Practical advice for pool owners
Swimming Pool Guides
Every guide in one place — equipment upgrades, robot comparisons, best-of rankings, and the maintenance know-how that keeps your pool crystal clear.
Featured Guides
Start here — the guides that make the biggest difference to your pool and your wallet.
Best-Of Guides
Our ranked picks across product categories—40 best-of guides and counting, informed by hands-on pool testing.
Robotic Pool Cleaner Guides
Compare every major robot lineup before you buy — tested head-to-head in our pool.
Pool Maintenance Guides
The care and chemistry guides every pool owner ends up needing.
Quick Links
Jump straight to the guides, tools, and reviews you're looking for.
Independent, Hands-On Reviews
Why Pool Owners Trust The Pool Nerd
We're not a big media company. We're a small, independent team that gets in the water and tests the products we cover.
Tested in Our Pool
Every robot, pump, and skimmer runs through repeated cycles in our test pool with dirt, leaves, algae, and other everyday debris—not a lab or demo tank.
Side-by-Side Comparisons
We don't review products in isolation. We test them head-to-head so you can see exactly how they stack up against the competition.
5+ Years of Experience
We've been testing pool products since 2020 — through every season, firmware update, and product launch. That depth of experience means we know what holds up and what doesn't.
Our Testing Process
We run each product through multiple cleaning cycles in our test pool — floors, walls, waterlines, and filtration all get evaluated.
Products go up against their direct competitors so you can see the performance differences, not just marketing specs.
We publish what we find — good and bad. If a $500 robot beats a $2,000 one, we'll tell you.