Why Buying The Zodiac MX8 Elite Pool Cleaner Was Not A Good Idea
It is almost 4 years since we purchased the Zodiac MX8 Elite Pool Cleaner and now it has to be replaced which means buying it was not a good investment.
02/05/2024
Zodiac MX6 Pool Cleaner
When we purchased the Zodiac MX8 Elite Pool Cleaner in 2020, I thought I had done my due diligence and chosen the best pool cleaner for our situation. We wanted to try out one of the new robotic pool cleaners and I researched the pros and cons of all different models before we took the final plunge (pun intended).
We have an unusual-shaped pool and conventional pool cleaners just were not doing the job. They never cleaned the steps and continuously got stuck at one end of the pool due to the placement of the water flow-in valve. This meant that we spent our time moving the cleaner away from that end so that it could clean the rest of the pool.
First, let me state that this is my personal experience with the Zodiac MX8 Elite Pool Cleaner and is in no way meant to offer any opinion on a choice that is yours to make if you are considering the purchase of a robotic pool cleaner. If you continue to the end of this post, you will see that the Zodiac MX8 pool cleaner has in fact been replaced by the Zodiac MX6.
Our experience with the Zodiac MX8 Pool Cleaner
Before I say anything else, I will state that this is probably the best pool cleaner that we have ever had when compared to a conventional floppy pool cleaner. It cleans the entire pool in a single day including the steps and both ends of the pool. It also cleans right up to the top edge of the pool sides and even a conventional pool cleaner cannot do that. So for all intents and purposes, this was a good buy - at the time.
The bad experiences related to wear and tear and the unavailability of parts and their cost. We have replaced the [2] tracks twice but this is due in the main to the fact that the surface of our pool is not completely smooth, so we accept this. What is hard to fathom is the silly flaps they have on the cleaning fins at the bottom, how quickly these wear away and how expensive they are to replace, if you can find them in stock anywhere - see image below.
Another complaint is the amount of wear and tear the pool cleaner shows despite only being in operation for not quite 4 years. The pictures above and below clearly show how wear has eaten away at the surfaces of the engine paddles and a lot of wear has occurred between the engine and side compartments as you can see in the image below. We only have a smallish pool (55,000 litres) and the pool cleaner is only in use 1 or 2 days a week surely not enough to account for such wear and tear.
The Zodiac MX8 pool cleaner has a different design to the MX6 and features 'cleaning flaps' on the blades at the bottom of the unit. These wear out fairly quickly and are expensive and hard to find.
The Zodiac MX6 pool cleaner is a design step backwards but it has been on the market for a lot longer than the MX6. You could almost say that the MX8 is a waste of time (and money spent) since the MX6 cleans in exactly the same way with a few differences, the most obvious of which is the side setting for the pool pipe as shown below.
The next and most important difference for us is that it does not have the 'cleaning flaps' at the bottom, and after having the MX6 pool cleaner running for the past month, the lack of these has made no difference whatsoever.
I am all for innovation but not at such a high cost. The Zodiac MX6 pool cleaner does exactly as the MX8 did, it uses fewer moving parts to do it and, because it has been on the market a lot longer, parts are more readily available albeit still at a high price.
As the saying goes, "Less is sometimes better!" and I couldn't agree more. You don't always need all the bells and whistles to get the job done.
