamps being launched alongside this one, the Uplighter. The name tells the story in part: In addition to providing task-based downlight illumination, the Uplighter is particularly designed with upward-firing accent illumination in mind, along with a third, side-lighting mode. Featuring lights designed with “enhanced RGBWWIC” LEDs (the acronym indicates there are discrete elements for producing red, green, blue, white, and warm white light), which Govee says “seamlessly blends dynamic color effects with practical white lighting,” the three lighting zones work like this: Downlighting: 1,000 lumens from warm-white LEDs to provide tunable, white-light-only illumination for use as traditional, downward-firing task lighting. Uplighting: This is really the main event. About 300 lumens of RGBWW lights fire upwards, painting the ceiling with a ripple effect (which I’ll elaborate upon in a moment). Sidelighting: Finally, a ring of RGBIC LEDs add a purely decorative accent element that can be used to complement either the down- or uplighting feature. There’s no luminosity spec provided, but this section isn’t bright. The Govee Uplighter Floor Lamp can deliver up to 1,000 lumens of downlighting with its dimmable warm-white LEDs.Christopher Null/Foundry All of these lighting components are contained in a single head unit, which is attached to the top of a metal pole that’s a little more than five feet long. The pole comes pre-wired, in pieces which are simply screwed together, sans tools. With the base and head unit, the system comprises a total of six pieces that must be connected, not including the standard A/C adapter. Things get wild with the Govee Uplighter’s upward-firing light; its task lighting function is largely traditional. Note that the head of the lamp can be tilted up to 30 degrees in any direction, which is useful for directing task lighting or, perhaps, for aiming the uplighting element, if you have a sloped ceiling. (Note, however, that it is difficult to make sure the head unit is level, as the ball-and-socket joint has no system for determining when it’s level with the floor.) Using the Govee Uplighter Floor Lamp A pair of buttons on the uppermost segment of the pole can be used to manually power the lamp on and off and cycle through lighting modes on both the up- and downlighting sections. A long-press on the scene button also switches uplighting on and downlighting off, and vice versa on the following press. The various presets for the scene button can be customized by the user. The Govee Uplighter sits atop a nearly 5-foot pole, which is prewired but you’ll need to make the final assembly.Christopher Null/Foundry As with all things Govee, the lamp is designed to work with the Govee app and sets up over 2.4GHz Wi-Fi. The app auto-discovered the lamp once I powered it on, and a single press of a button on the hardware was all it took to complete the connection to my network. As a task light, the lamp is solid, offering illumination that was more than bright enough for me to work under at full strength. (Even at about 20 percent brightness, I was still easily able to read by its light.) Color temperatures supported a range from 2700K to 6500K, providing more than enough variety for whatever mood you’re trying to set. While the task lighting function is largely traditional, the upward-firing light is where things get wild. First, it’s important to note the upper light is exclusively designed to showcase a “ripple effect” that looks exactly how it sounds. Wavy bands of color shimmer and dance on the ceiling, waving back and forth either in monochrome or with multiple colors, keeping with one color scheme or cycling through multiples. The Govee Uplighter Floor Lamp can project beautiful patterns onto your ceiling, but the effect becomes less pronounced the higher your ceiling.Christopher Null/Foundry It’s a bit like the effect of a swimming pool reflecting onto the ceiling at night; but not quite, especially since the ripple effect eventually stops and reverses, which is a little jarring if you happen to catch it happening live. It turns out the effect is largely mechanical, and you can see the bulb under the rippled glass physically rotating if you watch closely. A music mode that changes the lighting in time with ambient sound is also included and can use either the lamp’s microphone or your phone’s for its source, but the ripple effect remains. Lighting effects As is always the case with Govee, the user is given a seemingly infinite number of preloaded scenes to play with, whether you want your ceiling to look like it’s bathed in white moonlight, red flames, or chaotic graffiti (found under the “Funny” scene selections). Everything is displayed with that shimmering ripple effect. Of course, you can always DIY a scene of your own if nothing on the menu works for you, use Govee’s AI mode to ask for a bespoke scene, or check out the “Share Space” feature, where other Govee users can upload their own illuminated art. The sidelighting system includes another 8 segments of LEDs that you can play