Dolphin E10 Review: A Decent & Lower Cost Robotic Pool Cleaner

Our team choose to do a Dolphin E10 review of the popular robotic pool cleaner by Maytronics because hiring a pool cleaning company can be a pain!

If you want them to do a good scrub before a fun and busy pool party, then you have to hope they have no other clients waiting on them that evening.

You also have to keep your fingers crossed to see if they do a good enough job. You might as well do it yourself right?

Spending 45 minutes to an hour cleaning is rough work! That’s why you pay the pool cleaner so much! You don’t want to waste your pumped up energy before your party on cleaning your pool. By the time your friends arrive, you will be tuckered out and not in the mood for a good time.

Your last option is to hire a robot. No, I’m not speaking from the year 3,000!

You can buy robotic pool cleaners, and the Dolphin E10 by Maytronics was designed for smaller budgets, so you don’t have to be a movie star to afford it.

With the robot being so cheap, can you be sure that it does a good enough job? That’s what you’re here to find out! We have tested the Dolphin E10 to see if this robotic above ground pool cleaner is worth the purchase.

What Makes A Robot Pool Cleaner Good?

There are 5 factors that you need to be aware of when you are looking at a robotic pool cleaner. Not every machine will be great at all 5 features, and some don’t have these features at all.

We want to make you sure that you get a full review on the Dolphin E10, to do that you need to know what a robot pool cleaner should be able to do.

After you’ve got these ideas firmly in your head, we can compare them to the Dolphin E10 and decide if the low price is worth the comparison in features.

1. Suction Power

The suction power will tell you how much your robotic pool cleaner can pull from the water. Can it handle little rocks and fine sand, or is it stuck picking up leaves?

A high powered suction is around 70 GMP. GMP stands for gallons per minute.

Some companies like to make their mechanics seem better than their competitors by swapping from minutes to hours, thereby creating a larger number.

So to make the change easy for you, 70 GMP is 4,200 GPH (gallons per hour).

2. Ease Of Movement

Ease of movement can mean two things. How easy is it for us to move the robot, and how easy is it for the robot to move by itself.

Ideally, you would want a lightweight cleaner so that you can pick it up with no issues, however, if the robot is heavy, it should have wheels for us to push, making the process easy.

When it comes to the robot’s ease of movement, we don’t want it to get stuck on any twigs or material as it moves through the water.

We especially don’t want it to rip any material pools it is cleaning.

The best type of movement comes from tracks instead of wheels, as tracks will help the machine get over a lump in the pool, preventing it from getting stuck.

3. Filter Size

In this industry, debris and dirt are often measured in microns which is short for micrometers (one-millionth of a meter).

This allows manufacturers to be super precise about their machines capabilities while also attempting to sway their target audience with a giant number.

Unfortunately, you don’t want a high number when it comes to the filter size in this regard, as the lower the micron value is, the better the robot is at picking up small items.

Any cleaner should be able to clean up leaves or pebbles, but if you want your cleaner to pick up sand, then you want to look for a low micron value.

Some manufacturers won’t tell you their micron value to avoid jargon, so instead, they will say that the robot has a mesh or a fine filter.

However, without the micron value, you won’t know if the machine can pick up small debris.

4. Ease of Use

Being easy to use is a simple request that all of us have, no matter the technology you are searching for.

When it comes to robotic pool cleaners, the instructions should be easy to follow, picking up the robot shouldn’t be difficult, and any extra features to make using the product even easier will be appreciated.

5. Power Washing Jets

Some swimming pool cleaners that are robotic will use power washing jets, and others will use brushes.

Ideally, the best cleaner will use both. If there are sand or small dirt particles in the pool, then a power washing jet will be more likely to move the dirt out of any nooks and crannies so the suction power can pick it up.

Our Review Of The Dolphin E10 by Maytronics

Pros:

• Easy To Use
• Strong Power Suction
• Track Movement
• Lightweight
• Simple Instructions

Cons:

• Can’t Pick Up Sand
• Doesn’t Clean The Sides
• No Special Timers Or Changing Speeds

So now you know what you need to look for in a pool cleaner; it’s time to check out the specifications on the Dolphin E10.

Statement From Dolphin manufacturer Maytronics-

“This robot is designed to be a pool cleaner with an easy-to-clean filter which will suck up dirt from an above-ground swimming pool of up to 30 feet.”

This is its aim, so we will keep that in mind along with the general bits of information we have already gathered, which tells us what a good pool cleaner should look like.

Let’s start off with Maytronic’s first statement.

Easy to Clean

Most pool cleaning bots need to be flipped over to their exposed bottom when you want to clean the filter.

Although that method isn’t necessarily a pain (unless the robot is heavy), Dolphin E10 has made it easier by making the filtration system accessible from the top of its body.

To clean it, you simply need to twist the canister, remove the filter, give it a rinse, and then put it back into the robot. As the filter is self-contained, you don’t need to mess around with unlocking the system from its hardware.

We agree that the filtration system is easy to clean!

