Intex solar pool cover review

The whole case for it is fit

On an inground pool you buy an oversized rectangle and cut it down. On a soft-sided above-ground pool you cannot do that as easily, because the cover has to float inside a flexible wall that is not perfectly round and moves as the water does. A cover cut to your pool’s diameter sits flat against the water. A generic round that is close but not right rides up the wall, traps air, and leaves a gap at one edge.

That gap is the whole argument. Evaporation carries on through every square foot you did not cover, in direct proportion — the physics does not care that the rest of the pool is covered. Our sizing guide works through the trap, which catches out above-ground owners far more often than inground ones.

What Intex publishes, and what it does not

Reading Intex’s own product pages on 6 September 2026, the current 15-foot round cover is listed as model 28013E, and Intex states one number about it: “Reduces water evaporation by 95%”. The description says the air bubbles absorb and transfer sun heat into the pool water. Retail part numbers 29022E and 29023E are still in circulation at the pool retailers for 12-foot and 15-foot pools, so match the model to your pool rather than to the first listing you find.

What Intex does not publish is a temperature figure. There is no claim of any number of degrees on the manufacturer’s page at all. There is also no mil rating — no thickness specification of any kind that we could retrieve.

It is a thin cover, and that is mostly fine

Nobody publishes a thickness for these, but they are visibly light-gauge film and they are priced accordingly. Expect a season or two rather than the three to four a 12-mil pool-brand blanket is put at.

On this particular pool that matters less than it sounds, for two reasons. The first is arithmetic: an above-ground pool holds a fraction of the water an inground pool does, so the same sunlight moves its temperature far faster and the same overnight loss is a smaller number of BTU. The above-ground arithmetic is here.

The second is that a cheap cover you replace every other season is not obviously a worse deal than a dear one you keep — it is only worse if the cost per year is worse, and on a small pool the price gap between the two is small enough that it often is not. The cost-per-year comparison is the way to settle it rather than the sticker.

The bubbles go down

Bubble side against the water, always, and Intex packs them that way for a reason: the bubbles are the insulating layer and they have to be in contact with the surface to do anything. The answer has never actually been in dispute, despite how often it gets asked.

What it will not do

• Fit anything else. The cover is cut to Intex diameters. On a pool it was not made for, you are back to a generic round with a gap at one edge, and you have bought a thin cover for no reason.
• Survive being dragged. Thin film and a rough top rail are a bad combination. On an above-ground pool this is usually a two-person lift rather than a reel job, and how you handle it is most of what decides whether it sees a second summer.
• Fix a pool that is cold for a different reason. If the pool is not dropping much overnight, your problem is heat supply rather than heat loss and a cover is the wrong purchase. Four measurements tell you which it is.

What we could not assess

Actual thickness, because Intex does not publish one. How the film holds up across one full season in a hot climate. And whether the fit is as close on the metal-frame pools as it is on the Easy Sets — the covers are sold against both, and the two pool families do not hold their shape the same way when full.

What we can say is that Intex is one of the few manufacturers in this category that publishes a specific, modest, mechanism-appropriate claim about its own product and stops there. That is a lower bar than it should be. It is also more than most of this category clears.