This robot has it all: near-perfect cleaning capabilities (including floors, walls, and waterline), a powerful battery with six hours of underwater charging, AI-powered debris detection, and a robust mobile app. It also has the ability to skim the surface of the pool. When you’re done cleaning, the AquaSense 2 Ultra floats, so picking it up is just a matter of grabbing it from the comfort of the platform. After a quick clean, drop the robot onto the included charging stand to charge it again, no cables required.

What do you not like? Actually, only two things. Monstrous cleaning capacity requires a monstrous chassis, and to say that the 29-pound Beatbot AquaSense 2 Ultra is unwieldy would be an understatement. Getting this robot out of the water can be a chore, so work on your forearm curls if you plan on purchasing one.

There’s also the price: At around $3,000, it’s pretty much the most expensive battery-powered pool robot on the market, although there are plenty of competitors at least in the ballpark. If you’re on a tighter budget, you can get the same coverage with Beatbot’s Sora 70, which sells for just $1,499.

Pool cleaning robot with the best battery life

The traditional way to use a pool robot is to keep it in the dry dock and charge it, and then drop it into the pool only when you need it. Take it out at the end of the run, clean the filter basket and repeat.

An alternative may appeal to lazier pool owners: drop the robot into the pool and leave it there for a week or two, let it run on a repeating schedule, and then clean it only when the battery is dead.

The trick to this strategy is that few pool robots have a battery large enough to allow for more than one or two thorough cleanings. But with its new M1-AI series, iGarden packs a massive 12,500 mAh battery into its sleek pool robot, allowing for up to nine hours of in-floor operation alone. (You can also make walls and waterlines, of course, but that will use up more juice.) The robot also includes cameras that use an AI-powered algorithm to actively search for debris. In standard mode, the robot first follows an S-shaped path and then activates the cams to look for anything it missed, making cleaning even more effective.