TL;DR

The ECOVACS ULTRAMARINE P1 is a capable cordless pool cleaner that has impressed me most with its floor cleaning, ease of use and scheduling. Setup is simple, the app offers excellent guidance, and the 18,200 LPH suction, four roller brushes and dual filtration system do a good job of collecting everyday pool debris.

Wall cleaning worked in my pool but was less consistent than the floor cleaning, and the optional climbing rings didn’t make a dramatic difference for me. I also found fitting them a little fiddly. The app is very useful for setup and scheduling, but once the P1 is underwater you lose live Bluetooth communication.

At $1,099 AUD, it’s priced reasonably and has made regular pool cleaning far easier. I charge it, put it in the pool, let the schedule take over and come back later to a noticeably cleaner pool. For me, that convenience is where the P1 really earns its keep.

I have a fairly large pool and, while it doesn’t tend to collect mountains of leaves and debris, it certainly needs regular cleaning. Between friends, family and the dog treating it as her own private day spa, I like it clean and ready to use. What I don’t particularly want is to spend my spare time making that happen. I’d much rather be sitting beside the pool with a beer while something else does the cleaning.  The idea of charging a robot, putting it in the pool and letting it get on with the job has obvious appeal.

I do my research. This is ECOVACS’ move into robotic pool cleaning, and it has brought quite a bit of technology with it. Headline features include 18,200 LPH UltraPure suction, an anti-clog S-flow channel, four roller brushes, dual-layer filtration, SmartNavi intelligent navigation, up to 99% claimed floor coverage, three cleaning modes, three efficiency levels, scheduling, up to three hours of runtime in Eco mode and the ability to cross obstacles up to 5.5cm high. Phew! There is quite a lot happening underneath that shell.

Specifications are one thing, though. I wanted to know whether I could actually charge it, put it in my pool, walk away and come back to a cleaner pool. Thankfully, the answer is yes.

 

Editor-in-Chief note: The Ecovacs Ultramarine P1 is the company’s first generation robotic pool cleaner. During my visit to their HQ in Suzhou in July 2026, Ecovacs was candid that they built this one like a tank, without all the bells and whistles, so that it will do the job with longevity.

 

What’s in the box with the ECOVACS ULTRAMARINE P1?

The P1 is a substantial machine. At around 10kg, it isn’t exactly something you are going to tuck under one arm, but I found it quite manageable to carry from the house out to the pool.

You can purchase the model with a ‘Care Kit’ which includes a 3-micron inner filter and two pairs of climbing ring assemblies, giving you options for finer filtration and additional wall-climbing traction where required. There is also a retrieval hook, which becomes very useful once you realise that a 10kg pool robot sitting at the bottom of the pool isn’t something you particularly want to dive in after.

The P1 itself feels solidly made. It’s a sturdy unit. When I first unpacked it I did strangely wonder how it would go regularly submerged in salt water and sitting under Queensland UV. ECOVACS promotes what it calls a 10-tier Durability System, with marine-grade construction designed to withstand the UV exposure and pool chemicals that come with spending its working life around water. It also has IP68 waterproofing and a corrosion-resistant core. So, I guess that answered that.

ECOVACS ULTRAMARINE P1 setup is a breeze

Initial setup was very straightforward. Charge the P1, install the ECOVACS HOME app on my phone (another app! argh), connect to the cleaner via Bluetooth and follow the instructions. There are also controls on the P1 itself, so you don’t have to pull out your phone every time you want to change a basic cleaning mode.

The robot does like to make its presence known with a collection of beeps while you are setting it up. You are certainly never left wondering whether you’ve pressed a button.

Now, I complain about apps on the regular, however one thing ECOVACS has done particularly well is user support. The app contains a large number of instructional videos covering everything from initial setup and connecting the cleaner through to selecting filters, changing cleaning modes, fitting climbing rings, retrieving the P1 and general maintenance. There are also QR codes to help point you in the right direction when you need additional assistance.

Putting the ULTRAMARINE P1 in the pool

ECOVACS recommends placing the P1 flat onto the water rather than tilting it as you put it in. That sounds straightforward. With a 10kg machine in your hands, it feels slightly less straightforward. I found it a little awkward the first time, but once I stopped overthinking it and followed the instructions, the P1 sat quite happily on the surface before sinking down into the pool.

