8 Of The Most Useful Gadgets For Your Pool Area

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Summer's here, which means you can expect a lot more activity to happen around the swimming pool if you have one at home. However, you need to make sure that it's not only a fun place, but also a safe one for your family and friends, and it wouldn't hurt to have a little support with its upkeep. To help you with this, we've gathered a list of useful gadgets that you can consider buying for your pool area.

This roundup includes a wide range of gadgets, including solar-powered pool lights, a motorized pool float, and a robotic pool cleaner. The devices we've featured will bring more excitement to your swimming sessions, prevent accidents, or help you keep your pool clean — sometimes a combination of these.

All of the pool gadgets we've recommended here are available on Amazon, and they've each received favorable reviews from a trustworthy website or channel. We'll highlight the unique features that make them worth buying, as well as insights from the reviews to support their inclusion in this list.

Pool lights don't just make your swimming pool look pretty at night, but they also help prevent accidents when you go for a dip in the dark by making sure that your surroundings are well-illuminated. The Poolhacker YC066, which is available on Amazon for $88.99, is a solar-powered version of the gadget that comes with three types of mounting bases to install in an inground pool or on the steel wall or metal frame of an above-ground pool. Life Less Ordinary demonstrated how easy it is to attach the pool light, with no need for any drilling or similar work.

This Poolhacker solar pool light offers 10 colors and four modes, all of which are selectable through a remote, as also shown by Life Less Ordinary. The review also mentioned that there are no wires for this gadget, which makes it a safe device to include in your pool. The built-in battery can run up to 24 hours on a full charge, and you can choose for the device to shut down after one, two, three, or four hours using the auto-off setting. 

We've previously recommended several waterproof Bluetooth speakers perfect for poolside fun, and one of our favorite options is the JBL Charge 6. For $199.95 on Amazon, you'll get a device that will keep playing your music in the pool area, with no concerns about damage from splashes because it has an IP68 waterproof and dustproof rating. The gadget also comes with a durable strap for easy carrying and a rugged design with silicone bumpers that make it resistant to damage from drops.

This JBL speaker won't disappoint in sound quality either. What Hi-Fi said that it has deeper and more powerful bass than its predecessor, alongside clearer and more detailed audio, and that it has the ability to get really loud. The device will be able to keep your pool party going for a long time, too, with its battery life of up to 24 hours on a single charge, extendable by another four hours through the Playtime Boost feature. You can also pair two Charge 6 speakers or multiple JBL gadgets through Auracast, which you can access through the JBL app.

Owning a swimming pool has a lot of benefits, but it also comes with certain risks, especially if you have a curious toddler or energetic puppy at home. For your peace of mind, you need to install a pool alarm that will alert you if there's unexpected movement in the water. The Hovara PS01 is one of your options on Amazon at $269.99, and it's powerful enough to cover pool sizes of up to 20 feet by 40 feet. According to PureReviews, it's a great safety gadget with an extremely loud siren on the device itself and its indoor unit. At 110 decibels, you'll definitely hear it from anywhere in the house if your child or dog has fallen into the pool.

You can have this Hovara pool alarm floating freely in your pool or tethered to a wall through the attachments and line that come with it. Depending on the flow of water and wind, this gadget can lead to false alarms, but you can prevent that to some extent with its adjustable sensitivity settings. PureReviews also highlighted the functions of the three buttons on the device, one of which is for turning it on and another for delaying the alarm by 30 seconds so that you can place it in the pool without triggering it. The third button is swim mode, which disarms the alarm when you're going to use the pool. Once it detects 10 minutes of calm water, which means you're all done swimming, the alarm will automatically reactivate.

Just as there are smartwatches that can monitor your health metrics while you're running and doing other physical activities on land, there are also smart goggles for swimming. If your pool at home is big enough for laps, or if you go to a sports complex for formal swim training, the FORM Smart Swim 2 will be very useful. They have an augmented reality display on their polycarbonate lens that shows real-time data, including your swimming time, distance, pace, heart rate, and burned calories. The goggles have anti-fog coating, proprietary eye seals, five nose bridge options, and a battery life of up to 14 hours on a single charge.

