Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I read all the reviews about this item and came to the conclusion that there was no conclusion So I bought the unit to see how it worked for myself. If I had it all to do over again, I would not waste the money, so I suggest that you don't either Here are the results of my testing: The unit will vacuum "stuff" off of the bottom of your pool. It works, but not for long. The cute commercial shows them vacuuming rocks off the bottom of the pool, well I don't have rocks on the bottom of my pool I have silt and leaves. I will explain The unit stops being effective as soon as the small bag fills or the surface area is covered with silt or dirt/mud. THIS DOES NOT TAKE LONG AT ALL. THE BAG IS ABOUT THE SIZE OF A QUART ZIPLOCK BAG. For example if you have dirt or silt on the bottom of your pool (if you killed a bunch of algae and it settles to the bottom) the minute the bag surface is covered with the dirt your vacuum stops being effective because no water is flowing through the unit. This does not take long at all. That is the bag surface, not the entire bag. 98% of the bag is still empty. I did a 10 X 2 foot wide section across the bottom of the pool (about 20 linear feet) with a significant amount of silt on the bottom and the bag surface inside was covered within seconds and the vacuum quit working. The motor ran but there was no suction or draw of the water through the bag so the unit was not effective at all. The battery compartment is an accident waiting to happen. You must keep the edge of the cover sealed with some type of lubricant. The locking mechanism is VERY CHEAPLY MADE. For this money you would expect a more sophisticated sealing system. Re-engineering this would not cost them a lot of money and most likely prevent most of the water leaking into battery compartment problems that I have read about. Pulling the unit from the pool and keeping the crap in the bag and the suction unit from spilling back into the pool water requires acrobatic skills of balancing and strength. The head is too large to do the stairs of most pools I wanted this thing to work, but the bottom line is that it just isn't worth the money and it ends up being a lot more work than just using the traditional suction vacuum. I hope this helps you save the 400 bucks.