Once it reaches the bottom, it takes a minute or so to get itself acquainted with its surroundings and then heads off.

18,200 LPH suction sounds impressive, but does it actually clean?

ECOVACS’ headline cleaning figure is 18,200 litres per hour of UltraPure suction. The P1 combines that high-flow motor with an optimised S-flow channel designed to help prevent clogging and maintain suction. Four roller brushes at the front and rear scrub the pool surface while also assisting with traction and maintaining contact with the floor and walls.

Now, that’s all very ‘techy’. I was more interested in the claim of up to 99% debris pickup efficiency.

I obviously did not sit beside the pool with laboratory equipment measuring litres per hour or calculating debris percentages. What I could assess was whether the pool actually looked cleaner and what ended up in the filter basket afterwards.

Floor cleaning is the P1’s strong point

Before my first test, our pool had been somewhat neglected for a week or so. It wasn’t green, murky or covered in algae, but there was visible debris across the floor and it was definitely due for a clean. After around two hours with the P1, the debris was gone and the floor looked noticeably cleaner. More importantly, that wasn’t a one-off. Across repeated cleans, floor cleaning has been consistent.

Its cordless design is a definite advantage over the old ‘creepy crawly’. There is no cable trailing behind it, wrapping around obstacles or restricting where it can travel. I didn’t realise how much I would appreciate that until I started using it. It is also extraordinarily quiet. There are plenty of beeps during setup, but once the P1 is underwater cleaning, there is essentially nothing to hear from outside the pool.

The P1 is designed for a range of pool surfaces, including concrete, vinyl, fibreglass, pebble and acrylic, as well as different shapes, slopes and platforms. Our pool isn’t a basic rectangular box, it’s a bean, with a pebblecrete surface, so it has had a few more interesting angles to negotiate. Generally, it has handled them well.

Wall cleaning: how well does the P1 climb?

My first attempt at wall cleaning was somewhat underwhelming. The P1 was happily motoring around the bottom of the pool but didn’t seem particularly interested in going upwards. I started wondering whether the shape or surface of my pool was causing problems. Eventually I discovered the highly technical explanation.

I had it in Floor mode.

Operator error. (Insert *facepalm* here.)

Interestingly, checking that the P1 isn’t in Floor mode is one of ECOVACS’ own troubleshooting suggestions if it isn’t climbing the walls, so I am apparently not the only person capable of making this mistake. I am telling myself that anyway.

Once switched into Wall mode, the behaviour was completely different. The P1 started travelling vertically up the walls and, on a number of passes, successfully reached the waterline. My experience became a little mixed with the wall situation. In some sections it travelled all the way up and maintained fairly controlled contact as it came back down, appearing very powerful. In others, it would climb, detach and gently float back down before repositioning itself, which felt a less less controlled.

Do the P1 climbing rings improve wall cleaning?

The Care Kit includes climbing ring assemblies designed to provide additional traction if the P1 is having trouble maintaining contact with the pool walls. Given the mixed wall-climbing performance I was seeing, I decided to give them a try.

Installing them was probably the fiddliest part of my entire P1 experience. It’s certainly achievable, but there are several components to line up and assemble and it isn’t something I would describe as a fun Saturday afternoon activity. Thankfully, the step-by-step video in the app made the process easier to follow. For not so clever people like myself (see Operator error above) I think it would be easier if there was a second fully assembled climbing section that could simply be swapped with the standard one.

After all that effort, did the climbing rings transform its wall climbing? Not really, at least not in my pool. It continued to climb the walls, but I didn’t see a dramatic difference how it did that. That doesn’t mean they won’t help considerably on another pool surface. They are specifically designed to provide additional traction where it is needed. For my pool, though, I am comfortable running the P1 either way.

What about pool steps and beach entries?

The P1 isn’t designed to clean pool steps, and ECOVACS makes that clear, so don’t buy one expecting it to elegantly travel up your pool stairs scrubbing each step as it goes. Our pool also has a beach entry and other areas that are more challenging than a conventional floor or vertical wall. The P1 has given them a decent try. Sometimes you have to admire the optimism.

But I’m not going to mark it down for failing to clean areas it isn’t designed to clean. Across the pool floor and conventional walls, which are its primary job, the results have been good.

