Aiper Scuba X1 First Use

BollFam

Member
Apr 17, 2025
9
Ohio
Pool Size
19700
Surface
Fiberglass
Chlorine
Salt Water Generator
Alright, my Aiper Scuba X1 arrived last night, so here's my initial reactions.

Let me start by saying my pool has started very, very dirty. So far, I've given the X1 two runs in the pool. One last night after it arrived, and one this morning. Here are my quick takeaways: (1) It has not had full coverage on the floor or walls after two runs. (2) It has had no problem getting past the safety ledge on my fiberglass pool, it cleans up past it to the waterline and gets the ledge itself cleaner than I expected. (3) I like the X1's charging dock, this is my first pool cleaner, so I haven't had to deal with charging ports, but I it's pretty easy to get this unit charged back up. (4) Hooking the robot and pulling it to the surface was easier than I thought it would be, it's bouyancy makes it light to carry to the surface, but it definitely "poops" when you lift it out of the water.

Alright with all that said, I'll start by saying my first cleaning may not have given the robot a fair chance. I was getting ready to go out for the evening, so I set the robot to "smart cleaning" (walls, waterline, floor), tossed the robot in the pool, closed the auto-cover and left. That left it to spend the next 2+ hours cleaning in pitch black darkness. I returned home and opened the auto cover to find it "parked" in the deep end with two walls scrubbed and about 80% of the deep end cleaned. I'm not sure how much the robot depends on the vision systems, but I did confirm it can clean all the way up to the waterline with the cover closed. So, I cleaned out the very full basket and put the X1 on its charger for the night.

This morning, I put it back in the pool on "smart cleaning" again, this time in the shallow end, and I left the pool open for its full cycle. I spent some time watching it bumble around the stairs in the shallow end and found that it was very slow to navigate them, and missed big sections of them (I'll try to post a photo of that). Once it got past the stairs it moved around the other walls pretty quickly. After a while I came back to find it working on the floors and noticed that it didn't make it around the full perimeter before it switched to floor mode. I'm not sure if it stops after a certain amount of time and switches to floors, but it missed almost all of the far long wall. The floor cleaning seems okay, but I'd say after these two runs its still only about 95% of the deep end and still missed almost all of the shallow end. The robot parked in the deep end and had a very full basket again. It's back on the charger now.

I think next, I'll give the "floors only" mode a go with the ultra-fine basket and see how that goes. I'm curious to see if "floor only" will get me closer to full coverage on the floors, and if "walls only" will allow the X1 to make it around the full perimeter.

Edit: I haven't done any firmware updates yet. Might try to get one in before the next run.
 

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I’ve been looking into the Aipers as they’re more affordable than other brands… thanks for this review! Hope the robot eventually figures out your pool. Seems like it needs to “learn” for the first little while
Well… after the weekend I still feel like it’s not quite “figuring it out”. Honestly the lack of navigation in floor mode really surprises me. Oddly it will move forward about halfway through the pool then randomly turn and change direction. I can’t seem to understand why it doesn’t just go in a straight line from wall to wall then turn. Sometimes I think it may be trying to be “too smart” about how it does things.
 
Well… after the weekend I still feel like it’s not quite “figuring it out”. Honestly the lack of navigation in floor mode really surprises me. Oddly it will move forward about halfway through the pool then randomly turn and change direction. I can’t seem to understand why it doesn’t just go in a straight line from wall to wall then turn. Sometimes I think it may be trying to be “too smart” about how it does things.
Ha! Darn, wish it were working out better for you. Are you keeping it?