REVIEW: iGarden Pool Cleaner Okay Professional 120 Robotic will prevent hours of upkeep

Robots are slowly taking up family chores. By now, many houses have a robotic vacuum cleaner to assist gather the mud and mop so you possibly can spend extra of your time doing the stuff you love. Whereas much less common, there are additionally robotic garden mowers, and now there are robotic pool cleaners.

This aquatic robotic is designed to be easy: simply flip it on, drop it in, and it cleans your schedule and your pool. The iGarden Pool Cleaner Okay Professional 120 focuses on endurance, providing a beneficiant 12 hours of steady runtime. If you happen to want much more runtime, the top-of-the-line Okay Professional 150 stretches that to a full 15 hours.

Utilizing its Each day Care Mode, it will probably keep submerged for as much as 21 days between prices, mechanically waking for brief cleansing cycles each few days. For Australian pool homeowners sick of each day or weekly upkeep throughout summer season, this “set and overlook” promise is extremely alluring – particularly when a single weekly clear can simply eat two hours of your weekend.

I’ve been testing the Okay Professional 120 to see if its cleansing efficiency lives as much as that marathon battery life, and whether or not leaving a robotic within the pool for weeks on finish really justifies the premium price ticket.

Design

The iGarden Okay Professional 120 makes an announcement in a shiny, aggressive pink and black end that appears extra like a sports activities automotive than a family equipment. It contains a hydrodynamic “racecar” silhouette designed to scale back drag, which contributes to its vitality effectivity.

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The robotic is substantial, tipping the scales at round 10kg dry, and considerably extra when crammed with water; hauling it out of the pool requires a little bit of muscle. Luckily, it features a retrieval hook that attaches to an ordinary pool pole, permitting you to fish it out with out diving in.

One of the crucial sensible design decisions is the massive filter field built-in instantly into the center of the chassis. Entry is easy, making the “gross” a part of the job—emptying the sludge—fast and comparatively painless.

The unit sits on vast tank-like treads that present glorious grip on varied surfaces, making it relevant to a majority of pool homeowners.

Whereas the app affords management over the robotic, there’s additionally a contact panel with iconography to supply suggestions on mode choice, battery life and extra. By way of interacting with the robotic, that is additionally supported by voice instructions, that are significantly useful throughout setup.

Efficiency

The efficiency of the robotic will considerably impression your motivation to purchase or not purchase this product. It may look flashy, have all of the options, however until it really cleans your pool, it wouldn’t be value it.

Fortunately, there’s excellent news to report on the cleansing efficiency entrance. One of many key questions I had when beginning this overview was how properly it will probably clear. Would it not be potential to go away a pool over winter, then drop within the robotic and have it prepared for summer season swimming? The reply, possibly.

As quite a lot of homeowners do, this pool was left alone through the winter (non-swimming) months, and through spring, it wanted to be introduced again to life to be prepared for the approaching Australian summer season. As a take a look at of the worst-case state of affairs, we merely dropped the robotic in and let it run to see the way it went. The picture on the left was the consequence, a totally full filter field, displaying the robotic may take away a good portion of the pool contents answerable for turning it inexperienced.

The robotic was run throughout quite a lot of days to wash out a considerable quantity of the algae and particles from surrounding timber. Science tells us a salt/chlorine pool wants some chemical assist to completely restore it, however when it comes to cleansing, the bulk was achieved with the robotic. There was a remaining clear with a pool vacuum to get the finer particles, however 90% of the trouble was achieved by the robotic.

With the pool prepared for summer season, the workload now turns to upkeep for the approaching months. This job is far simpler, simply cost the robotic, drop it within the pool, and due to the lengthy battery life, it strikes by way of its cleansing cycle, then you definately merely take away it whenever you swim. The filter is ok, so it’s value noting that ultra-fine gadgets is probably not eliminated, however the overwhelming majority of what you’ll usually be scooping out of your pool are eliminated by the robotic.

The picture on the best reveals the quantity collected after only a few minutes of operating in a pool that appeared clear to start out with.

The robotic’s means to wash your pool in the end offers you time again in your life that might in any other case be consumed each week. It’s because of this that pool homeowners may justify the acquisition worth.

Options

The robotic affords a variety of options and, as we anticipate from our good devices in 2025, connects to a cell app. Nonetheless, right here is the place issues get fascinating. The expertise is vastly totally different from the cell app to your family robotic vacuum, primarily as a result of connectivity stops the second the Okay Professional 120 goes underwater.

