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It’s that time of year: pool robot reviews. Because no one really enjoys the chore of cleaning a swimming pool. I was really looking forward to trying out the AquaSense Pro that Beatbot sent for review because it’s the first one I’ve tried that says it does it all. Not only does it clean the pool floor and walls, but the AquaSense Pro also floats on the surface and scoops up leaves and other miscellaneous floating debris that I currently have to manually scoop out with a net. As if that wasn’t enough, this 5-in-1 also offers the option to dispense pool cleaning chemicals to clarify the water.

The specifications of this pool robot are really impressive. Features nine motors, a front and rear dual brush roller system with 5,500 GPH suction power, an extra-large filter basket offering up to 150 μm ultra-fine dual filtration, Wi-Fi connectivity (with companion app), and a 10,400 mAh Li-Ion battery offering up to 9.5 hours of operation per charge. Its Cortex-A7 quad-core processor and 20 smart sensors support AI-driven mapping, navigation and obstacle avoidance.

On top of that, the AquaSense Pro is a sleek looking piece of equipment with an attractive metallic blue casing. It won the iF Design Award 2024. It it seems the most advanced wireless robotic pool cleaning technology. And at $2,199, it’s also priced to reflect that stance. However, after testing the AquaSense Pro daily (sometimes several times a day) for the past week, I have some thoughts.

The good

Let’s start with the looks, because this pool robot looks good. Its metallic blue shell is smooth, blemish-free, and features Japanese IMR coating technology. The trim and actuation steps are contrasting matte black, with off-white rotating cleaning brushes. It looks and feels well put together, solid and exudes a premium product. With no charging port plug to remember to attach before you drop it in the pool, this robot slides into an included charging dock.

As a bottom cleaner, it does a perfect job every time. Its filter basket (actually two nesting baskets) offers high capacity and also ultra-fine filtration (150 μm); the robot picked up any leaves on the bottom of the pool, but also the fine dirt that other robot vacuums might scatter instead of picking up.

The 10,400 mAh battery offers up to 9.5 hours of operation, but that’s for surface cleaning. This cuts down to the claimed 5 hours to clean the bottom. In mixed use (bottom plus sides/waterline) in our pool (24 x 14 feet) it lasted about 3.5 to 4 hours on a charge and about that time to recharge. In other words, battery performance is a strong point.

After completing a cleaning cycle, the AquaSense Pro would return to the surface near a wall for easy removal – a hook is included, but I never needed it.

I don’t mess with pool chemistry if I can avoid it, but a dispenser is available to go into a dedicated port on the front of the robot to automatically deploy a water clarifying agent (kit sold separately).

The bad

For a robot that’s so loaded with processing power and sensors, the AquaSense Pro looks awfully dumb.

It has a quad-core 1.8GHz processor, 20 different smart sensors (including dual ultrasonic AI sensors), smart navigation, AI-pool mapping and obstacle avoidance. You have to wipe the floor with the competition.

It did very well on the pool floor. However, when I threw surface cleaning into the mix, the robot inevitably got stuck around our pool steps. He had a lot of free space, he just wandered into the step area and couldn’t get out by repeatedly hitting a step. Sometimes he would send a message that he was trapped, other times he would stay there treading water until I finally failed and pushed him to open water. After which it will just as likely return back to the stairs and repeat the process. All he had to do was turn around and it would be clear, but he’s clearly not smart enough for that. Mapping clearly only applies to the bottom of the basin.

Another time (when it was in floor and wall only mode) I watched it attempt to clean the waterline where it kept climbing around the waterline until it flipped back into the water. The robot stood up, but never recovered. I watched it float helplessly around the pool for another hour until it finally died. No SOS through the app and no attempt to resume cleaning.

I was hoping that a firmware update that appeared in the app would help. Unfortunately, there was no noticeable improvement after installing the firmware.

Outside of getting trapped, surface cleaning seemed poor. As far as I could tell, there seemed to be little, if anything, in the way of suction. The robot reminded me of a giant shark. As it traversed or drifted through an area, everything in the path of its sweeping absorption disappeared. But nothing seemed to be actively pulled, and in the end, surface cleaning didn’t seem to be particularly effective. Waterline cleaning was another weak point. The AquaSense Pro doesn’t often float to the surface during this cycle, and when it does, the front rollers spin very slowly, sometimes stopping completely. It doesn’t seem to do an effective “cleaning” of the waterline.

Then there’s the app. The Wi-Fi connection drops when the robot is below the surface, so you can’t rely on a real-time connection. Sometimes – but not always – when it encounters problems on the surface, the AquaSense Pro sends out an SOS. But the app as a whole feels buggy. The screens are pulled on top of each other and after several hours of cleaning, the app always seems to insist that zero square feet of pool has been cleaned.

Key features of AquaSense Pro:

• 9-motor NonaDrive system
• 2 x 2 roller brushes
• Dual intake ports (5500 GPH)
• Double filters 250 μm+150 μm, filter basket capacity 3.7 l
• Supports cleaning of floors, walls, water pipes and water surfaces with optional water clarification
• Quad-core Cortex-A7
• 20 smart sensors including dual gyroscopes and dual ultrasonic AI sensors
• 10,400 mAh Li-ion, charging dock
• Built-in control buttons, also Wi-Fi connected with mobile app (plus Wi-Fi firmware updates)
• Working depth from 1.64 feet to 9.84 feet
• can be used in above-ground pools of all shapes and materials, up to 3,229 square feet
• It weighs 24.3 pounds
• MSRP $2,199

AquaSense Pro recommendation

I have yet to try a pool robot that beats the AquaSense Pro in looks. Its iF Design Award suggests I’m not the only one who thinks it looks better than anything else on the market. For a basic bottom cleaning function, it performs very well and offers excellent battery life.

If only its AI and common sense matched its luxurious looks! Unfortunately, its inability to navigate around common obstacles like stairs or recover from minor accidents on its own, its mediocre surface cleaning and waterline scrubbing action, plus its buggy application make it really hard to justify that premium price. I suspect many of these issues can be resolved through firmware updates, and I hope the Beatbot will do so.

In the meantime, though, I wouldn’t spend that much money on this pool robot. If you still want to do so in the hope that the company will eventually iron out the bugs, the website sometimes has coupon codes (at the time of writing they were offering $400 off), there’s a 30-day money-back guarantee, and a 2-year warranty.

Disclosure: Beatbot provided the AquaSense Pro for evaluation purposes but was not involved in this review.