There's nothing the Aiper Scuba N1 can do that you can't, unless you count riding on the walls and around the bottom of your pool sucking up leaves and debris. You could achieve the same thing with a long pole and brush and basket attachments, but that means exerting a lot of energy we reckon you'd otherwise want to save for more engaging tasks, like family time, or shouting at the ref. That alone makes it worth the asking price.
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As we head straight into summer, having seemingly skipped spring altogether, you’re probably looking at your greenish, debris-filled pool with dread. It’s going to take a bit of work before it’ll be ready for summer enjoyment, and you almost certainly have better things to do.
Thankfully, there’s a relatively new option for lazy pool owners — the Aiper Scuba N1 robot pool cleaner. It’s meant to replace the Kreepy Krauly-type thing you’ve got hooked up to pipes, as a simpler automatic solution. It will still require small amounts of manual input from you, but that’s what kids are for.
Out of box, into pool
As a close cousin to robot vacuum cleaners, we expected the Aiper Scuba N1’s assembly and setup process to be more involved. While house-bound robot vacuums usually come mostly assembled, you’ll still have to clip on a few brushes, and they often require your input (or at least some help) to map out where they’re meant to clean, set up their cleaning schedule, and the like.
All the Scuba N1 required from us was to take it out of the box, switch it on (ours was already charged, but you may have to charge yours first), and dunk it in the pool. There isn’t a companion app to worry about with this one, although more advanced models will need a Wi-Fi or Bluetooth connection. That suited us just fine, seeing as our pool was out of Wi-Fi range, but it’s something to keep in mind if you’re looking at the smarter ‘bots.
Once fully submerged, it immediately got to work on the bottom of the pool, sucking up everything in its path. It did its thing for just under an hour before it returned to roughly where it entered, begging to be charged. Well, it didn’t really beg; it just flashed its red light and died.
Not just a one-trick pony
After a four-hour charge, it was back into the water so we could try out its other modes. There’s the standard ‘Auto’ mode that will clean the floor and walls right up to the waterline for as long as the battery lasts (usually around two hours), or you can set it to just do the floor or just the walls. Then, it has an ‘Eco’ mode, which is meant to serve as the maintenance option. In Eco mode, it will switch on automatically every 48 hours to clean for up to 45 minutes at a time until it runs out of juice.
The manufacturer reckons it’s suited for all pool types and shapes, and while we only tested it in two types of pools, neither gave it any hassles. The caterpillar treads made short work of transitioning from floor to wall, and the silicon brushes removed loose dirt from around the waterline well. We were also interested to see how it fared with pool steps, but some of these proved too difficult for the bot to manoeuvre.
If you’ve got wide steps, this shouldn’t be an issue. But if your steps are regular, indoor-step-width apart (i.e smaller than the Scuba N1), it will likely struggle. It also never managed to figure out how to grab the leaves on the water’s surface. It turns out Aiper has a separate robot for hoovering up that debris.
Aiper Scuba N1 verdict
If you’re one of those people who relishes spending your time on pool maintenance as some sort of meditative practice, the Aiper Scuba N1 could still be for you on the days when you don’t feel like meditating. But folks who would rather not scrub underwater walls will get more joy from this device. Although, depending on your pool size, you might just be swapping wall scrubbing time for trips to and from the charger.
And while the internal basket might have fine mesh walls, they aren’t fine enough to trap every small particle and therefore completely remove the need to vacuum up the dust from the bottom of your pool — although it certainly performed better than we expected.
But, at the end of the week, would you rather have a clean pool and sunburnt shoulders, or a clean pool with more other stuff done (what you do with your time is your business). For the asking price of R15,000, it’s bound to be worth it for at least a few pool owners. You’ve got time to save up; the next restock is expected this November.