SmartNavi navigation: clever or just wandering around?

The P1 uses ECOVACS’ SmartNavi Intelligent Navigation System, which uses an IMU sensor to keep track of its position and movement and work out its cleaning route. ECOVACS claims this helps reduce unnecessary repeat passes and achieve up to 99% floor coverage.

Watching it for the first time, I wasn’t necessarily convinced there was a great deal of intelligence involved. At times it looked as though it was simply wandering around wherever the mood took it, and I found myself wanting to point out the bits I thought it should be cleaning.

But apparently it knew what it was doing better than I did.

While the route doesn’t always look particularly logical from above, the consistent cleaning results I was seeing told a different story. It may not always go where I think it should go next, but ultimately it gets the job done.

The P1 also has obstacle-assist wheels designed to help it negotiate obstacles up to 5.5cm high, including things such as drains and underwater lights. Our pool has its fair share of different angles and obstacles and, overall, the P1 has navigated its way around without much trouble.

So yes, you really can sit beside the pool with a beer and claim to be cleaning it.

Technically, you are supervising.

How well does the P1 filtration system work?

For my first clean, I deliberately used only the standard 180-micron outer filter. The P1 also gives you the option of adding the much finer 3-micron inner filter which I used on subsequent cleans. Used together, ECOVACS says the dual filtration system can capture more than 10 types of debris, ranging from leaves, twigs and insects through to finer material such as sand and pollen.

The first time I tried opening the filter basket, I found the release quite stiff. For a moment, I wasn’t sure whether I was doing something wrong or about to break my brand-new pool cleaner. After checking the app for guidance and a little perseverance, it opened and has been fine ever since.

When I opened the basket, there was plenty of evidence that the P1 had been doing its job. The outer filter had collected the everyday debris from our pool very well. The inner filter had noticeable fine dirt and sand.

I haven’t attempted to scientifically prove that the 3-micron filter can capture pollen, nor do I intend to start sprinkling pollen into my pool in the interests of investigative journalism.

What I do like is having the choice. I can use the outer filter for our regular cleans and add the finer filter when the pool needs something more.

Emptying and rinsing the basket afterwards is simple too, which matters. The less effort required after each clean, the more likely I am to keep using it regularly.

P1 cleaning modes and efficiency levels

One feature I really like is being able to tailor the clean rather than simply pressing one button and hoping for the best. The P1 provides three cleaning modes: Floor, Wall and All, along with Eco, Standard and Max efficiency levels. Modes can be selected through the app or on the cleaner itself.

That meant I could run a full clean initially, switch specifically to Wall mode while testing its climbing performance and then establish a more sensible regular cleaning routine once I knew what worked for our pool. There is no point sending a robot around doing a major clean every day when the pool doesn’t need it.

And, if you do have a particularly dirty pool, you can increase the cleaning intensity.

ECOVACS HOME app: excellent, with one important limitation

I really like the ECOVACS HOME app. It is easy to navigate and contains far more useful information than I expected. This isn’t one of those apps you install because the manufacturer tells you to and then never open again. You can change cleaning modes, adjust cleaning efficiency and create one-off or recurring schedules. More importantly for me, there is a lot of help available when you aren’t quite sure what you’re doing. I found myself going back to the instructional videos several times while learning how everything worked.

There is, however, one limitation that is important to understand. Once the P1 is underwater, the Bluetooth connection drops and the cleaner appears offline in the app until it is back out of the water. That means I can’t sit inside watching exactly what it is doing or receive live information telling me that it has become stuck somewhere. I would really like some way of knowing what is happening during the clean, even something as simple as whether it is still operating normally or approximately how much cleaning time remains.

On my first long run, the P1 eventually ran out of battery while still in the pool, which also meant I couldn’t immediately reconnect via Bluetooth to see the cleaning information. That isn’t a dealbreaker, but I think it is something potential buyers should understand when they see app control listed as a feature.

The app is very useful for setting up what the P1 is going to do, from anywhere. Just don’t expect to sit on the couch piloting it around underwater.

This is the feature that really changed how I viewed using a robotic pool cleaner. Initially, having to remove the P1 from the pool, charge it and put it back in again felt like it could become another chore, particularly compared with a traditional creepy crawly that you can essentially leave in the pool and forget about. I set mine to a Standard clean three days a week. All I need to do is make sure the robot has charge and put it into the pool. When the scheduled time arrives, off it goes. There was something strangely satisfying the first time I went about my day and then saw it start exactly when I had programmed it to.