This occurs as a result of WiFi operates on the two.4 GHz frequency, which is extraordinarily near the resonant frequency of water molecules. The water absorbs the radio waves nearly immediately, successfully “consuming” the sign vitality and changing it right into a minute quantity of warmth (the identical precept utilized by microwave ovens).

For the person, this leads to a disconnected expertise that requires a shift in mindset. Not like a terrestrial robotic vacuum that may map your flooring plan in real-time in your display screen, this robotic turns into a “black field” the second it sinks. The app is highly effective for scheduling, firmware updates, and reviewing cleansing experiences after the job is finished, however don’t anticipate to drive this factor across the pool flooring with a digital joystick. It serves as a stark reminder that whereas 2025 expertise is superior, it nonetheless can’t break the basic legal guidelines of physics.

21-Day Endurance Mode
This mode permits the robotic to get up each few days for a one-hour upkeep cycle, permitting it to stay submerged and energetic for as much as three weeks on a single cost.

Massive Chassis Filter Field
Designed for heavy masses, the high-capacity particles basket can deal with important leaf litter and sediment, making it superb for seasonal cleanups or uncared for swimming pools.

Turbo 200% Suction
A high-power mode that doubles the suction functionality to sort out heavy particles masses, resembling after a storm or heavy leaf fall.

Clever 3D Path Navigation
Utilising infrared sensors and gyroscopes, the robotic plans an environment friendly S-shaped cleansing path to make sure complete protection of flooring, partitions, and waterlines with out missed spots.

Points and Alternatives

Whereas the robotic is a formidable machine when it comes to efficiency, design and options, there are some issues I feel might be improved.

The hook also can scratch that shiny pink end as you try and hook it from the underside of the pool. It is usually potential and presumably possible that you simply hook the filter. This can be a design side I hope iGarden considers in future revisions of the product. In the event that they had been to invert the course of the filter deal with, this might not permit the hook to catch it inadvertently.

The filter field is beneficiant in dimension, however it additionally options an space for enchancment. As you extract the filter field from the guts of the robotic, the catch that holds the filter door closed has a really tight tolerance, that means that it’s really fairly straightforward for it to return open. Throughout the overview, we discovered that these occasions the place the filter field was fairly full, it positioned strain laterally towards the door and will inadvertently launch whenever you don’t need it to. Once more, this might be resolved with a slight tweak to the design to require a purposeful motion to unlock the mechanism.

Worth and Availability

The iGarden Pool Cleaner Okay Professional 120 has been out there internationally for a while, however solely this week launched to Australian customers who can now buy it by way of the official iGarden web site – https://au.retailer.igarden.ai/merchandise/igarden-pool-cleaner-k-pro

The iGarden Pool Cleaner Okay 120 (reviewed) is the mid-tier mannequin of the Okay Professional sequence, which is presently supplied with Black Friday reductions (code 25BF12). The lineup pricing is detailed beneath:

• iGarden Pool Cleaner Okay Professional 100 – RRP A$2,099 ($420 off with code: 25BF10) = A$1,679
• iGarden Pool Cleaner Okay Professional 120 – RRP A$2,799 ($550 off with code: 25BF12) = A$2,249
• iGarden Pool Cleaner Okay Professional 150 – RRP A$3,799 ($800 off with code: 25BF15) = A$2,999

General

The iGarden Pool Cleaner Okay Professional 120 is a very compelling product for pool homeowners who worth their time and wish to shift the upkeep workflow to robots in an effort to spend it doing the issues they love, with the individuals they love (like going for a swim of their pool).

Just like the robots inside our houses, this robotic merely requires recharging and emptying infrequently, a a lot better deal than spending hours of your time cleansing every week.

The selection of fashions is one thing you must contemplate earlier than merely clicking purchase, because the battery life differs between fashions and primarily based on the dimensions of your pool and the variety of days you’d prefer it to run between prices, it may be the distinction in worth you’ll want to pay for the posh. Having robots do our chores is in the end a luxurious, however one which some are ready to pay for. If you happen to’ve invested $60k right into a pool, likelihood is, you possibly can afford a couple of extra to automate the cleansing.

Having seen the results of the robotic’s cleansing efforts with a full 4L of particles from the seasonal comeback, the efficiency of the robotic is spectacular, and it’s nice to see it’s able to heavy lifting when required. You probably have a big pool and the price range to help a premium funding, that is possible the very best “set and overlook” answer available on the market at the moment.