Polaris 9550 Sport Robotic Pool Cleaner, Automatic Vacuum

Alright, so I've only tried a couple of pool robots. I prefer these fully autonomous units rather than suction side type units which have no intelligence to them. In addition to this unit, I've tried the Dolphin Nautilus. Both the Dolphin and this Polaris F9550 cleaned my pool equally well. In the case of either robot, my pool is spotless in about 2 hours. I have a 20,000 gallon pool and it's rectangular. Neither robot cleaned the stairs at all. I have short steep stairs, and I'm sure that has something to do with it. I just brush the stairs off with my pool brush and and ensure I keep the jets on the stairs turned on and its not an issue. I've had this unit for 4 months now and I waited to review because I wanted to ensure it continued to perform well. It's easy to clean as well, just pop the filter out and hose it off. The remote is handy if you want to grab a spot the machine missed, or if something falls in before you take the robot out. The remote is mostly a gimmick, but it works well, especially for removing the robot from the pool. I use the remote to steer the robot to the side of the pool I want to remove it from, then I hit the easy lift button to remove it from the pool. The caddy is great. I live in FL and I need to remove the robot from the pool and bring it inside daily, due to lightning. Cons - The filter does feel fragile, but it hasn't broken on me yet. I imagine you'll need to replace this yearly, but I haven't gotten there yet. Update August 2022 - Robot still works great. Expect to replace the filter each season. It will gum up and ruin the performance of the machine eventually especially if your water is hard. I run the robot about once per week. In a tropical climate so the season is about 8 months.

I needed to completely replace my old pressure side pool cleaner, from the pump out. Looking at total cost, I opted to instead switch to the fully electric pool cleaner. This will save a ton of money in electrical bills (over 1000 watts for my 3/4 horse pump down to 150 for this unit) . I have now had the Polaris F9550 Sport for 5 months. It has performed utterly flawlessly. I have a nearly rectangular 17'x38' pool and the cord has never, not once, gotten tangled. It has never flipped over not not been able to right itself. The cleaner keeps everything so clean I rarely have to vacuum. It does walls and the tile line but will not do any stairs. So I have to brush the stairs off manually. I can't believe the basket when I empty it... it even captures beach sand! The device has been in the pool continuously for 5 months, only coming out to clean the basket. The remote has nearly no use for me except for amusement. Pressing the lift button causes the cleaner to climb the wall and wait for removal. The only negative is to understand that the unit will do only 7 cleaning cycles before needing reprogramming. This can be once a day for 7 days or 2 weeks for 3 days each But 7 is it. I assume that's to ensure someone cleans the basket. When I go out of town, I program it for 2 days a week and I get 3 weeks of cleaning. Another possible negative is the thing keeps my pool so clean I get lazy and don't keep up with brushing the pool down or vacuuming. Th Polaris F9550 Sport turned out to be great investment. I'm very happy.

To say I am disappointed with my investment in the Polaris F9550 is an understatement. I bought this unit in Dec. 2017 after hours of research of various pool robots. F9550, at least on paper, sounded like the best among all of them with all the cool and fancy features. However, the reason I am so very disappointed is that it can't do the most basic promised function: CLEANING THE POOL! In November of 2017, our house went through a series of renovation. The pool was not covered, therefore leaving serious amount of debris from construction (sands, wood chips, tiny rocks) in my pool. On top of the regular dust, dirt and leaves, yeah, my pool was very dirty. Therefore it prompted me to look into pool bottom surface cleaner. After F9550 arrived, I was very excited to try it out. At first I thought it worked great. It picked up all the very obvious, larger debris in the pool. However, I soon noticed that although it did a decent job on picking up larger pieces of debris, there remained a fine layer of sand/dust/dirty on the bottom of my pool. I didn't immediately notice this issue because I later realized that since the propeller of the robot is located at the back of the unit, it blows the sand/dust/dirt and spread them around in the pool until they resettle. Confused, I went online and did more research. I concluded that I probably got the wrong filter. So I ordered the fine particle filter thinking that this might solve the issue. I was wrong. When the filter arrived, I got more confused. Because the filter looked exactly like the one I already have. I compare the shape, size, and the fineness of the filter net opening. They look completely identical. Nonetheless, I thought I'd still give it a shot, but of course, the result was the same. Very frustrated at this point, I bought a manual pool vacuum (the kind that attached to the end of the skimmer telescoping pole). Within 25 minutes, it sucked up about 80% of all the remaining dirt in my pool. I opened up the filter, and it was FILLED with sand/dirt/dust. Even though I have a viable solution now, it is far from being ideal. I have a very busy schedule between work and family and would like to do as little of manual work as possible. That's why I dropped close to 1,100 to buy this robot so it can do most of my work for me. The result is very disappointing after about 3 months of frequent use with various adjustment and experimentation. I am very disappointed to conclude that, this robot, or at least that one I got, does not clean that well. While it does do a good job on larger debris, but it renders itself completely useless if I still need to stand by my pool and manually operate another vacuum for at least 45 minutes every week.

