Have trouble keeping your pool clean and don’t want to hire a pool boy to do the work for you? Well, now is an excellent time to be alive, thanks to all of the robotic appliances that make it so much easier. Robotic pool cleaners have practically eliminated the need to pull your sleeves up to pull out gross piles of dead leaves, scrub away algae from pool walls, and deal with the general discomfort of a dirty pool.
Today, we’d like to review compare two awesome Maytronics robots – the Dolphin Premier and the Oasis Z5i. Both bots have garnered a healthy number of thumb-ups from customers, but which of the two is deserving of the crown? Let’s find out together.
Maximum Pool Size
Premier and Oasis Z5i
Both the Premier and Oasis are designed to clean pools of up to 50 feet. Their 60-foot cables should provide the uninterrupted cleaning throughout their cleaning cycles, but this depends on the location of the nearest power outlet and how deep the deepest end of your pool is.
As long as the power cord is slack, you can rest assured that your robot is doing its underwater duty.
Navigation Software
Premier
One area where the two robots differ is their navigation software. The premier, the older model of the two, uses Smart navigation which, according to Dolphin, uses advanced algorithms and science stuff that allows it to clean 100% of your pool.
We’ve tried it, and it’s pretty good by outdated navigation system standards.
Dolphin Premier Video
Oasis Z5i
The Oasis comes with IntelliScan Navigation that scans the area of your pool to create a digital map. The robot accesses the map to create the most efficient cleaning route to touch every surface of the pool’s floor and walls to ensure the job is well done after 2-1/2 hours of cleaning.
Conclusion
Out with the old, in with the new. The IntelliScan Navigation software pre-installed in the Oasis is the clear winner here. With a digital map in its memory, it’ll follow the same cleaning path every time and ensure it makes the best use of its allotted 2-1/2 standard cleaning time.
The Smart Navigation in the Premier is decent enough, but its random pathing is nowhere near as efficient as the Oasis.
Filter Cartridges
Premier
Another differentiating feature between the two is the location of the filter cartridge. In the Premier, the robot needs to be flipped over to access the cartridge and remove its contents. It may sound innocent enough, but take it from us: flipping a 37-pound robot on its back can be weary and fast.
The good thing is that the cartridges are a bit large so you won’t need to do this often – twice or three times a week.
Oasis Z5i
The size of the Oasis filter cartridges is identical to that of the Premier, but where it’s placed makes a ton of difference. As soon as you pull your robot out of the pool, all you need to do is flip open the latch on its back to gain access to the collected pool gunk.
The tiny adjustment of switching locations of its motor and filter makes a ton of difference in terms of convenience.
Conclusion
Once again, we see that the Oasis, as the more recently released robot, has had some upgrades that customers have been yearning for.
It is one of them – the placement of the filter cartridge is a lot easier to access, thereby eliminating the need to spend an excruciating amount of time (two or three minutes) turning a robot over, opening its belly, and removing the cartridges.
Brush Style
Premier
The only way a robotic pool cleaner can get any scrubbing done is if it has a brush. The Premier uses a single brush that extends from side to side to clean the waterline and base of your pool. Afterward, the powerful suction swallows the water up, filtering it in the cartridge, and spits it back out as clean water.
Oasis Z5i
The Oasis brush is slightly different. Instead of one wide brush that goes from side to side, it has two brushes that work independently of each other. It helps a lot with making sharp turns at the corners of your pool.
Conclusion
Here’s another area where the Oasis setup trumps that of the Premier. With two brushes working side by side and spinning in opposite directions, the Oasis can create a mini underwater vortex that pulls algae off the pool lining to suction up more gunk with less effort. Plus, it gives the Oasis better maneuverability when submerged.
Remote Control
Premier
The Dolphin Premier uses a standard physical remote control with all of the buttons for setting up the scheduler, and starting and stopping its cleaning schedule.
You can also control the robot manually with the remote control to do a bit of spot-cleaning wherever the robot missed, but the controls are clunky and painfully slow.
Oasis Z5i
The Oasis Z5i Robotic Pool Cleaner connects to your smartphone via Bluetooth to receive orders from the MyDolphin app. The app does everything the remote control can do, and it even gives you manual control over where the robot goes.
Manual control is slightly better with the smartphone app, but it’s still a bit awkward to use. Plus, the latency between the phone and robot depends heavily on distance.
Conclusion
A smartphone app, remote control… it’s not a big deal either way. As long as you have full control over the programmable scheduler and receive alerts of when the filter needs to empty – two things that they both do – it’s good enough.
Single Reviews
Dolphin Nautilus CC Plus Robotic Pool Cleaner
Dolphin Premier Robotic Pool Cleaner
Dolphin Oasis Z5i Robotic Pool Cleaner
Dolphin Proteus DX3 Robotic Pool Cleaner
Dolphin Sigma Robotic Pool Cleaner
Comparison Articles
Dolphin vs. Polaris
Dolphin Premier vs Oasis Z5i
Dolphin Sigma vs. Dolphin Premier
Dolphin Oasis Z5i Video
Dolphin Premier vs. Oasis Z5i – Which Is Better?
As robotic pool cleaners, you’ll want to spend your hard-earned cash on something that offers the best bang for the buck. Between these two Dolphin-made robots, we feel that the Oasis is, hands down, the better model by far.
Its improved navigation software combined with upgraded maneuverability makes it one of the best pool cleaners we’ve seen. It could use some improvement in the remote control department, but as is, you’re not missing much.
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Last update on 2023-06-04 / Affiliate links / Images from Amazon Product Advertising API
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