Beatbot Sora 10 review: The affordable pool robot most people need

Price When Reviewed

$549.00

Best Prices Today: Beatbot Sora 10

Beatbot’s Sora line, introduced earlier this year, marked the robot producer’s aggressive foray into lower-cost pool cleaning systems, with three models on sale at stair-stepped price points. The Sora 10 stands at the bottom of that price band, typically available for under $500, which is pretty much the bare minimum you can get away with paying for a pool robot that has any real value. So, what does $500 get you? For most pool owners, it turns out to be plenty.

Beatbot Sora 10: Specifications

The Sora 10 is visibly smaller and more portable than any other mainstream robot I’ve tested, weighing in at a svelte 19 pounds and measuring just 17 x 16 x 11 inches in size. Compared to competing robots like the 29-pound Beatbot AquaSense 2 Ultra, the Sora 10 feels almost like a toy. The mint green color scheme (it’s also available in a more traditional midnight blue) only adds to the cuteness.

Foundry / Christopher Null

Aside from size and color, design-wise the robot doesn’t change much from its brethren. It’s designed with two thick treads and dual front-mounted roller brushes, scooping up debris into a lidless interior basket that, while slightly smaller in capacity, works much like that of the other Sora robots.

The debris basket is accessed through a removable hatch on top of the device rather than a hinged hood, again just like the other Sora robots. Missing here, however, are the guide wheels on the sides of the robot, as seen on the Sora 70, which help it avoid scraping the pool walls. And while the unit does have a single sonic sensor to help avoid obstacles, there’s really not much under the hood by way of intelligence.

While it’s powered by a smaller 7,800 mAh battery, the robot’s diminutive size means it doesn’t need as much juice to keep rolling, and its theoretical maximum specified running time of six hours is actually an hour longer than the Sora 70. Beatbot specifies a maximum pool size of 3,229 square feet–that’s plenty for any suburban swimming hole. It does need 12 inches of water depth to operate, so note that your pool’s top step is probably not going to get cleaned. The charging system is the same easy tech that’s used on other Sora robots, which doesn’t require the removal of any screwed-on grommets or rubber stoppers.

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The unit connects to Beatbot’s mobile app via Bluetooth and works with either 2.4GHz or 5GHz Wi-Fi for downloading updates. While you can get things running without the app thanks to a small switch near the charging port, you’ll need the app for most operating decisions, even basic ones. Again, this is a simple robot, with just two operating modes — floor only or standard. The standard mode covers the floor, walls, and waterline. An additional eco mode cleans the floor for 45 minutes once every 48 hours, giving you a couple of weeks of set-and-forget operation. The two primary modes can be configured to run for two hours, three hours, or until the battery is depleted.

Beatbot Sora 10: Installation and setup

The Sora 10 is good to go out of the box, and my test unit barely even needed much charging before I was ready to drop it into the pool. Wireless onboarding was painless, similar to other Beatbot products, and after a quick firmware update I was ready for my first test run in just a few minutes.

Beatbot Sora 10: Performance

The Sora 10 is billed as a simple robot for basic cleaning needs, but I found it worked quite well even with larger cleanup jobs.

In testing with both organic and synthetic debris, the robot was capable at picking up both dirt and leaves, and it seemed to do a credible job at scrubbing the walls and waterline as well. There doesn’t seem to be much rhyme or reason to how the robot scoots around the pool, attacking things semi-randomly until, eventually, the job somehow gets done.

In my most thorough test, within about two hours the robot had collected over 95 percent of my test debris, and after another hour of running it had scooped up any lingering remnants on the floor. It missed all debris on the pool steps, not just the shallow top step. This was true even after nearly five hours of cleaning, including walls and the waterline.

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When finished, the robot is supposed to dock at the waterline for easy retrieval, and I found this to indeed be the case… but with a big catch. The robot spends only a few minutes idling at the waterline. If you don’t collect it in time, it sinks to the bottom of the pool and must be retrieved with the included hook and a pole.

This wouldn’t be as big of an issue if the robot sent a push notification when it is finished cleaning and ready for retrieval, but it unfortunately does not, so you’ll have to time runs separately if you want to catch it before it sinks. Cleaning runs are at least logged in the app, if you’d like to keep tabs on operations over the long term. And the scant few mode options are also easy to navigate in the Beatbot app. Maintenance features like firmware updates completed without a hitch throughout my testing.

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Cleanup was nearly identical to my experience with the Sora 70. Once the robot is on dry land, just pop the hatch and retrieve the debris basket. A quick hosing is enough to get most of the debris out of the bin, but some of the nooks and crannies require a little more attention to get fully clean. All told, it’s a straightforward cleanup process.

Beatbot Sora 10: Conclusion

At $499 (typical street price), the Sora 10 is Beatbot’s cheapest robot (by far). While it lacks many of the bells and whistles that make Beatbot’s pool robots so compelling, you may not need them. Put simply, the Sora 10 does a credible job if all you really need is an occasional cleanup (and don’t mind cleaning the steps yourself). If your expectations are kept reasonably in check, those with dirty pools but limited budgets should give it strong consideration.

Best Prices Today: Beatbot Sora 10

Author: Christopher Null, Contributor, PCWorld