I'm really happy with this purchase. We had a Legend II pressure side pool cleaner that worked well for a couple weeks each season, but the valves had to be set just right, and it became less effective as debris collected in the filter and the filter pressure changed. Keeping it working was always a hassle. Our pool service recommended we install a booster pump with a new cleaner; an $1,800 proposition. Apparently, our existing cleaner wasn't designed to work with a 3/4 hp pump. I wasn't convinced we'd be better off, so I got this guy instead. Before purchasing, I had some questions/concerns about the unit which the product literature doesn't adequately address. First, the 70' power cable floats, so it stays out of the way of the unit, and generally stays untangled. It's double insulated, and doesn't require a ground, but the manufacturer recommends not swimming while it's deployed. The caddie mounted control unit and power connection appears to be weather resistant, so I wouldn't worry about the whole thing getting caught in the rain. Water jets through the cleaner, which functions like the sweep hose on a pressure side cleaner, driving debris toward the pool drain in the deep end as it passes by. That means it doesn't have to cover every square inch in order to be effective. With regard to the remote, get it. The cleaner only has a 6' power cord for the outlet, which means you probably won't be able to place the caddie close enough to the pool to be able to see the cleaner while operating the control unit, unless you use an extension cord. You need to see the cleaner to direct it during the lift function, and the remote solves this. We've had it a couple of months now, and I'm pleased with the performance. The biggest test was after a soccer team party which saw a whole bunch of leaves and landscaping mulch deposited in the pool, including heavier rubber mulch from the playground. This thing cleaned EVERYTHING and never got bogged down. Our old cleaner would have stopped working at least once due to a heavy bag. Some people have complained that their floating cable gets tangled. This has only happened once with ours, but a simple figure 8 loop in the cable is all it takes to cause the unit to stop working. It's easy to fix, but the manufacturer doesn't list this as a possible cause for the unit not working, and it might not be readily apparent what the problem is. PROS: - Easy assembly, no tools required. - Thorough cleaning of the floor bottom and walls. Climbs 9.5" walls with ease. - Reaches the tiles. Though I doubt it cleans the entire perimeter, my old cleaner never came close. - The lift function works well, making it easy to remove from the pool. - Rigid mesh filter is sturdy and can hold a lot. - Easy to transport and store, requiring only 18" square by 38" high of space - Easy to clean. - Doesn't require you to change your valve settings back and forth, or alternatively, a separate booster pump. CONS - Short power cord, only 6 ft. - Takes a little longer to deploy and put away than our old cleaner. The biggest issue is rolling up the 70' floating cable. It straightens out during use, and needs to be twisted correctly to loop onto the caddie, like manually rolling up a garden hose. - Though it can reach them, it doesn't clean shelves well, and doesn't appear to clean steps at all.

