Methodology
How we test pool products
Three kinds of guide, labeled differently, because a rating means different things depending on where it came from.
Last updated September 19, 2026
Three kinds of guide
Hands-on tested
The product ran on a working pool for at least one full season, to the protocol below. Cycle times, energy draw, coverage, part failures and warranty experience all recorded. These are the guides where a score reflects something I watched happen.
From experience
Picks drawn from more than fifteen years of servicing, repairing and installing pool equipment: which parts wear, which fail early, what a pool actually needs. Not run side by side to the protocol below. Specifications, warranty terms and prices come from the manufacturer and are cited so you can check them.
Research-based
Conclusions drawn from published specifications, warranty terms, current street pricing and parts availability — all cited so you can check them. No hands-on testing. Every one of these pages carries a published scoring rubric so you can see exactly what the number is built from.
Both are legitimate. Presenting one as the other is not, which is why the label sits at the top of every review rather than buried in a footer. More on why I work this way is on the about page.
I buy what I test
When a category goes through hands-on testing, the units are bought at retail. If a manufacturer ever sends one, it is disclosed on that page and assessed identically — including publishing a poor result.
One season minimum
Nothing will get a hands-on label from an unboxing. To earn one, equipment has to run on a working pool for at least one full season, through real bather load, real debris and real weather.
I open things up
Fifteen years of repair and warranty work teaches you what a spec sheet never will. That experience is what the current picks come from, and it is why repairability carries so much weight in the scoring.
Failures count more than features
A spec sheet tells you what a product does on day one. What matters more is what breaks, how easily it is repaired, whether parts are sold at all, and what the warranty actually pays for when you claim on it.
What I measure, by category
Different products fail in different ways. When a category goes through hands-on testing, these are the specific things that get recorded.
Robotic pool cleaners
- Timed floor, wall and waterline coverage on three pool shapes
- Cycle time versus claimed cycle time
- Fine debris capture, measured by filter basket contents after a controlled debris drop
- Cable tangling over 30 consecutive cycles
- Energy draw per cycle at the plug
- Repairability: are motors, tracks, brushes and PCBs sold as spares?
Pumps
- Actual wattage at each speed, measured with a clamp meter — not nameplate figures
- Flow at the equipment pad against system head
- Noise at 10 feet, in dBA, at typical run speed
- Priming time from dry, and re-prime behavior after a lid seal disturbance
- Control interface: can a non-technical owner actually change a schedule?
Filters
- Pressure rise rate over a season at a fixed flow
- Clean-to-clean interval under identical bather load
- Water used per cleaning cycle, including backwash volume
- Ease of teardown: how long a full element clean actually takes
Test kits and testers
- Accuracy against reference standards at known concentrations
- Repeatability across ten consecutive tests by two different people
- Reagent shelf life in real storage conditions
- Whether the kit tests CYA at all, and how well
Heaters
- Measured temperature rise per hour against pool volume
- Fuel or energy consumed per degree of rise
- Heat pump output at 50°F, 60°F and 70°F ambient — where they diverge most from claims
- Fault behavior and diagnostic clarity when something goes wrong
How scores are assigned
Scores are out of five and they are relative to the category, not to the whole of pool equipment. A 4.5 in budget robotic cleaners does not mean the same machine as a 4.5 in premium robotic cleaners.
I weight durability and repairability heavily, because that is where owner disappointment actually comes from. A cleaner that scrubs beautifully and dies in season three scores below one that is slightly worse at cleaning and still running at year seven with a $40 parts bill.
Where a category has one clear winner, I say so plainly and do not pad the list to ten. Where the honest answer is that the cheap option is fine, I say that too — it costs me affiliate revenue and it is still the right answer.
Where the current guides stand
Every review guide on this site is currently from experience, and each one says so in a line above its short answer, with the full note at the foot of the page. The picks come from more than fifteen years of servicing, repairing and installing pool equipment. Specifications, warranty terms and prices come from the manufacturer, and every source is cited at the foot of the page.
I have not yet run these products on a pool for a season. As each category goes through the protocol above, that page gets rewritten and its label changes to hands-on tested. I would rather tell you which is which than let a score imply work that has not happened.