Beatbot Aquasense Pro review

Anyone who owns a pool knows the chore of setting up the cleaning robot and its long hose that snakes its way around your pool, not to mention all the skimming you have to do yourself. The Beatbot Aquasense Pro looks to eliminate those hassles; like one of the best robot vacuums — but for your pool — this wireless robot aims to clean every crevice of your backyard oasis with minimal intervention. However, at $2,199, the Aquasense Pro is more than twice as expensive as many other robot pool cleaners; does its performance justify the price? To find out, we tested the Beatbot Aquasense Pro for a few weeks in our pool to see how well it worked.

Beatbot Aquasense Pro review: Price and availability

Priced at $2,199, the Beatbot Aquasense Pro sits at the top of the company’s line of robotic pool cleaners. The company also sells the Aquasense for $1,299; while both can clean the floor, walls, and waterline, the Pro model can also clean the water surface. Additionally, it can handle larger pools (up to 300 square meters vs. 210); has five operating modes as opposed to three; a nine-motor drive system; two filters instead of one; and a larger filter basket.

Beatbot Aquasense Pro review: Design

The Beatbot Aquasense Pro has a sleek modern design with a black/gray body, white rubber scrubbing wheels, touch panel buttons to change cleaning modes, and varied lighting schemes to indicate low battery or when the cleaning is complete.  It comes with a charging station that sets up in seconds and inverts the Beatbot Aquasense Pro so it drains quickly and shows when the device has been fully charged.

The Beatbot Aquasense Pro definitely feels like it was made from high quality materials. While it is fairly heavy, it’s sturdy and durable, and it can take bumps from kids, balls, or even an accidental drop.

Beatbot Aquasense Pro review: Setup and ease of use

There is virtually no setup required.  Just open the box, turn the Beatbot Aquasense Pro on using the power button, plug in the charging station, and set the Beatbot Aquasense Pro on top to begin charging.  While charging, scan the QR code from the sticker placed on the device to download the app and pair the device.  In 15 minutes, you’re ready to start cleaning your pool.

To start a cleaning cycle, sit the device on the pool deck for five seconds. You can either choose one of the standard cleaning modes from the buttons on top of the device or use the application to pick from the standard set of cleaning modes or choose one of your custom cleaning cycles. Then, just set the Beatbot Aquasense Pro in the pool. It floats for a few seconds, releases its air, sinks to the pool floor, and begins the cleaning cycle.

Once the cleaning cycle is complete, the Beatbot Aquasense Pro rises to the top of the water and parks itself against the side of the pool for easy removal and charging. If you leave the Beatbot Aquasense Pro in overnight, it will eventually sink to the bottom of the pool. Fortunately, it comes with a hook attachment for a pool skimmer pole that can be snapped in place and used to pull out the device.

To remove all the dirt, leaves and debris collected by the Beatbot Aquasense Pro, simply pop open the lid to the filter and remove the filter basket and liner. The filter basket catches leaves and pine needles, and the liner has a fine mesh that catches sand or smaller particles in your pool. It is super easy to pull them out, dump the contents, and rinse them clean for the next pool cleaning cycle. They also seem to be well made and durable.

Beatbot Aquasense Pro review: Performance

The rubber scrubbing wheels that can move in both directions does an impressive job sticking to the floor and walls of the pool, as well as to propel itself across the surface of the pool to act as a skimmer.  

Accuracy: The Beatbot Aquasense Pro intends on mapping out your pool so it can efficiently cover the floor and walls, hitting every area of the pool. Our pool has an odd shape and is fairly long, and it consistently missed the same spots, leaving dirt and sediment on the bottom of the pool over a few days of cleaning. I would give it the benefit of the doubt here, and for a more rectangular shaped pool or those with a uniform shape, it probably covers all parts of the pool consistently.

Larger debris (leaves, pine needs, twigs, etc.):  The Beatbot Aquasense Pro does a fantastic job sucking up leaves from the bottom of the pool. We first used it after the pool opening, and it still needed a good vacuuming before anyone would be getting wet. The Beatbot Aquasense Pro’s powerful scrubbers were able to suck up all the leaves it rode over along the floor of the pool and along the waterline. When the filter basket was full, the Beatbot Aquasense Pro attached itself to the edge of the pool and sent me a notification via the app that it needed to be emptied. 