I ordered this to replace an old Polaris pool cleaner that had finally broken down and needed hundreds of dollars of repair parts. My old pool cleaner operated off of an extra pump that we have installed. This new one is electric and does not use the pool's system for suction. Out of the box, this thing was crazy easy to assemble. I had it on the cart and ready to go in about 30 minutes. Since we've been without an automatic cleaner for the winter, the first clean for this unit was a big task. It did a great job and I didn't have to empty it before the cleaning cycle finished. It ran for about two hours and got about 80% of the pool. Now that I've had it for about six weeks, here are the things I've noticed: 1. I love the cart. It's so nice to just park this thing in my garage without it taking up a ton of space! 2. My pool is about 21,000 gallons and is just a rectangle. For the cleaner, 3-4 hours gets about 95% of everything on the bottom of the pool. 2 hours gets about 60-80%. 3. The remote is super finicky. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. I've learned that I experience the highest level of success if I am able to grab the remote and position it to lift it out of the pool before the time expires on the cleaning cycle. If I try to turn it back on, unplug or plug it back in, the remote has a 50/50 shot at working. 4. Cleaning the basket on the inside is so easy! I pull it out, spray it with a hose and it takes me all of 2 minutes to have a totally clean basket. 5. The electrical cable likes to wind and tangle once it touches the water. Perhaps it's because the water is colder right now, but uncoiling and re-coiling the electrical cable is 90% of the time investment for this thing. I end up having roughly 1/3-1/2 of the electrical cable out of the water because otherwise it just bunches up and gets tangled during the cleaning cycle. --I sat on purchasing this for about 8 weeks. I was struggling with the price point. After 12 weeks of not having an automatic pool cleaner in the pool, my time investment per week to clean and maintain the pool went from HOURS to MINUTES. No more lugging out 40ft of vacuum hose and having to empty the filter skimmer once or twice every single vacuum. No more clogged hoses. Now I only need to invest about 15 minutes to set it up and pack it up. Beyond that, some light surface skimming and emptying the pool filter skimmers and I'm done. This was a HUGE WIN for me, so your mileage may vary depending on how much time you have.

First impressions on using this robotic cleaner are excellent. My reference of comparison is with an aging Hayward Tigershark. The Polaris 9550 cleans well, is very intelligent and does everything as advertised. It is a great improvement over the Tigershark in operation. I especially like the Lift system. There is a limitation here that you must observe, if the basket full indicator light is on … it will come to the shallow side you select but will have trouble climbing up the wall. Still much better than the Tigershark who must be dragged in from somewhere. The cleaning cycle for my 20x40 pool is only 1:30 min which I extended to two hours. With the light off after a two hour cycle, It had no problem climbing the sides for extraction from the pool. Since I just opened my pool using the Polaris 9550 I thought this was excellent considering how much extra de cleaning was required. The basket contained a lot of debris. Since I do my own repairs on the Tigershark, I hope Amazon allows me to modify this review should maintenance be required in the future for the Polaris. So far I am really impressed with this pool cleaner. Since I’m retired and work a busy sckedule any more the weekly programming options are of little use to me. But otherwise, you would simply program the device ahead of time & slip it into the pool the night before you go to work. Don’t think I’ll need the remote , maybe I’d consider it more of a toy since need for spot cleaning is not needed on the Polaris 9550. Now if you buy a Tigershrak, get a remote … you’ll have some spot cleaning issues. Placing the Polaris in the pool vertically gets all the air out of the internal structure. Back flipping. I didn’t see any issues here. No cable swivel … cable needs untwisted every use on any robotic. Not a problem. Want cable problems, use the cable to lift the cleaner out of the pool or drag it to the side. I’m replacing the cable on the Tigershark now.

