- The Beatbot AuquaSense Pro is an AI-enhanced automated pool robot.
- While it’s Wi-Fi enabled, it’s not quite as autonomous as I imagined it would be.
- It will clean the bottom and sides and skim the top, but there are other options, too.
It’s summer, and when you’re ready to head to the pool, you don’t want to have to clean it first. You also don’t want to spend hours everyday keeping it clean. That’s where Beatbot’s AquaSense Pro comes in.
When the company offered to let Lifewire test the new Beatbot AquaSense Pro pool robot with AI, I was all about it. The area I live in is hot, hot. And there are beaches nearby, but during the summer beaches mean sharks and tourists. No thank you. I do, however, love to spend time in the pool. So anything that makes maintaining that pool easier is always of interest.
The promise of the AquaSense Pro is that you have to spend less time maintaining your pool so you can spend more time enjoying it. And the AI that’s integrated into the unit is designed to make it smarter. Let’s see how that worked out.
Setting Up the AquaSense Pro
So, first of all, this isn’t a tiny robot. In fact, if you’ve ever seen a robot lawn mower, it’s about that size. Overall, about two feet long and about a foot and a half wide. It also stands more than a foot tall and weighs almost 40 pounds (when it’s not full of water). So, it’s sizeable, which I suppose I should have expected, but somehow, I had it in my head that this would be about the size of a robot household vacuum (you know, I’m fond of those little robots).
However, for its size, the box wasn’t as big as you might expect. It was well-packaged, and the charging stand comes in 3 pieces that you have to put together. It’s easy enough; they just snap together to provide a base on which the AquaSense Pro is stored and charged. There’s no assembly required on the robot other than popping a clarifying cartridge into the appropriate spot.
It charges fairly quickly (from empty to full in about 3-4 hours), but unless you’re planning to clean your pool multiple times a day, that’s not really a concern since, once the cleaning is done, you pop the robot back onto the charger until the next cleaning.
And, of course, it comes with a companion app that you can use to monitor cleaning, get notified when cleaning is done, or select the cleaning mode. I did run into a little trouble getting the robot connected to the app, but I suspect it’s my internet provider, not the robot. I ended up having to use my iPad, because it failed when I tried with my iPhone. (I had this issue with a smart home security system, which made troubleshooting it this time super easy.)
Using the Beatbot Pool Cleaner Robot
Putting the AquaSense Pro to work was almost as easy as unboxing it. You select the type of cleaning you want to do (floor, floor and walls, floor, walls, and skim, or custom type of cleaning—which lets you select the number of times the robot will clean the floor, walls, and skim the top). Then, set the robot beside the pool for about 5 seconds while it calibrates, drop it in the water, and it does its thing.
It’s fascinating to watch as it moves around the pool, sucking up any debris from the bottom and climbing the walls to clean the waterline. It has a clarifying agent cartridge that you can choose to use or not. I used it, and my pool water was sparkling when it was done. My pool guy seemed pretty impressed with how well the robot maintained the cleanliness of the pool, too. He’s had to spend less time working on the pool since I started using this.
Here’s where I was disillusioned, though. I thought (probably because of my experience with house vacuums) that the robot would enter and exist the water on its own and return to the charger. That’s not the case. You have to physically pick up the robot and put it in the water, and then when it’s done, remove it, let it drain for a few minutes while you clean out the filters, and put it back on the charger. Not a big deal, but you know how assumptions are.
There is a mode that lets you leave the robot in the pool, and it automatically cleans the floor every couple of days until the battery needs to be recharged, but I didn’t use that option. Despite my grousing, I really don’t mind dropping the robot into the pool and pulling it out. I just let my imagination get away from me.
You also need to clean the filter out each time you use it, which is where it differs from other robots that aren’t hoseless. Since it’s not connected to a hose in the pool, all the debris collects in a dual-filter basket that does a very thorough job of collecting the mess. My pool has a couple of trees nearby, so leaves, mistletoe, and mustard algae are a problem. AquaSense handles it all without so much as a hiccup.
The Wi-Fi Is Strong With This One
One of the AquaSense Pro’s biggest selling features is that it’s AI-enabled, which basically means that it senses the most optimal cleaning path for your pool. But AI means it needs a Wi-Fi connection. That’s also how you can monitor and control it with your phone or iPad. The problem that I ran into is that my pool is pretty far away from my Wi-Fi signal. Fortunately, the robot works just fine. I still get a cleaning log on my iPad, and I can still adjust the cleaning cycles. There’s a little bit of a lag, but I can work with that.
But Is the Beatbot AquaSense Pro Worth It?
It probably goes without saying that the AquaSense Pro isn’t an inexpensive device. At around $2200 it’s an investment. But I believe it’s worth it. Given the conditions around my pool, I wasn’t holding out a lot of hope, but I was very pleasantly surprised when the AquaSense Pro did exactly what it claimed to do, and did it well. On average, we run the robot about 4 days a week, and since we started using it, my pool always looks inviting. So, yeah, if you’re considering it, this is your sign to get this robot and let it do the work for you.
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- Hands-On With The Beatbot AquaSense Pro AI Pool Robot
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