How We Review
A review is only as good as the work behind it, so let's be precise about what PoolGearGuide does — and doesn't — do before recommending anything.
What our reviews are right now
Our current reviews are research-based. For every product we review, we work through:
- Manufacturer documentation — spec sheets, owner's manuals, and support pages, which say more about a product than its marketing page does.
- Warranty and return terms — one of the strongest honest signals of how much a manufacturer trusts its own hardware.
- Verified owner feedback at scale — patterns across hundreds or thousands of owner reports, not cherry-picked quotes. One angry review means nothing; two hundred people reporting the same cable tangle means something.
- Retailer listings — kit contents, availability, and how the product is actually sold.
Every review page carries a notice saying exactly this. When we can't verify a claim, the page says "not confirmed" instead of guessing.
What we never do
- Claim hands-on testing we didn't do.
- Invent prices, measurements, specs, or warranty terms.
- Use "lab tested" wording for products without test evidence.
- Let affiliate commissions touch a score (see our affiliate disclosure).
How we score (the rubric)
Every product review carries a 0–10 overall score built from six weighted dimensions. We publish the per-dimension bars so you can re-weight for what you care about — a renter and a pool-service pro shouldn't read the same number the same way. Here's exactly what each dimension measures:
- Cleaning performance (25%) — coverage (floor, walls, waterline), filtration fineness, brushing, and how well it handles the debris the product is sold for, cross-checked against owner reports of what it misses.
- Value (20%) — capability per dollar at typical street price, including what you don't have to buy separately. Not "cheapest" — cost-to-benefit.
- Ease of use (15%) — weight, retrieval, filter access, setup, and day-to-day fuss: the things that decide whether you actually run it.
- Durability outlook (15%) — build, wear parts, warranty length and terms, and the depth of the brand's parts-and-service network.
- Features (10%) — scheduling, app control, mapping, self-cleaning and extras, scored by usefulness rather than spec-sheet length.
- Owner sentiment (15%) — the direction and consistency of verified owner feedback at scale, not cherry-picked quotes.
Scores are editorial opinions, stated as such, and they never move because a product pays a higher commission (see our affiliate disclosure). When a dimension can't be verified, we say "not confirmed" rather than padding the number.
Where this is heading
As the site grows we plan to add genuine hands-on testing, starting with robotic pool cleaners. When that happens, hands-on reviews will be labeled as such, with photos, test dates, and measured results — and the research-based label stays on everything else. A review only gets to say "we tested it" when we actually did.