with to complement either the uplighting or downlighting modes—either as accent or contrast—and many of the built-in modes have preloaded settings to control the sidelighting as well. You can also control this lighting directly, even going to far as to address each of the 8 LED segments individually with their own color. You’ll find a dizzying array of lighting effects in patterns in Govee’s app. Christopher Null/Foundry What can’t you do with the Uplighter? The big limitation is that you can’t run both uplighting and downlighting simultaneously. While the sidelighting system can operate with either, Govee’s position is that task lighting and mood lighting are mutually exclusive. And to reiterate, there’s no color downlighting on the device, because Govee also seems to say that when you’re supposed to be working, you can’t be having fun. The height of your ceiling matters when it comes to the ripple effect. Beneath a low, 7-foot ceiling, the ripple is bright, commanding a tight area about 4 feet across. But cast on a 12-foot ceiling, the ripple spreads across about 12 feet of space, with its brightness significantly diminished. You won’t readily be able to alter this, of course, beyond adjusting the placement and brightness of the lamp. Power consumption The Govee Uplighter Floor Lamp offers a decidedly modern aesthetic.Christopher Null/Foundry Govee breaks down the power draw of the lamp by section: The downlight draws up to 9 watts, the sidelight 3.8 watts, and the uplight 17.8 watts, all of which seem reasonable. Support for Matter, Alexa, and Google Assistant are all also included – though as is common with complex lighting products like this, third-party ecosystems will greatly limit how much you can do with the device. That said, I had no trouble getting the Uplighter set up in each of them. This review is part of TechHive’s in-depth coverage of the best smart lighting. Should you buy the Govee Uplighter Floor Lamp? For $180, the Govee Uplighter might well be the most expensive torchiere in your home; it will likely also be your biggest conversation piece. The purchase decision, however, will almost exclusively come down to your thoughts about the ripple effect on your ceiling. 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At a glanceExpert`s Rating Pros Outstanding cleaning ability given ample time Attractive pricing assuming coupons and discounts hold Amazing styling Cons Ineffective shorter cleaning cycles Overly complex controls Cleanup is more difficult than it needs to be Water gets into its charging port Our Verdict Price When Reviewed This value will show the geolocated pricing text for product undefined Best Pricing Today This is a review of two pool robots, one which is the most exceptional cleaning device I’ve tested to date, and one that’s maddeningly frustrating and overly complex. You’ve probably already figured out the twist: Yes, they are same device, the iGarden Pool Cleaner K60. Specifications To start things off, just look at the thing: With its jet-black chassis and orange-trimmed wheels, the machine looks more like a sports car than a glorified leaf sweeper. Despite the evocative look, it still moves about courtesy of large wheels and treads that abut a pair of spinning scrubber. It’s a fairly classic, standard design. The control panel on the iGarden Pool Cleaner K60.Christopher Null/Foundry Its biggest selling point is under the hood: A fairly beefy 7500mAh battery powers the 30-pound robot to an epic running time of up to 6 hours, according to iGarden. (My testing achieved an even better maximum operating time of about 6.5 hours.) That’s so long that iGarden says it has a Guinness World Record for robotic pool cleaning longevity – though a quick search doesn’t quite bear that out, with Guinness noting a prototype robot from the same manufacturer hit the 40-hour mark in 2023. The iGarden Pool Cleaner K60 cleaned up 100% of the synthetic leaves in my first test. No matter though, 6 hours is mightily impressive, and what’s even more notable is that the robot achieved a feat that no other has done in my years of testing these devices: It cleaned up 100 percent of the material in my first synthetic leaf test, leaving behind absolutely no debris—even on steps, which few robots ever manage to clean properly. Even the very best pool robots tend to leave behind a few scraps during their run, but the iGarden scooped up everything on its inaugural run, a monumental first. (Subsequent runs did leave behind two or three tidbits, though that is still impressive.) Performance The rubber plug protecting recharging the iGarden Pool Cleaner K60’s battery repeatedly failed to prevent water getting into the port.Christopher Null/Foundry So, what’s the catch? Well, there are quite a few, starting with the fact that the iGarden K60 really needs those six hours to do all that work. The unit can be set to operate for shorter cleaning times (60-, 90-, or 120 minutes), and even the 120-minute mode wasn’t effective at picking up more than about 70 percent of my test debris, leaving large