Aiper Pool Cleaners Australia: Which Scuba Should You Buy?
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Table of Contents
Aiper make the best-selling cordless pool cleaner in the world, and they sell nine of them in Australia, from $269.99 to $2,999.99. That range is the problem. The model names don’t track the price, the jump from one to the next isn’t where you’d expect, and the most expensive machine is not the one most people should buy.
For most Australian pools the real choice is between four of them. This guide sorts the range into a ladder, names the one that gives you the most for your money, and tells you exactly where each model stops being worth the extra.
Every price and stock status here was read off Aiper’s own Australian store on 12 September 2026. We check availability as well as price, because two of the nine weren’t shipping when we looked, and finding that out at the checkout is nobody’s idea of a good afternoon. Aiper move their discounts around week to week — three prices changed in the six days before this update — so it’s worth a look before you buy.
The short answer
Scuba SE
Floor only, 90 minutes, no walls. If your pool is flat and vinyl, the extra thousand dollars buys you nothing.
Scuba S1
The one most people should buy. Aiper’s volume seller, and the 270-minute Eco mode covers a typical suburban pool without a recharge.
Scuba X1
The best value in the range by a clear margin, and it beats a model above it that costs more. Details below.
Who Aiper actually are
Aiper make cordless robotic pool cleaners and not much else. No pumps, no filters, no chemicals. Just the robots and a couple of surface skimmers. Aiper say they are the world’s largest maker of smart robotic pool cleaners by 2025 unit sales, citing Euromonitor figures in their own announcement — it’s their claim rather than a published Euromonitor report, but nothing we found contradicts it. In a category this young that scale matters more than it sounds: it means firmware that keeps improving, spare parts that stay available, and an app that gets maintained.
What matters more for an Australian buyer is that they run a proper local store with AUD pricing and Australian shipping, rather than routing you through a grey importer. That’s not universal in this category.
The range, as a ladder
One thing to get straight before the table, because it’s the single most confusing part of Aiper’s own marketing: they quote suction in two different units and never convert between them. The X1 is advertised at 25,200 LPH in Aiper’s bundle listings. The S1 Pro is advertised at 6,000 GPH. Those look four times apart. They aren’t. 25,200 litres per hour is about 6,657 gallons per hour, so the X1 is roughly 11% ahead. Every figure below is converted to the same unit so you can actually compare them.
Click any model name to jump to the full write-up.
| Model | Price | Suction | Cleans | Buy it? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Scuba SE | $269.99 | 1,200 GPH | Floor | Yes, if your pool is flat · Buy |
| PilotFlow X1 | $329.99 | 1,260 GPH | Spot cleaning | Not a robot — see below · Buy |
| EcoSurfer S2 | $699.99 | N/A — surface skimmer | Surface only | As a companion, not instead · Buy |
| Scuba S1 | $899.99 | Not published | Floor, walls | Yes — the default pick · Buy |
| Scuba S3 | $1,199.99 | 4,800 GPH | Floor, walls, waterline | No — still pre-sale, not shipping |
| Scuba X1 | $1,399.99 | 6,657 GPH | Floor, walls, waterline | Yes — best value · Buy |
| Scuba S1 Pro | $1,499.99 | 6,000 GPH | Floor, walls, waterline | No — Aiper have labelled it phase out |
| Scuba V3 | $1,599.99 | Not published | Floor, walls, waterline | Only for the filtration · Buy |
| Scuba X1 Pro Max | $2,999.99 | 8,500 GPH | Floor, walls, waterline, surface | No — out of stock at Aiper |
The pick: Scuba X1
The X1 is the one worth your attention, and the reason is unusual. It out-cleans the model directly above it in Aiper’s own range while costing less.
The Scuba S1 Pro sits at $1,499.99 with 6,000 GPH of suction. The X1 sits at $1,399.99 with roughly 6,657 GPH. So the X1 has about 11% more pull, does the same three surfaces, and costs a hundred dollars less. Aiper’s own product page now carries a phase-out label on the S1 Pro. There is no version of this where the S1 Pro is the better buy.
Brushless motors rather than a single pump, which is where the suction comes from. The waterline scrubbing runs in constant contact rather than bouncing off, so the greasy tide mark actually comes off instead of being smeared around. One thing to know before you buy: the X1 loses app connection while it is submerged, and unlike the X1 Pro and X1 Pro Max it cannot be paired with Aiper’s HydroComm accessory to get around that. So you won’t be steering it from the deck chair mid-cycle.
Aiper list it at $1,999.99 and are currently selling it at $1,399.99, checked 12 September 2026. That’s the deepest genuine discount in the range.
Don’t buy this if your pool is small and flat. You’d be paying $1,130 more than the Scuba SE for wall and waterline cleaning on surfaces you don’t have.
If you don’t need all that
The cheapest way into cordless and honest about what it gives up. It cleans the floor and nothing else. For a flat-bottomed above-ground pool that’s the right match, and the extra money up the range buys you capability you can’t use. Check your pool’s minimum water depth first, because very shallow above-ground pools defeat some robots entirely.
Aiper list it at $299.99, currently $269.99, checked 12 September 2026.
Don’t buy this if you have a deep end, a curved wall, or a waterline tide mark that bothers you. It won’t touch any of them.
If you’ve seen an Aiper in someone’s pool, it was probably this one. The 2026 revision added a 270-minute Eco mode, which matters more than it sounds. It’s the difference between one cycle covering your pool and having to charge halfway through. Aiper doesn’t publish a suction figure for the S1 the way it does for the SE, S3, X1 and S1 Pro — it’s the one spec missing from an otherwise fully-specced range. For a standard suburban in-ground pool with a deep end and tiled walls, this does the job, and the X1’s extra suction is a nice-to-have rather than a fix for anything.
