This is my third summer season with the Dolphin Nautilus CC Plus Robotic Pool Cleaner… and I couldn’t be happier with it. There are a lot of options to choose from when buying a pool cleaner, with big price tags and not so great reviews. Well this Dolphin product is highly rated on Amazon, and my experience has lived up to those ratings. Watch the extensive video below, read my quick write-up, and order from the links I provide to ensure you get the same product I am reviewing.
It’s a lot of money that you will be investing and you want to make sure that you are choosing the right product. For me… the Nautilus CC Plus has been great and it truly is a time saver. Moving an 12 foot pole and vacuum head across the bottom of the pool is tiring and time consuming… and now the Nautilus handles it for me effortlessly.
This season when we opened the pool, the water was greener and dirtier than normal. While I should’ve done a traditional vacuuming of the pool… I tossed the Dolphin Nautilus in and let it run… It wasn’t my plan to only use it, but I let it run a few cycles and with the addition of proper chemical balance, the water and liner are beautiful.
We have an 8ft deep pool and it can be challenging to manually vacuum at the bottom, and right now I see no need for me to have to do that. The Dolphin Nautilus running a cycle per day seems to do the trick.
The main robot unit has no buttons (its in the controller), and it uses a simple but very effective filter pack. Four filter panels total which sit in a paired frame (two frames). The powerful motor pulls the water and dirt from the bottom into each of the two frames so that dirt and debris is captured inside, and the water then moves out through the top center outlet. The frames can easily be removed from the top, taken a apart and cleaned with a hose. It’s just as easy to snap back together.
The long cord is sized to accommodate pools up to 60 ft. As you expect the robot and cord are completely waterproof and can be left in the pool as long as the chemical levels are properly balanced.
The other end of the cable attaches to the controller/power box. This box is built for outdoor use, but I learned the hard way that it is not rain/waterproof. More on that in a second.
The control of the robot cleaner could not be simpler. There is one power button and one mode selector (with three modes). Power on the unit and then you have a few seconds to cycle through the modes and choose the one you want. Mode 1 means the cleaner will run for one cycle. Mode 2 means it will repeat the cycle once each day at the same time! You literally could just leave the device in the pool and it will automatically clean it! Of course you need to plug it into a protective GFCI outlet, and even with that I will remove the cleaner before swimming.
As mentioned, the controller should not be left exposed to the rain over the season, as water will get into the controller and damage it. So I’ll admit that in the start of my second season the controller did not work… and I could see some rust on the connector which clarified to me I had damaged the controller. The support folks at Dolphin didn’t ask many questions, and since I was under warranty they sent me a new controller unit free of charge! (this is not a guarantee of your support experience, just what I experienced). What I’ve done for year 2 and 3 is I purchased a small Suncoast deck box (the kind that forms a seat also), drilled two holes for the cables and I keep the controller nice and dry inside that deck box!
To view the products on Amazon and possibly order: