Wybot C1 Review

[Michael z]

Do you mind sharing what brand this is or posting a link?

ETA: I'm seeing one made by Chasing called the Poolmate Hydro 3 and 3S that may fit this criteria but have not heard anything about them.

In fact, the brand I'm referring to is my own brand, haha.
I have used many brands of products for research.
And come to the forum to listen to user suggestions.
But due to platform rules, I should not directly send the link to my product, and it has not been officially launched for sale yet.

However, in terms of hardware parameters, the poolmate hydro you mentioned is a good choice.
At least in terms of hardware specifications, they are much better than wybots
They claim to use a 150W motor and a 200+Wh battery, while wybot only uses a 65W motor and a 99Wh battery
Wybot is better at meeting the lowest level of full utilization at the lowest price: 65
W's small motor can climb walls, and no one can do better than them in using the lowest power motor.
Then achieve sales success by offering the cheapest prices on Amazon.
You can understand it as the impact of affordable and fuel-efficient Japanese cars on traditional high displacement cars in the United States.
But its disadvantage is that if your wall is slippery or the pool is dirty, it will not be able to climb up the wall successfully after the filter is clogged, and when in floor mode, it will “wheelie”
But Wybot is the inventor of cordless swimming pool robots, with 20 years of industry experience and a mature, stable, and reasonably priced supply chain.
Therefore, they are relatively mature and reliable.
They recently launched wybot c2 and added a fine filter on top of c1.
But the hardware parameters remain at 65w+99wh for the weak battery, which makes me wonder if the weak suction can support it to climb up the wall after the filter gets dirty, or if it can firmly suck on the floor when cleaning the swimming pool floor, preventing it from "Wheelie"
The parameters of Poolmate are high, but obviously they don't have enough experience yet.
As time slowly passes.
There are also some negative feedback pointing out potential quality hazards (such as charging issues that cannot be avoided in the swimming pool robot industry), but this situation exists for every brand including Aiper and Wybot, albeit in different proportions.
Perhaps it can be evaluated by the proportion of long-term negative comments.
But it can be seen that poolmate only lacks experience with the first product, but as a new brand, they are making every effort to make the product better.
I think it's worth trying as a new brand

 

[Aubie99]

But its disadvantage is that if your wall is slippery or the pool is dirty, it will not be able to climb up the wall successfully after the filter is clogged, and when in floor mode, it will “wheelie”

Definitely seeing this with my Wybot C1. Didn't close the pool down properly and had to SLAM pool. It would make one or two passes and the filter basket would be clogged with dead algae and it'd start "wheelie" in floor mode only. Finally got it all cleaned up after a lot of hard work. I think I'm going to replace the cable on my Warrior SE and use it for the heavy duty work and run the Wybot only for light duty cleaning which seems to do fine and run it until it decides to die as I have zero confidence in Wybot's customer service doing anything. Amazon should do their customers a service and not allow Wybot to peddle their products until they get the CS issues addressed.

 

[Freddyfudrucker]

You should know that the two-layer filtering system is only equipped on robots priced above $800

Wybot C2

 

[ekadd]

Does anyone with a fiberglass pool with the 'safety ledge' find that the robots (C1 or S1) will clean debris from the ledge when running on wall mode?

 

[etbrown4]

Will try a new C1 on a fiberglass with safety ledge in a few days. I dont expect it to clean the ledge, but I i do expect it to continue climbing 3' higher to the water line.

On leaving C1 in the pool 24/7, I dont see how that works, because don't you still need to remove it for charging? I guess if you just run it 40 min a day, you might leave it in 4 days, but it still comes out for charging, right?

Most pool robots warn against leaving in 24/7. Seems like the chlorine would eventually be hard on the plastic, etc.

 

[robl45]

Will try a new C1 on a fiberglass with safety ledge in a few days. I dont expect it to clean the ledge, but I i do expect it to continue climbing 3' higher to the water line.

On leaving C1 in the pool 24/7, I dont see how that works, because don't you still need to remove it for charging? I guess if you just run it 40 min a day, you might leave it in 4 days, but it still comes out for charging, right?