parts of the pool untouched. Even a second 120-minute run didn’t pick up what was left behind, and it was only when I set the robot to run on its undisturbed, run-until-the-battery-dies schedule that I was able to achieve that 100 percent pickup performance. That presents users with a quandary: Would you rather have a robot that picks up about 95 percent of debris in two hours, or one that gets 100 percent in six hours? I think it’s a fair compromise to select the former, as no one wants to drop a robot in the pool in the morning, only for it not to finish until the end of the day—especially if you’re planning on swimming that day. The iGarden Pool Cleaner K60 features a 4-liter debris basket.Christopher Null/Foundry The K60 is also marred by a wildly complex interface, both on its chassis and in its half-baked mobile app. The app’s control panel is a touchscreen festooned with icons, many of which are difficult to parse. A clock icon seems self-explanatory, but you’ll need to understand what the three lights next to that icon mean to use it properly. One light equals a one-hour cleaning time, two lights is 90 minutes, and three lights is two hours. No lights means it runs until the battery dies. An “AI timer” has a similar three-light system, corresponding to auto-cleaning cycle of every 24-, 48-, or 72 hours, presuming you leave the robot in the pool after each run. Additional controls are built for cleaning mode (floor-only or floor/wall/waterline) and “turbo mode” (which speeds up the robot considerably). Alas, none of this is intuitive, and even after a week of use I found myself referring to the manual to refresh my memory about what icon was what. Even turning the robot on is tricky. First, you’ll find a knob on the underside of the robot that must be turned as a sort of master power switch. Then the power icon on the touchscreen must be held down for three seconds until it starts flashing. At this point you can change your operating selections via the other buttons, and then you must push the power button again. Wait too long on any step and the robot will go to sleep and you’ll need to start over. When I attempted to run the robot on its inaugural run, I had to fish it out of the water with a hook twice because I’d messed something up. Frustrating. The iGarden app iGarden’s barebones app doesn’t log cleaning sessions or include a battery-life indicator.Christopher Null/Foundry iGarden’s mobile app is somehow no better. While it recreates most of the hardware experience, it lacks anything in the way of extras—including a battery monitor or a log of operations. I also found that my selections in the app didn’t always transition to the robot, requiring me to double-check the control panel before each run. I encountered other problematic, if less-severe issues as well. The iGarden’s filter basket is large but strangely designed, with multiple chambers and a relatively small access hatch that together make it difficult to clean out. You’ll charge the unit via a standard plug-in cable, and the charging port is covered via a thick rubber gasket when it’s in the pool. The problem is this gasket isn’t 100 percent waterproof, and each time I ran the robot, water got into the charging port, which in turn necessitated attempting to drain it by placing the robot at an angle with the port facing down, often overnight. Even the hook provided to retrieve the robot is non-standard in size. Retreival is doable with a more typical hook, but not as easy as it should be. And for that matter, a robot this expensive should be able to dock at the waterline when it’s finished running. The multi-chambered debris basket proved difficult to clean out.Christopher Null/Foundry The perhaps optimistically named turbo mode helps the robot get its job done slightly faster, but it’s also a little less effective. It runs out of battery life after five hours while collecting a bit less debris. A bigger issue is that while in turbo mode, the robot twice beached itself on a high step, unable to get back to deeper water without a push. It’s unclear if this is an anomaly of turbo mode or just bad luck during those test runs. Should you buy the iGarden Pool Cleaner K60? The iGarden K60 is billed at a heady $1,498 MSRP, but it’s currently on deep discount (with a coupon) if purchased directly from the manufacturer. You should also be aware that this robot is listed on Amazon as the model GT60. We checked with the manufacturer and verified that the G60 and the K60 are the same product. Finally, the iGarden model K40 and K20 are essentially the same robot, but they offer 4- and 2.5-hour maximum running times respectively. With the discount applied, the K60’s discounted price puts it within striking distance of some midrange robots, a price that merits consideration. While it’s an exceptional cleaner (given enough time in the water), its numerous quirks and foibles mean it’s ultimately an exercise in compromise that will require some serious thinking to justify buying. Read...

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