Beatbot iSkim Ultra review: It’s just not a better leaf trap for your pool

While testing the Beatbot iSkim Ultra, it occurred to me that a pool-skimming robot probably just isn’t a very good idea. I’m not saying that the Beatbot iSkim Ultra is a bad product per se, just that, for most pool owners, robotic skimmers probably aren’t a worthwhile investment.

If you have a pool pump with a thru-wall skimmer, you almost certainly don’t need a robot for the job—unless perhaps you live in such an extremely tree-laden environment that the wall skimmer can’t keep up. Even then, I can’t see how you would ever be fully satisfied with your investment in a pool skimmer which, to be frank, isn’t cheap.

The Beatbot iSkim Ultra is technically the better of the two skimmers I’ve tested to date for Techhive, and yes that is damning with the faintest of praise. At $1,199, it’s considerably more expensive than the Smonet SR5, but it did only a slightly better job at cleaning the surface of my pool. The iSkim Ultra has more features—including some wireless features—and fewer bugs; but like the Smonet, it left an awful lot of surface debris untouched at the end of the day.

All pool-skimmer robots have a similar overall design, although the iSkim Ultra does feature a few extras to spice things up. Two small propellers in the rear of the device guide it around the pool, while the entire top of the skimmer features a 24-watt solar panel that allows it to recharge and run semi-continuously. If you need extra juice, a magnetic AC adapter can attach to the back of the skimmer to more quickly recharge its 10,000mAh battery. That’s a lot of juice, but the iSkim Ultra needs it. At 17 pounds, sans debris, it takes a lot of energy to move this robot through the water.

This review is part of TechHive’s in-depth coverage of the best robotic pool cleaners.

The most unique feature on the iSkim Ultra are its two side brushes. These are horizontal spinners mounted on the front corners of the device. When the skimmer moves forward, these brushes spin inwardly to scoop debris that might otherwise hit the edge of the robot toward the filter basket, which rides underneath the device. (An additional paddlewheel is mounted on the front of the basket, further attempting to gobble up floating debris.) As with Beatbot’s underwater robot, the iSkim Ultra can also be used to dispense clarifying agent as it moves around.

In theory, the iSkim Ultra is extremely basic. Push the power button, place it in the water, and it’s on its way. The only other hardware control is an “action button,” which sets the unit to dispense clarifier if you have one of Beatbot’s $37 clarifying agent pods installed. (These are sold separately.)

Once it’s running, the iSkim Ultra jets around the pool until the battery’s dead, meandering about in what Beatbot calls an “S Shape” pattern but bouncing off the walls instead of turning before it hits them. In the dead of summer, with strong overhead sunlight or a full charge from a wall socket, you can expect 14 hours or more of working time—essentially running from dawn to dusk. But if you’re starting the day with a dead battery, and you’re facing a cloudy winter day, you might only see 3 hours of running time.

During my two weeks of nonstop testing, I had three consecutive days where the robot didn’t run at all because it didn’t have enough solar-powered charge. Your mileage will (literally) vary widely based on your location and weather conditions. Either way, once the battery capacity hits about 10 percent remaining, the unit will enter a “seeking light” mode and then park itself once it’s found some sun. If that doesn’t work, it will simply wait for the sun to find it.

The iSkim Ultra touts “20 high-precision sensors” and an AI algorithm that is supposed to help it “tackle every corner and obstacle.” And while it makes good time cruising the surface of the pool, it certainly came as a surprise on more than one occasion to find it running full throttle directly into the wall of the pool, attempting to blindly plow forward with its face smooshed against the tile when it instead needed to turn around.

The bigger issue, however, is one that impacts both the skimmers I’ve tested so far: They just don’t pick up much debris. Even when leaves were lying directly in the path of the iSkim Ultra, I would often—most of the time, actually—observe a small leading wave that gently pushed the leaves to one or the other side of the robot instead of sucking them underneath its body and into the filter basket. The corner-mounted paddles are supposed to help with this, but they were minimally effective at best, as leaves were still get pushed to one side and dodge the blades.

Larger leaves would often get stuck in the paddle blades or wedged beneath them. The iSkim Ultra did, however, have a particular appetite for our floating pool thermometer, which got stuck underneath the robot and lodged in the blades of the front-mounted paddlewheel on a regular basis, causing it to stop running until it was manually freed. (I eventually took the thermometer out of the pool entirely during testing.)

After 10 full days of running the robot, I was shocked to find only a few small handfuls of leaves in the debris basket (see photo). And this was during a period in which leaves were falling regularly and heavily into the pool from a nearby pecan tree. As was my experience with the Smonet skimmer, most of the leaves were ultimately collected by the wall skimmer, or they would sink to the bottom of the pool before Beatbot’s skimmer could get to them.

I also tried testing with synthetic leaves, turning off the pool pump so the thru-wall skimmer wouldn’t pull them in. My results were only marginally better than I got with the Smonet skimmer, with the Beatbot capturing 40 to 45 percent of the test material. The rest sunk to the bottom of the pool.

Like the Beatbot AquaSense Pro, the iSkim Ultra is a smart device that can connect to your Wi-Fi network. And since the skimmer stays on the surface, it can remain in contact with the network the entire time it’s operating.

There are some really cool parts of the Beatbot app, including daily charts of running time vs. idle time, a running graph of solar recharging activity, and a timer system that lets you specify when you want the device to idle, if you aren’t comfortable letting it set its own hours. The skimmer can also be manually operated via remote control buttons in the app, and this function works surprisingly well. A “rocket” button even lets you double the unit’s speed, which makes for as much fun as you can have around the pool without getting in.

But I don’t know what to make of Beatbot’s estimate of the ambient air temperature, which invariably showed that the balmy Texas air was well below freezing. And yes, I had it set to Fahrenheit, not Celsius. As near as I can tell, the problem is that the app doesn’t know exactly where the robot is, allowing you to set the time zone but not your actual location. Could the app really assume that my “Chicago” time zone meant I was literally in Chicago? Conversely and confusingly, Beatbot’s measurement of the water temperature looked to be correct.

As mentioned, I’m finding it tough to love any pool skimmer, but the iSkim Ultra’s sky-high price tag of $1,199 makes that calculus even more difficult. If you have an incredibly filthy pool and no thru-wall skimmer, a robot might make some sense to reduce the amount of manual skimming you have to do with a net. My advice, however, would be to stick with a more basic and much cheaper device for this task, such as the Smonet SR5.

The iSkim Ultra’s bells and whistles just don’t add enough convenience, performance, or time savings to merit spending more three times as much.