Most pool robots warn against leaving in 24/7. Seems like the chlorine would eventually be hard on the plastic, etc.

True but the sun on the unit will blow the seals a lot quicker than leaving it in the water so make sure it’s shaded

 

[etbrown4]

Ran a new c1, 3 times this weekend.
In standard mode it was extremely erratic, mostly random in its coverage. Tried two other patterns and still seems completely random, almost like a pin ball machine. Since a fair number of others are happy with the pool coverage, I'll reserve judgement, pending more usage.

Regarding covering safety ledges, it's not happening. Sometimes it thinks the safety ledge is the water line and it returns to the bottom. Other times it will climb the safety ledge and continue on up to the actual water line.

No mater what, you are going to be brushing the ledge.

Battery lasts a solid 2.5 hours.

Unlike the Wybot ads, it dies on the pool bottom when battery is depleted. No such thing as floating and waiting for you, so if your pool is really green, you might want to tie on a long rope.

 

[BollFam]

Ran a new c1, 3 times this weekend.
In standard mode it was extremely erratic, mostly random in its coverage. Tried two other patterns and still seems completely random, almost like a pin ball machine. Since a fair number of others are happy with the pool coverage, I'll reserve judgement, pending more usage.

Regarding covering safety ledges, it's not happening. Sometimes it thinks the safety ledge is the water line and it returns to the bottom. Other times it will climb the safety ledge and continue on up to the actual water line.

No mater what, you are going to be brushing the ledge.

Battery lasts a solid 2.5 hours.

Unlike the Wybot ads, it dies on the pool bottom when battery is depleted. No such thing as floating and waiting for you, so if your pool is really green, you might want to tie on a long rope.

I just put in an order for an Aiper Scuba X1. We'll see how it handles my safety ledges. I'm not expecting it to clean them, but I'm sure hoping it goes past them to get the waterline.

 

[Highland Gal]

I used to use a Barracuda G3 cleaner and last year I dumped the Barracuda for a Maytronics Active 20. The Active 20 worked reasonably well, but the wall cleaning was really disappointing. It would rarely manage to climb the wall all the way to scrub the tiles, instead slipping off the wall and back down most of the time, only cleaning the tiles in occasional spots here and there.

Anyway, I never took the battery powered vacuum cleaners very seriously until I heard forum members talking about the Aiper Scuba S1 and giving it similar plaudits to the Betta. I considered getting the S1, but I have a kidney-shaped hopper bottom pool and the complaints about the S1 sometimes having difficulty with that kind of pool was a real concern.

During my research I found the Wybot C1, which seemed to be more or less in a similar class, less expensive than an S1, and the reviews didn't seem to complain about pool shape or slope, so I figured for $400, I might as well take a chance.

In short, it wildly exceeded my expectations. It completely blows away the much more expensive Active 20 at wall climbing and waterline scrubbing. It's not even close. It'll climb the wall until it's vertical a couple feet below the water line, pause, and then the impeller will appear to kick into high gear to increase traction and then it'll go right on up to the surface and get to work. It has a dedicated wall mode where it'll just scoot to the right and repeat around the perimeter of the pool.

It cleans the bottom just fine, and it does a much better job than the Active 20 at climbing steps and cleaning them as well (though brushing steps is still a good idea either way). No issues whatsoever climbing from the deep end to the shallow end of the pool.

The basket is roughly similar to the Active 20 with a hinged bottom. You can't swap out the mesh sides but it has a much better no-return flap than the Active 20 does, so it appears to be better at sucking up leaves where the Active 20 sometimes sucks them up and sometimes pushes them around. I'll follow up in the fall when leaf pickup will be a lot more challenging. There is no fine pleated filter mesh option like the Active 20, so that's a point in Maytronics' favor. Putting the basket back in the robot is a little bit fussy until you get used to the right angle to use. Once you have that down, it's fine.

