Buying a robot this week! Any input on Polaris 7240 sport?

[pewl]

I was all set to call and order my S200 robot. Then the pool service guy who our PB contracts to do the first 30 days of new pool start-up service dropped of a new Polaris 7240 sport to demo/tempt us with.
I'm sure his price will be much higher than what I could get the S200 for. I looked at that site showing different robot models/brands which are pretty much the same robot, but the Polaris 7240 is not on it. Does anyone know how they compare? Thanks!

 

[bmoreswim]

My only concern with that robot (other than not being familiar with it personally) is that the basket looks to be similar to the rough filter mesh material of the Dolphin S series robots. Which is to say, it will may let very fine dust-like debris through. With the S series, you can set them up with two levels of filtration at the same time. The fine filters are pleated and very similar to a pool's cartridge filter. They are quite effective.

I'm more likely go with what hundreds of people here have gone with and are generally very satisfied with than another option.

 

[pewl]

Yes, you are right- the filter is a rough mesh. Here's my review of it after running it in the pool a couple days now:
We had just had two very windy days prior to trying out the Polaris. It blew in a lot of loose sand from between our new pavers into the pool so you could really see some very concentrated areas of sand at the bottom, plus some leaves. It does a pretty good job getting the sand up, but it is not a "smart" robot like my Roomba is. What I mean by that is when my Roomba runs over an area of concentrated dirt/crumbs it senses that it has hit a dirtier area and goes back and forth while slightly changing direction over and over the area until it gets all the debris. The Polaris hit areas where there was a heavier collection of sand and it just went over them that one time it and kept going forward. Because of this pure randomness in direction, the Polaris takes a lot longer to ever hit the noticeably dirty areas. It also kicks up a lot of the sand it comes near so that it escapes suction and resettles after the Polaris moves on. Also, it seems to only climb up to the tiles/water level in my low end (4 ft) and only gets a few feet up the wall in my deep end (7 ft). Despite these small issues it is still pretty awesome- I like the clear tank to see the gunk flowing around in there, but that doesn't make it $500 better than the S200.

 

[MannyT]

Maytronic robots will work pretty much in the same randomness as the Polaris but my S300i doesn't have any problem climbing my 6.5ft deep end. I will get a large amounts of sand.