Simple:

• Charge it.
• Pop it into the pool in the morning.
• Go to work, go shopping, clean the house or do whatever it is you actually want to do with your day.
• Come back later and Voilà! Clean pool.

Or, on a weekend, sit beside the pool with a drink and supervise it while contributing absolutely nothing to the cleaning process.
The P1 allows both one-off and recurring schedules, so you can build it into a normal pool-maintenance routine rather than having to remember to manually start it every time.
For us, three times per week is plenty.

ULTRAMARINE P1 Battery life

The P1 is rated for up to three hours of continuous cleaning in Eco mode and can cover pool floors of up to 180m² on a charge. Our regular cleans don’t need anything approaching the maximum coverage. Running it for a couple of hours three times a week works well for the amount of debris our pool gets and generally leaves enough flexibility around charging that it hasn’t become something I need to think about constantly.

I thought the charging process would annoy me more than it does. In reality, it has just become another small part of the routine.

Retrieving the P1 after cleaning

The supplied retrieval hook makes getting the P1 out of the pool relatively straightforward, and mine generally finishes at or close to the edge where I can reach it. I’ve only had it stop once in the middle of the pool. On other occasions, it has finished somewhere much more considerate.

Use the hook to bring it in, lift it out and remove the filter basket for cleaning.

Nobody has to change into swimmers and go on a rescue mission.

Cleaning and maintaining the ULTRAMARINE P1

Maintenance is straightforward. Remove the filter basket, empty the debris and rinse everything clean. What I also liked was the amount of longer-term maintenance information ECOVACS provides. There is guidance around filters, brushes, tracks, wall-climbing issues and off-season storage, so you aren’t left wondering what to do with the P1 when you’re using the pool less frequently.

Components can also be replaced rather than having to purchase a new cleaner when a brush or track eventually reaches the end of its life.

ECOVACS Rewards: what P1 owners should know

There is another part of the ECOVACS ecosystem worth mentioning: ECOVACS Rewards.

If you purchase through ECOVACS and use the ECOVACS HOME app, it is worth actually looking at the rewards section rather than ignoring it.

More research! ECOVACS’ Australian rewards program currently offers points for eligible purchases and for connecting a robot to your account for the first time. Points can be redeemed towards eligible purchases, with 100 points currently providing $1 in discount, subject to the program’s redemption limits.

There are also points available for completing certain tasks in the ECOVACS HOME app.

There is an important distinction here, though. At the time of review, ECOVACS’ Australian terms list specific DEEBOT models as eligible for automatic-cleaning task points and don’t specifically include the ULTRAMARINE P1.

So I wouldn’t buy the P1 expecting every pool clean to earn you rewards.

I would, however, check the Member Centre in the app to see which rewards and tasks are available to you, If I’m already using the app and buying into the ECOVACS ecosystem, I’ll happily take any points that are available.

Is the ECOVACS ULTRAMARINE P1 worth it?

At a recommended retail price of A$999 at the time of review, the ULTRAMARINE P1 isn’t an insignificant purchase. It is also available on Amazon Au.

The review unit is a P1 Care Kit with came with the addition accessories, priced at RRP A$1,099.

But after using it repeatedly, I think its biggest selling point is simply how little it asks of me.

It cleans well. The pool floor is noticeably cleaner after it has run, the debris disappears, it operates quietly and scheduling means I don’t even need to remember to actually start it.

Its cleaning has been excellent in my experience.

Friends swim in it.

Family swim in it.

The dog swims in it. Probably more than everyone else.

Keeping it ready for all of them without having to manually clean it is exactly what I want.

I originally thought charging the P1, carrying it outside and putting it into the pool several times a week might eventually feel like another job.

It doesn’t.

Three times a week I make sure it has charge, pop it into the pool and let it do its thing.

And despite sometimes watching it and wondering where on earth it thinks it is going, I have learned something important.

Leave it alone.

Come back later.

The pool will be cleaner.

Thanks to ECOVACS for providing the ULTRAMARINE P1 for me to trial and review. It was a tough assignment, but someone had to watch a robot clean the pool.