The app is mandatory if you want to change settings, so something to think about there if you have an aversion to apps. Speaking of which, there are a variety of modes and patterns (different wall patterns, different floor patterns) to select from so you can find whatever works best for your situation. You can even select from a variety of pool shapes and materials in the app, but I'm not sure if the pool characteristics actually affect the robot at all. The app can sometimes be a bit fussy in that it's sometimes confusing about whether the robot picked up the mode switch or not. My advice is to set the desired cleaning mode and pattern, wait for the app to say "Successfully Sent!" and then let it get to work - but double check to see that the robot is behaving consistently with the requested mode.

One very nice feature the app provides is "scheduled cleaning". The robot will set aside 120 minutes of its 150 minute putative run time and split it up across 2,3, or 7 days for floor cleaning only (no walls). This is a really fantastic feature and since the robot is cordless, it's much more practical to leave the robot in the pool 24/7 - no ugly tangled cords running around the pool and the Betta and C1 coexist peacefully throughout the week. The pool has never been this clean day after day with minimal effort on my part before. I typically use 3-day mode and bring up the robot to charge in the middle of the week when I get back from work before dropping it back in the next morning.

Unfortunately, these schedules are "take it or leave it" - you can't tailor the timing or run time at all. For example, the 7 day schedule cleans every other day for 30 minutes, but you can't ask it to clean for a consecutive four days at 30 minutes a day, something I would have appreciated, or five days skipping only one day somewhere in between.

The robot is supposed to park itself at the waterline when it's done to be easily picked up, it doesn't seem to be very well implemented. You don't get any notification on your phone that it's done and ready to be picked up so in practice I just find the robot parked at the foot of the wall.

Charging is a piece of cake - you just unscrew a cap on the top of the robot and plug in the charger. There's nothing tricky or difficult about taking off the cap or putting it back on - it works exactly like you'd imagine it should. The charger wires are a little too thin IMHO and easily strained - mine came with a pretty good bend right at the edge of the strain relief and this made me a little worried about the longevity of the wire. Also replacement chargers are very expensive from Wybot - somewhere around $80-100 IIRC. Speaking of which, Wybot doesn't seem to carry much in the way of parts, so if the robot dies out of warranty, it may be hard to keep it in service. That's less of an issue considering the reasonable price, but it would be a shame to throw out a whole robot for want of a small part sometime down the road.

Overall, as long as the longevity is there, my impression is that the Wybot C1 is amazing for the price. If it only had filter mesh as nice as the Active 20 I'd really question if the Maytronics robot serves a purpose at all anymore. I've never used or seen an Aiper Scuba S1 in use so I can't say how the Wybot compares to that, but since it climbs the slopes of my pool fine, at least in terms of performance and navigation it appears to be a good alternative for folks with hopper bottoms and freeform shapes.

Hopefully this is helpful for folks looking in this space. If anyone has any questions I'll respond as best as I can as time permits.

We have the C1 too, and it does a great job - I echo everything said here. Our pool is indoors, so what we need to clean our are a lot of bugs, and a few small pieces of grass or leaves that get walked in with swimmers, and it does a great job on that. Dirty DE and fine silt is another problem however, and I wonder whether I can carefully line the filter with cheesecloth (making sure it is not linty or would come loose from the basket) to try to filter out the fine silt and dirty DE. Does anyone know if this would work, or if it might cause a problem?

 

[djdonte]

What expert mode patterns did you have the best luck with? On the back and forth one, it works pretty well in my free form pool but it misses some small stuff at the radius where the floor meets the wall in some spots. I'm thinking of trying the one that looks like a star.

 

[BollFam]

I just put in an order for an Aiper Scuba X1. We'll see how it handles my safety ledges. I'm not expecting it to clean them, but I'm sure hoping it goes past them to get the waterline.

Scuba X1 has been able to handle my safety ledge pretty well. It gets past it and cleans up through water line. However, so far it hasn't been able to clean the full pool perimeter in "Smart Mode" (Walls, Waterline, and Floor).

 

[Vol Family]

This is my 2nd season with this pool robot and I am enjoying it so far. Only issue so far has been the app so I stopped using the app and just press the options on the robot itself. I have a back bench and it is hit or miss if it actually cleans it or not.