Amazon is selling the Smart Swim 2 for $199, and you can also sign up for the FORM Premium subscription for $9.99 per month after a one-month free trial. This unlocks additional features like workouts and training plans, as well as HeadCoach for performance tips that you can see in the goggles. CNET's review said that swimming with the Form Smart Swim 2 can result in improvements in how you swim because of all of these features, and the data that you see on the AR display will also help motivate you to push yourself harder to get better. This applies to everyone, from triathletes to casual swimmers.

The PoolCandy Splash Runner Pro, which you can buy from Amazon for $299.99, is a fun way of lounging in the pool. It's a motorized pool float that you can maneuver via the two joysticks on either side, and while Reviews Unscripted said that it takes some time to get used to the controls, it's a very cool experience once you understand how they work. You can get on, propel yourself to the middle of the pool, and enjoy your time there with your phone and drink, both of which fit in holders within easy reach. The inflatable float is 66 inches long and 43 inches wide, and it can accommodate weights of up to 350 pounds.

The dual 66-watt motors won't have much trouble moving the PoolCandy around the water, and its propellers have a safety grill, so you won't have to worry about them causing any accidents. The gadget also promises comfort, as it has a backrest with lower back support, so you can stay on it as long as you want. It needs 16 D batteries for its motors, but they're easy to install, and you won't need any tools to get going.

Pool maintenance is tough for most people because it takes a lot of guesswork to get the right water chemical balance. The Crystal smart water monitor eliminates all the uncertainties for $449, plus $99 per year for all of its features after the free first year. Once you install the smart home gadget near your pool and dip its sensor in the water, you can connect it to your home's Wi-Fi network and the Crystal app on your phone. The device will show you information like your pool's pH level and temperature, which it updates every 10 minutes for reliable data that's not just from a single point in time.

The Crystal smart water monitor's price and subscription are more expensive than other options in the market, but it's more cost-effective because of lower ongoing costs, according to PCMag. The subscription is worth the price because it unlocks features such as chemical dosage advice for chlorine or bromine, historical water quality readings, and replacement warranty information for all the parts of the device. PCMag also mentioned that the device's measurements are accurate, and the alerts that you receive on your phone in case there are any issues are very helpful, as the app also provides you with instructions on how to fix them.

With the Betta SE,  you might not have to fish out leaves and other debris on the surface of your swimming pool ever again. This solar-powered pool skimmer, which sells on Amazon for $369.90, can continuously remove anything that's floating on the water. Allowing it to sit in the sun for about five or six hours fully charges its battery, which can last for up to 30 hours when fully charged. You don't have to worry about the gadget's durability since it has UV-resistant coating and material.

The Betta SE is The Pool Nerd's best overall pool skimmer because of its simplicity. It doesn't require an app or an internet connection, as you just need to place it in the water and operate it via its remote. It's also pretty good at actually cleaning the water, and with its dual sensors, it's great at avoiding bumping into walls and other obstacles, just like a robot vacuum, according to The Pool Nerd. You can dock the Betta SE at the edge of the pool using its remote, which makes it easy to remove the debris basket from the top of the device to empty it.

While a pool skimmer handles the surface of the water, a robotic pool cleaner like the Beatbot Sora 70 is a more thorough machine, as it will also be able to clean the waterline, walls, and floors. It costs much more at $1,499 on Amazon, but it received a strong recommendation from CNET as an efficient cleaning device that will let you stay on top of your pool's maintenance. With suction power of 6,800 gallons per hour, it's in the top tier of residential pool cleaners, according to CNET, and while it's rated to run up to five hours on a single charge, the review said that it can actually last up to eight hours.

This Beatbot robotic pool cleaner is equipped with ultrasonic sensors that enable obstacle detection and avoidance, and once the cleaning session is finished or if its battery runs low, it will automatically go to the edge of the pool for easier retrieval. The device also has six cleaning modes that you can access through the Beatbot app, and it works with all pool types and all kinds of surfaces.

In building this list of useful gadgets, we chose only items that can be purchased on Amazon to ensure maximum accessibility to shoppers. Most of these items are also subject to the occasional discount that will let you access savings on their prices. They've also received positive feedback from a website or channel known for honest and credible reviews.

We selected these devices for this roundup because of features that make them excellent additions to the pool area that will actually help you in some way, whether that be with safety, cleaning, or entertaining. We run down these capabilities to prove they belong in this list and combine those overviews with comments from professional reviews to further explain why they're worth spending on.