Don’t Hand Scrub Your Pool – Use a Robot Instead – Aiper Smart AIPURY1500 Pool Cleaner Review

I have a fairly large, rectangular pool. It measures about 14 feet by 42 feet with has deep and shallow ends. It requires quite a bit of work in terms of cleaning as trees are surrounding it in our backyard. As a consequence, it does get quite a bit of debris throughout the year. From leaves to bark to insects, it tends to accumulate a lot of stuff along the bottom. And you know what that means…cleaning! I have a manual brush and leaf scoop, but honestly, I’m a bit lazy and only occasionally skim the leaves off the surface. For the most part, I barely touch the bottom of the pool. That is until I got my hands on a robot that would do it for me, specifically the Aiper Smart AIPURY1500 robotic pool cleaner! (*Disclosure below.)

Despite my laziness, I do realize it is important to keep your pool clean. From scrubbing the walls to remove build-up to getting the submerged leaves off of the bottom to prevent stains that are pretty much impossible to remove, having a regular cleaning schedule is pretty important. But, the other thing you should consider is your own time. Do you have half an hour a couple of times a week to scrub the walls and bottom of your pool? Do you have a long pole with a net to get those stubborn leaves on the bottom of the pool?

I’m going to guess if you are anything like me, probably not. Yes, I do have the net and leaf scoop. But I don’t really have a couple of hours a week to regularly follow a maintenance schedule.

So, I’m all in with a robot that can do ALL of this work for me and probably do a better job in the process. This is where I happily handed over this responsibility to the Aiper Smart 1500 robotic pool cleaner.

I had some questions that I wanted to answer from my testing:

• How good of a job did the Aiper Smart do?
• Is it easy to use?
• Did it pick up debris from the bottom?
• How did it actually climb up a wall to clean?
• Is it truly smart?
• Will all of our jobs be replaced with robots?

Well, there is no better way to get the answers to these questions than to just “dive right in” and see if the Aiper Smart robotic pool cleaner would “sink or swim” with the task of cleaning my pool (sorry about the pool metaphors, well, not really).

What is the Aiper Smart AIPURY1500 robotic pool cleaner?

The name, robotic pool cleaner, pretty much tells it all. This is a battery-powered device that crawls along the bottom and walls of your pool, cleaning, and scrubbing as it goes. It has quite a large pair of cylindrical brushes on the front, which are used to clean the walls and sweep debris off the bottom into the pool cleaner itself.

Inside a door on the top is a screen mesh basket that captures pretty much anything it encounters. There are limitations though, it won’t pull in branches or large, heavy items like rocks or acorns, for example (actually, it was able to suck up a few acorns to my surprise). But, the mesh basket I found to do quite a good job at grabbing the debris and holding quite a lot.

And, to my surprise, when I took the mesh basket out, I did find significant amounts of sediment, grit, and small debris. This is actually quite important.

Many pool sweeps that may be plumbed into your pool either don’t have the power to pick up sediment (think particles the size of sand or even smaller) or, their debris bags have mesh that is too porous, and the segment simply passes through.

Not with the Aiper Smart robotic pool cleaner. It seems to have the capability of getting all of that “stuff” off of the bottom of your pool. You just have to be sure that you fully clean the mesh basket once the Aiper Smart is done cleaning. I recommend taking the large stuff out by hand and then washing it out well with a garden hose.

Also on the top is a switch to turn it on and off and a place that has a rubber, waterproof plug that plugs up where you connect the Aiper Smart to power to charge up the battery.

Four rubberized wheels move it along the bottom of the pool and pull it up the sides of a pool.

And there is a water vent at the top. I was actually quite surprised at how much water actually flowed through the Aiper Smart cleaner.

The motor sucks the water from the bottom of the cleaner into the mesh basket, where all of the debris is captured, and then it is pushed out the top. So in shallow water, it produces quite a disturbance on the surface as it pumps.

Why is the Aiper Smart called “smart?”

When I think of something being called “smart,” I think it has to have some sort of intelligence and is somehow connected to your Smart Home via the internet or other connections. Only part of this is actually true, and honestly, it makes sense.

The intelligence is built into the cleaner itself for the mapping of the pool and how it cleans both the walls and the bottom. However, the Aiper Smart robotic pool cleaner does NOT connect to anything whatsoever. So, you aren’t notified if the battery is low or if the cleaning is done.

Before I go into the actual intelligence of the cleaning process, let me touch on how you know if the battery is charged or low and know when the process is done (as they are related).

On the front of this robotic pool cleaner is an LED light which is visible even from the deep end of the pool. When the light is blue and blinking, it means that it is running. And, you can get an idea of how much battery is remaining by how many blue bars you can see.

When the battery runs out, this LED light turns yellow. The AIPURY1500 is supposed to head close to a wall of your pool when the battery is about to die. That seems to occur most of the time.

Included in the package, along with the charging cable, is a hook that you attach to the end of your pool cleaner rod. The hook easily grabs onto the handle on the top of the Aiper Smart so that you can retrieve it from the bottom of the pool. Once retrieved, you can clean the mesh basket and then let it dry out for a while. This is critical before you plug in the Aiper Smart to charge it up for the next cleaning session. Remember, water and electricity are NOT friends and can be dangerous, so be sure the AIPURY1500 is dry before you plug it in!