Occasionally, when removing the Beatbot Aquasense Pro from the pool, small pine needs and spores that didn’t get sucked all the way into the filter basket would all dump back out into the pool, but it wasn’t anything that a quick pass of the skimmer couldn’t pick up in 5 seconds.

Surface Cleaning: Amazing feature, it literally left the top of the pool spotless.  One of the skimmers in the back of our pool doesn’t have the same sucking power it once had, and all the floating debris that would stay back there was cleaned by the Beatbot Aquasense Pro.

Fine debris (dirt, sand): This is the one area that was a disappointment. The Beatbot Aquasense Pro does a very mediocre job vacuuming finer dirt and sand from the pool. While some dirt was caught in the fine mesh liner for the filter basket, the Beatbot’s rubber scrubbing wheel did more to kick the dirt and sand up from the bottom of the pool to suspend it in the water and make the pool appear clean, only to see it sitting at the bottom again after a cleaning cycle.

Beatbot Aquasense Pro review: App

Beatbot’s app (Android/iOS) is pretty standard for a standalone smart device.  Simply pair it over bluetooth or with the QR code, setup the account, verify it, and you’re off and ready to go.

From within the application, you’ll just select your device and cleaning mode, and the Beatbot Aquasense Pro can be placed in the water for a cleaning cycle. When it’s done with the cycle, the filter basket is full, or the battery is low, the app can send a notification to your phone, which is super helpful when you want to run a second cleaning cycle without checking the battery levels.

The app also shows the length of time it took to complete each cleaning cycle.  What’s clever about the Beatbot Aquasense Pro is that it intends to map your pools layout and get more efficient each time it runs through a cleaning cycle.  We didn’t see much improvements over the 30 or so cleaning cycles we ran, probably because I was switching between cleaning modes.   

Beatbot Aquasense Pro review: Features and cleaning modes

The Beatbot Aquasense Pro has smart path technology that maps out the bottom of the pool and senses ladders, steps, and even objects sitting on the bottom of the pool. The idea behind this tech is to take an efficient path around the pool and to ensure the device never gets stuck in a odd place. While it definitely never got stuck, the non-linear shapes of our pool gave it trouble with the area where the pool floor and wall meet, and it never really cleaned the pool walls.

Cleaning modes can be selected from the app or from the buttons on the top of the Beatbot Aquasense Pro, but only the Custom and MultiZone modes can be selected from the application.

Cleaning modes include Quick Mode (which cleans the floor 1 time), Pro Mode (which cleans the floor, walls, waterline, and the surface 1 time) to an Eco Mode, which cleans the pool floor 1 time and continues to run every 2 days until the battery runs low. 

There’s also a MultiZone Mode (beta), which is designed for pools with large stepped areas and bowl shaped or round features and runs for longer cycles for up to 4 hours. This was the only mode that really worked for our relatively large irregularly shaped pool.

Beatbot Aquasense Pro review: Battery life

Beatbot claims that the Aquasense Pro’s 10,400 mAh battery will last up to 9.5 hours when cleaning the surface and up to five hours when cleaning the floor. I consistently found that the Beatbot Aquasense Pro could run for 4+ hours without requiring a recharge. I twiced maxed out the cleaning cycles; the first time, it ran for 5 hours and 45 minutes, and on the second run, it lasted an even longer 6 hours and 10 minutes.

The Beatbot Aquasense Pro charges fully in about an hour from being completely depleted.  And if you charge it after a 1-2 hour cleaning cycle, it will be fully charged again in 15-30 minutes. 

Beatbot Aquasense Pro review: Verdict

For anyone looking for an innovative and easy-to-use pool cleaner that eliminates the need for a pump, water lines running through the pool that pose risks for swimmers, and even the need for skimming, the Beatbot Aquasense Pro is a worthy option. It has a range of impressive cleaning features, advanced technologies, and a wireless design that can make pool maintenance a breeze. 

However, for the price, I expected it to do a better job at picking up fine debris; its performance was on a par with other wired and in-line pool cleaners I’ve used, all of which required me to use a brush or a pool vacuum to pick up the remaining bits. While that’s fine for a less expensive model, I wanted more out of this device. To be fair, my pool’s shape would challenge any robotic pool cleaner — but it was a challenge that I had hoped the Aquasense Pro would meet.