If Apple designed a pool vacuum, this would be it. This is so well designed and engineered and met exactly what I was looking for. I had the old Polaris 360 that finally died and I replaced it 5 years ago with a Polaris robot vacuum. I hated it! It wouldn’t cover the entire pool uniformly, it was hard to take out of the water, it got tangled in the cord every use, etc. So I went back to the water driven Polaris 280 (total junk) but it wasn’t really built for a pool my size and it really never kept up. I recently had to have my liner replaced, and asked them to carry of the 280 with the removed liner. I wanted a robot vacuum that didn’t have an app because my roombas are constantly “fussing” about something. Get sick of the daily notifications, thus, I threw out all pool robots that used an app. This was the highest end model that I could find that didn’t use an app. It works great! Covers the entire pool. Traps leaves and fine particles. It’s easy to take out of the water and empty the filter. I couldn’t be happier, even though I’ve only used it 4 times so far. It has an easy to understand control panel, easy to put together with no tools, and a cart to store and pool the robot. Robots are not meant to stay in the pool like water driven vacuums, so be prepared to remove this after each use. Plus, I want to get as much life out of it as I can considering the expense. If you don’t want to fool with apps, then this is definitely the robot for you. After 6 months: The plastic module that holds the “brain” of the vacuum has completely come apart and cannot be reattached. Therefore, the cart is unusable. I have to bring the vacuum and electric cord out SEPARATELY from the cart and “brain”, and make a second trip to get those vital pieces. In addition, the “+” button on the timer no longer works so I’m stuck with one setting. I purposely chose this model to avoid too much tech, and it still performs well below expectations. I regret my purchase and wish I had gone with Dolphin.

I live in the desert and we get a lot of really fine dirt in the wind that ends up at the bottom of our pool quite regularly. The Zodiac Polaris F9550 Sport Robotic In-Ground Pool Cleaner does a great job roaming around the pool and sucking up the dirt. The filter that comes with the machine has much bigger holes in the filter basket and would not pick up any of the fine dirt, but they sell a fine mesh filter basket that does get absolutely all of the dirt, at an extra cost. THINGS I LOVE ABOUT IT: It's all automated, just hit start and it gets right to work, sucking up everything in its path. It will also climb the walls, scrubbing all of any algae or dirt that happens to take hold, keeping your pool sparkling clean. This robot is a massive time-saver. THINGS I HATE ABOUT IT: I have owned my robot for 13 months and about the 9 month mark it stopped being able to climb the walls. It would start to climb the wall then it would turn over on its belly and get stuck, so when I would start a cleaning cycle, the very first wall it would climb it would get stuck and eventually turn itself off, not cleaning my pool. I had to disable the wall climbing command on the controller and then it would clean my pool fine but then I started getting little bits of algae growing on my walls. I could tell it was no longer performing as it once did. I strongly suggest you buy the 3 year warranty with this as you are going to need it. I just used my warranty after only 1 year because the mother board controller stopped communicating with the robot. I believe it was a P10 error. I called Polaris and they told me to take the robot to my nearest pool store where they could better diagnose the error code and tell me exactly which part has failed. I then had to e-mail Polaris with proof of purchase and the part number I needed (provided by the pool store down the street), and I am waiting on the part to come in so I can take it to the pool store for repair/replacement. I still need to call Polaris and tell them about the unit not climbing walls. They will probably need to send me the rubber wheels. Its just sad that it does so awesome for about 9 months, then it starts to break down. When you pay over $1,200.00 for an underwater Roomba, it should work for years...not this model. So be warned ahead of time, get the longest warranty possible because you are going to need it! Otherwise, it will soon become your best friend!!!

Easy to get running. Features are easy to understand. Does a really good job on our 18 x 36 concrete pool. Clean up of the filter basket is very easy. The one feature that jumps out is the LIFT feature. This guides the robot to the wall of your choice and then it climbs the wall allowing you to easily grab the handle. It purges the water (which reduces the weight of the robot) and once removed, it automatically shuts off. How cool is that? I am very impressed by this equipment.

Works great at keeping the pool clean! If you have a pool, you want one of these!

Received a completely different pool cleaner. The box was clearly too light and the contents didn't match the photos.. Won't be buying a warehouse 'deal' again.

Very easy to assemble and use! Suction power is amazing, even picked up the smallest debris to the paint chips. Painting next year. Our old vacuum broke down. Pool was filthy! Waiting for this new cleaner to arrive! I honestly didn't know how this robot would clean up the dirt! It did! Sparkling pool after one use! Even the pool water color changed! So easy to use! I highly recommend it! The remote is easy to use, point and walk after you press the start button. Easy!!!

Mon troisième été que j'utilise ce robot... toujours parfait