I’m pretty sure the main reason you cannot connect the AIPURY1500 to an app via Bluetooth or WiFi is because those signals really don’t travel well underwater (if at all). So when you do a cleaning cycle, you basically turn it on and put it in the water and then come back a few hours later to see if it is finished.

I recommend checking on it from time to time to ensure it isn’t stuck on a ledge or the stairs.

I also found that it was better to run it when your pool equipment is off. Sometimes, the drains at the bottom of the pool can have a significant amount of suction that will trap the AIPURY1500 on top of the drain. This didn’t happen to me though.

How does the AIPURY1500 clean?

I already mentioned that this robotic pool cleaner has a couple of stages to its “smarts.” When it is fully charged, I recommend taking it to the shallow end of your pool (which can be an in-ground one or an above-ground one), turn it on, and then put it somewhat in the middle of the side. You have a few seconds of time before the wheels start moving and it starts sucking up the water.

Once you drop it in, the “smarts” begin to kick in. From my observations of a couple of cleaning cycles, it seems to want to first map the length of the pool, and then it stops somewhat mid-way, and it measures the width. I truly don’t know if it uses internal measuring or sonar or radar or magic to figure everything out. Still, once it does somewhat figure out the size of the pool, it then begins an up-and-down process of climbing the walls all the way to the surface (and even partially out of the water) and then dropping back down to the bottom to start another cleaning climb.

Again through my observations, the Aiper Smart robotic pool cleaner will NOT clean every inch of your wall. But through the law of averages, you will “eventually” get all of the wall surfaces if you run it regularly. Honestly, it may take a bit of time, just from what I observed.

Once the wall cleaning is completed, the Aiper Smart will begin working on the bottom of the pool. Starting in the “center” of the pool (it doesn’t seem to be super precise), it will then begin cleaning the bottom in a bunch of diagonal lines (like an asterisk – *). The 3-axis motor will slightly pivot the direction by 15º each time. This process will continue until the battery runs out.

One thing to keep in mind, the larger the pool, the longer it will take to clean. As I mentioned, I have a fairly large pool, so I don’t think that I am completely getting the entire pool bottom and walls swept in a single cleaning session. I do feel that the Aiper Smart robotic pool cleaner is a better fit for smaller pools.

The battery is a high-capacity, 8600mAh one. I found that fully charged, it was able to run more than one hour (and maybe hit two hours). Obviously, over time, the battery capacity will be reduced, so keep that in mind.

The AIPURY1500 does obviously come with a wall charger. And it does take several hours to charge up fully. An LED light on the plug itself tells you if the battery is low and charging (it shows red) and then when it is fully charged (it shows green).

I do wish that the charging cable was more “outdoor-ready.” That is to say, I charge the robotic pool cleaner outside, and I don’t think the charging cable and plug could be left plugged in. It seems to be more of an indoor type.

The AIPURY1500 made quite a “splash” in my opinion

While I was a bit skeptical initially about a robot cleaning my pool, after watching the Aiper smart AIPURY1500 robotic pool cleaner in action, I was actually quite impressed. It DID climb walls and scrub them all the way to the surface. It DID navigate around my pool and pick up debris from the bottom. It DID successfully navigate onto steps and ledges (and only got stuck a couple of times). And it DID vacuum up sediment from the bottom, something that simple brushing could NOT do.

So, how much does the AIPURY1500 robotic pool cleaner cost? Well, it honestly isn’t cheap. But you do have to think about the amount of time it would take you to do the same task. Or to pay someone else to do it. And do that cleaning process regularly.

The AIPURY1500 retails for $1099.99, but on the site, it is on sale for $599.99 (which I think is a bit more realistic). It is also available on Amazon for $599.99. The nice thing is, there aren’t any parts that you have to continue purchasing later (unless you get a hole in the basket – I don’t know if or how you can replace the batteries later either).

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Overall, adding the Aiper Smart robotic pool cleaner to your pool’s maintenance is probably a good thing. You will keep the walls and bottom clean of algae (assuming your chemical are balanced), remove sediment and other debris from the bottom, and regularly brush the sides, which is an important task to regularly do (and something that this lazy pool owner doesn’t really do…until now with the Aiper Smart)!

Disclosure: I have a material connection because I received a sample of a product for consideration in preparing to review the product and write this content. I was/am not expected to return this item after my review period. All opinions within this article are my own and are typically not subject to editorial review from any 3rd party. Also, some of the links in the post above may be “affiliate” or “advertising” links. These may be automatically created or placed by me manually. This means if you click on the link and purchase the item (sometimes but not necessarily the product or service being reviewed), I will receive a small affiliate or advertising commission. More information can be found on my About page.

HTD says: Yes, many of the mundane but essential tasks we do can be replaced by robots. Sweeping the walls and cleaning the bottom of my pool is something that I have gladly handed off to the Aiper Smart AIPURY1500 robotic pool cleaner.