Great Above Ground Swimming Pool Cleaner

Not very many people have an above-ground swimming pool, and if they do, it doesn’t tend to be very big.

With a smaller pool to look after, cleaning it probably doesn’t feel like a whole day chore, like it does to ground-level pool owners.

So do you even need a pool cleaner? That, of course, is up to you. But what makes the cleaner only usable on the ground level?

We can see that the Dolphin E10 cannot climb stairs. This means that it cannot attempt to clean the whole floor of your pool if that pool has levels.

Above-ground swimming pools don’t have more than one level for the machine to focus on, which is why the E10 is a popular choice for above ground swimming pool owners.

30ft Wire Length

Technically the Dolphin E10 has a core length of 40 feet, and the whole machine can be submerged underwater.

The reason that Dolphin E10 has shortened its suggested depth and length is simply to allow the user 10ft to reach their power socket. 

Suction Power

The Dolphin E10 has a suction rate of 4000 GPH, which is 66.66 GPM. This isn’t far off the high 70 GPM we suggested earlier. For a cheap robotic pool cleaner, this suction power is surprisingly great!

This little pool cleaning machine is more than just a suction supreme, it also has a CleverClean scanning feature. The robot uses a series of sensors to map out your swimming pool.

The map is then used to calculate the best cleaning path to pick up all the debris it can. This will stop the Dolphin E10 from aimlessly wandering around the same patch of the pool, wasting time and consuming energy.

Ease Of Movement

The Dolphin E10 is super lightweight, coming in at just under 14 lbs. This means that picking it up and carrying it from the garage to the pool isn’t a terrible task.

Despite its lightweight frame, the robot is amazingly robust and durable, so dropping the machine on the ground shouldn’t break it.

This little robot doesn’t have wheels and instead runs on a tracker.

This allows the E10 to get a stronger grip on the pool’s surface to prevent slipping over or getting caught in drains. In general, this type of movement is amazingly energy efficient.

Filter Size

The Dolphin E10 does have a fine filter type and is a top-loader, but unfortunately, Dolphin E10 is among many products which do not reveal their micron size filter, which means that we had to rely on our own testing to see what the little robot could pick up.

It isn’t able to pick up sand, but leaves, rocks, and blades of grass don’t seem to be a problem for the E10. 

Ease of Use

The Dolphin E10 has an instant water release system which means that you don’t need to be a heavyweight champion to lift the machine out of the water.

Instead, the robot will quickly start to drain water as soon as you lift it past the waterline. It will do this while keeping all the dirt it has a collection on the inside, making the only manual part of the job super easy.

When it comes to the mechanics, there is just a simple on and off switch.

This means you don’t have to learn a Tolkien-sized book about making the Dolphin E10 function; however, the downside is that it doesn’t have any special cleaning functions that you can set up.

This pool cleaning robot will clean a 30ft sized pool in around 1.5 hours.

Despite all of this easy living, the Dolphin E10 doesn’t clean the sides of your pool. It only cleans the floors.

This means that you will still have to scrub the walls as often as the pool manufacturer has indicated.

This kind of restriction might leave you wondering why you would buy a machine that only does half a job, but in reality, letting the Dolphin E10 zip around your pool once a day will keep the overall health of the pool up, and it will make the aesthetic of the pool crisp as the debris all gets collected.

Power Washing Jets

The Dolphin E10 doesn’t have any power jets. Instead, it has a single brush. This brush sweeps up algae and dirt from the swimming pool floor.

Its active brushing technology allows it to be rotated 2 times faster than the movement of the robot, which means that it’s working super hard to move all the dirt into the robot’s suction.

The brush is super powerful and does a great job at sweeping the debris. 

Conclusion on Our Dolphin E10 Review

We have looked into what makes a good robotic pool cleaner, how the Dolphin E10 compares, and if the Dolphin E10 stands up to its own goals.

The manufacturer states that the Dolphin E10 is designed to be an effective pool cleaner with an easy-to-clean filter that will suck up dirt from an above-ground swimming pool of up to 30 feet. We can confirm that this is true. It is super easy to clean, great at collecting big debris, and can safely go up to 30 feet underwater.

If you are looking for a more robust pool cleaner that is better for an inground pool, check out our review of the Dolphin Nautilus CC Plus.

The suction power is only a touch away from the “best,” which is astonishing considering its low price tag. It is super easy to move across the garden, and it does a great job of keeping itself steady in the water.

The filter size isn’t small enough to pick up sand, but it can pick up leaves, rocks, and blades of grass. It only has one button, which makes it super easy to use, although that does limit the amount of function it provides to “start” and “stop.” It also only cleans the floor and the sides.

Without a power jet, you can’t expect Maytronics Dolphin E10 to do a deep clean of the pool; however, it will do a great job of picking up pool debris.

All in all, our Dolphin E10 Review concluded that we would recommend this robot pool cleaner to someone who wants a powerful and quick everyday cleaner but is prepared to clean their pool monthly by hand.

Also, check out a video test & review below!