Beatbot Aqua Sense X Review: A Pool Robot That Cleans Itself | WIRED

Overview

So, you’ve taken the leap and invested in a pool robot. The robot cleans the pool. But then, who cleans the robot? Surprise! You do.

That’s the calculus that has saddled pool-cleaning robots since the beginning, and it’s an awfully tough one to wriggle away from. Just like your terrestrial vacuum cleaner, all that debris has to end up somewhere. With pool robots, that invariably involves an onboard filter that requires your attention each time you retrieve the device.

Details

But what if you didn’t have to clean out that filter basket by hand? What if it could clean itself? Numerous manufacturers have been working on this very problem for years, and while demos and prototypes have been commonplace, none have made it to market until now. With Beatbot’s Aqua Sense X, self-cleaning technology is finally here.

The Aqua Sense X isn’t in itself self-cleaning. That job comes courtesy of a second device—which is packaged in an even bigger, heavier box than the robot—that does the job. The Astro Rinse station is a massive machine, 42 pounds on its own, reminiscent of an industrial printer with its squared-off design and telescoping arm hovering above. The Aqua Sense robot in turn sits on top of the Astro Rinse, which handles both cleanout of the debris filter and charging duties for its upstairs neighbor.

It’s up to you to put all this together, and users who don’t want to wrestle with screwdrivers, wrenches, and hoses may find the process a little daunting. The “quick start” guide contains a full 16 steps to get everything up and running, and I spent about half an hour getting things positioned.

Most of that time involves getting the Astro Rinse station connected and configured. Stepping through the entire process would take all day, but the highlights of setup include attaching the cleaning arm to the chassis with four included hex nuts (a screwdriver is also included), then connecting two hoses, one for water input and one for drainage. The input hose has to connect to a standard hose spigot (a splitter is included in the box if you need one), while the short drain line just needs a place to empty out the used water. The included input hose is only 12 feet long, so you’ll need to locate it near a water source or add your own extension hose to the mix.

Naturally, the Astro Rinse also needs a power supply, so if you don’t have a standard electrical outlet near your hose spigot, you’ll need another extension cord solution here. The unit must be level to run properly, and it features adjustable feet and a built-in spirit level to help you achieve that.

All told, you’ll need to carefully consider where you’re going to place the Astro Rinse, ensuring you have access to water, power, and drainage—and that the location isn’t too far from the pool. Since the Aqua Sense X robot itself weighs 29 pounds (and more when freshly pulled from the water), you probably don’t want to haul the thing halfway across the yard to clean and charge it. Unfortunately, given the availability of the above three services in my backyard, that’s exactly what I had to do.

The Beatbot Aqua Sense X robot is nearly identical in appearance to the Beatbot Aqua Sense 2 Ultra except for some changes to the basket design (which is a single piece here instead of two). Setting it up is far simpler than the Astro Rinse.

Physical configuration involves installing two side brushes—these are used only by the skimmer function—but this is a fairly quick affair. Once the brushes are attached, the robot must be set on top of the Astro Rinse cleaner so the two devices can be wirelessly paired together. (The quick start guide lays out the particular button presses you must do to complete this process; don’t lose it.) Lastly, the system must then be paired to the Beatbot mobile app; you’ll need Bluetooth and a 2.4 GHz or 5 GHz Wi-Fi connection to complete this task. One tiny hiccup I encountered: After completing all this work, both devices downloaded firmware updates, which promptly broke their pairing connection. It was easy to reestablish, however, by simply repeating the pairing process.

After a full charge, I put the cleaner through its paces in the pool on both the floor and the surface, and as expected, I saw no real difference in performance against the Aqua Sense 2 Ultra. During floor testing with both organic and synthetic debris, the device picked up an average of 97 percent of the test material, doing exceptionally well on steps and platforms. On the surface, the unit was predictably middling to awful, collecting less than half of floating debris and sinking most of the rest. The unit is just too slow to collect much material on the surface, even though its spinning side brushes help, to a small extent, to pull leaves into its maw.

On the floor of the pool, maximum running time is about 41/2 hours, courtesy of a 13,400 m Ah battery—the same as the battery on the Aqua Sense 2 Ultra.

As with other Aqua Sense robots, a bevy of operating modes are available in the Beatbot app, letting you choose from dozens of potential combinations of floor, wall, waterline, and surface cleaning, each with up to two runs per zone and with various running times. An AI Quick Mode activates the onboard camera to allow the robot to actively search for debris instead of encountering it randomly; it’s good for a quick clean when there’s not much to pick up but more than you can easily fetch with a net.

Again, not much of this is any different from how the Aqua Sense 2 Ultra behaves, and aside from the poor surface performance, it works outstandingly well.

On to the main event: cleanup. After each run, the Aqua Sense X parked itself at the waterline to await retrieval, and I dutifully lugged it across the pool deck to where I had the Astro Rinse station set up. While it can take a little trial and error to get the robot seated in just the right spot, once you do, the cleaning system kicks in automatically within a few seconds.

As the rinsing system starts up, the top-mounted arm swings into place and connects with the mouth the robot uses for surface skimming. Then, a high-pressure stream of water (sounding quite loud) begins blasting from the arm and into the filter basket, which is positioned directly below this opening. The water spray runs uninterrupted for three minutes before the arm swings back and the system shuts off. (A quick mode, which runs for one minute, can also be selected in the app.) After that, the arm retracts and the unit is done. Debris is captured in a net-covered basket built into the base of the cleaning station. Any remaining water drains out through a mesh screen at the very bottom of the unit.

The results were good to very good in my testing, but never once did the Astro Rinse device clean out 100 percent of the debris from the Aqua Sense X’s internal 5-liter filter basket; after each run, a handful of leaves would invariably remain behind. This was never a big deal, but if you like your robot to be 100 percent clean in between runs, you’ll need to fish out a few stray leaves from the basket by hand afterward.

Beatbot says users should only have to clean the 22-liter debris container and mesh bag inside the Astro Rinse once every two months, and while that will depend on how dirty your pool gets, the bigger question is how long you are comfortable with a bunch of wet leaves rotting in a bin in your backyard. I’m hyper-attuned to standing water lingering anywhere on the property for the risk it will turn into a mosquito breeding ground overnight, but the Astro Rinse underbelly remains fairly wet for days unless you open the access hatch and actively let things dry out (and preferably clean out the debris bag, too, which can be its own challenge).

So, what to make of all this? Beatbot deserves credit for solving a problem the industry has been talking about for years, but, frankly, I’m still trying to figure out if it’s actually faster and less of a headache to clean and recharge the Aqua Sense 2 Ultra by hand or use the Astro Rinse to do the job for me on the Aqua Sense X. The Aqua Sense X definitely saves some time and headache in the short run—except for having to haul the robot to the cleaning station instead of just the tiny filter basket—but there are longer-term maintenance concerns with the Aqua Sense X setup that are harder to quantify timewise, and my mosquito situation remains an issue.

What I can say with authority, however, is that the time and effort saved by the Aqua Sense X do not justify spending an extra $1,800 over the cost of the Aqua Sense 2 Ultra, at least for now. Teach the robot to get out of the pool and crawl its way over to the Astro Rinse to dock itself, and then we can talk.

Key Takeaways

• So, you’ve taken the leap and invested in a pool robot
• That’s the calculus that has saddled pool-cleaning robots since the beginning, and it’s an awfully tough one to wriggle away from
• But what if you didn’t have to clean out that filter basket by hand
• The Aqua Sense X isn’t in itself self-cleaning
• It’s up to you to put all this together, and users who don’t want to wrestle with screwdrivers, wrenches, and hoses may find the process a little daunting