Yup, love em or hate em. I'm in the love em column. But then again, it's all I've known for the past 17 years. Mine is by A&A Manufacturing and comes with a "lifetime" warranty on moving parts (to the original owner). While I have had to replace gear sets, pop-ups and a few other parts over 17 years - the only item I paid out of pocket for was the leaf vac basket ($30 - the original bag failed after 12 years).
This particular company's customer service/support is great. Several of us here have called with questions and the company is very responsive. One member called and the company send a rep out to tweak his system for better performance - at no cost to the pool owner.
While the system isn't perfect (none are - whether in floor, robots, others), mine does a good job keeping my pool clean. As for our dust storms in the PHX area - my pool cleans up within the next cleaning cycle. Worst dust storm we had, it took two days - at 4 hours a day cleaning - to return the pool to pristine clean. Of course, I still brushed daily during that time and scooped out most of the larger debris.
Of course, if I was building a new pool, I'd be looking at in floor versus robot - no suction side or pressure side cleaner for me.
Something to consider - in floors require the pump to run at a high speed (usually 2700 or higher), which takes more electricity to run. This run time will vary with each pool, but is usually somewhere around 4 hours a day. With a robot, the pool pump doesn't need to run - the robot plugs into 120 VAC and I think it converts to 12 volt or 24 volt to run the robot. And many do not run their robot daily - as often times it isn't needed. Running the pool pump at a lower speed is more economical too.
Hopefully others will chime in with their take too.