Aiper list it at $999.99, currently $899.99, checked 12 September 2026. It was $799.99 six days earlier, so this one moves.
Don’t buy this if the waterline is your main complaint. The S1 does floors and walls, not the tide mark at the surface. That’s where the X1 earns its extra $500.
The V3 costs $200 more than the X1 and Aiper don’t publish a suction figure for it, which tells you where their emphasis is. What you’re buying is the filtration and the navigation. Aiper describe it as a MicroMesh ultra-fine filter without publishing a micron rating on their Australian store, so take the fineness claim as their description rather than a measured figure. The pitch is fine silt and pollen rather than leaves, so if your pool sits under a gum and goes cloudy rather than dirty, this is the one aimed at that. The wireless dock means no plug to fumble with wet hands.
$1,599.99 at Aiper, no discount running, checked 12 September 2026.
Don’t buy this if your problem is leaves and grit. That’s a suction job, and the X1 does it better for less. Only pay the premium if the water itself is the issue.
The two that aren’t pool cleaners
Two products in the range get bought by mistake because they sit in the same catalogue at similar money. Neither replaces a floor cleaner.
A solar skimmer that patrols the surface all day catching leaves before they sink. That last part is the whole argument for it. A leaf caught floating never stains the floor, never breaks down into the sludge that clogs your filter, and never has to be picked up by the robot at all. Under gums or jacarandas it arguably does more useful work than the floor cleaner does.
$699.99 at Aiper, checked 12 September 2026. The $599.99 promotion that was running the week before has ended. Aiper sell this under two names — EcoSurfer S2 and Surfer S2 — across different retailers and markets. It is the same machine.
Don’t buy this if you’re expecting it to clean the pool. It doesn’t touch the floor, the walls or the waterline. It’s a companion to a Scuba, not an alternative.
This is a cordless vacuum on an extendable pole. You hold it and you drive it. It’s genuinely handy for the places robots skip: steps, the tanning ledge, tight corners, the spot where the dog gets in. At 1,260 GPH it has enough pull for that job.
Aiper list it at $499.99, currently $329.99, checked 12 September 2026. That’s a new discount and the biggest proportional cut in the range.
Don’t buy this if you want to stop cleaning your pool by hand. This is cleaning your pool by hand, with better equipment. If that’s the goal, buy a Scuba.
The rest of the range
Three more Scubas sit alongside the four above. Each one exists for a specific pool, so here is where each fits and what to check before you order.
Scuba X1 Pro Max
The flagship, and the most capable machine Aiper make. At 8,500 GPH it is the strongest in the range, and it is the only Scuba that skims the surface as well as doing floors, walls and waterline, with pool mapping on top. That combination earns its money on a large, irregular or heavily shaded pool where floating leaves are half the problem. On a straightforward rectangular pool the X1 covers the same three surfaces for less. The catch is availability: Aiper’s own Australian store has had it listed as out of stock every time we have checked, on 6, 7 and 12 September 2026, now against a list price of $3,499.99. Other Australian retailers have carried it, so it is worth searching if you want this specific model rather than waiting on Aiper to restock — we are not linking to a particular one because we could not confirm current stock anywhere at the time of writing.
Scuba S1 Pro
The one with caterpillar treads instead of wheels, which grip noticeably better on a steep transition into a deep end. If your pool has a sharp slope, that is a real advantage the X1 does not have, and it is the reason to pick this one. Aiper’s own product page now carries a phase-out label, so if the treads suit your pool it is worth buying while it is still listed.
Scuba S3
The newest in the range and the one to watch. At 4,800 GPH it has meaningfully more suction than the entry-level SE, though less than the X1 or S1 Pro above it, and its 240-minute Eco battery is the longest Aiper make, which on a large pool is the difference between one cycle and two. It is still on pre-sale rather than shipping as of 12 September 2026, and Aiper’s Australian store no longer displays an estimated ship date — an earlier listing gave 15 September. Treat it as an order-ahead with an open delivery window: fine if you are planning for later in the season, less so if you need something running this weekend.
Aiper offer package deals pairing a Scuba with the EcoSurfer S2, and as of 12 September both undercut buying the two machines separately. The X1 pairing is $1,999.99 against $2,099.98 apart, saving $99.99. The S1 pairing is $1,449.99 against $1,599.98 apart, saving $149.99. That is a reversal — a week earlier both bundles were priced above the separate parts, which we flagged to Aiper at the time. One caution: their store’s grid tile for the X1 bundle still shows a different figure from the bundle’s own product page, so check the price on the product page itself before you commit.
Aiper or Dolphin?
The honest split is cord versus no cord, and it’s not really about the brands.
Dolphin have been making corded cleaners for decades and the pool shops that sell them will service them over the counter. A corded machine also runs indefinitely because it is plugged in. If you want a local technician who has seen your exact model before, that is the established option.
What Aiper give you is no cord in the water. No float, no tangle, no walking around the pool untwisting a cable, no cord to trip over. If you’ve used a corded cleaner and the cord is the thing you hate, that’s the entire argument and it’s a good one.
The trade-off is the one every cordless product makes: the battery sets the service life. A sealed pack working in chlorinated water is a harder engineering problem than a plastic suction cleaner, and the category is young enough that long-term data is still being written. Aiper’s scale helps here — replacement packs and parts are easier to get from the biggest maker in the category than from a small one. We cover the cordless trade-off in full in our cordless pool cleaner guide.
Frequently asked questions
Which Aiper should I buy?
For most Australian in-ground pools, the Scuba S1 at $899.99. If you want the waterline scrubbed as well, or your pool is on the larger side, the Scuba X1 at $1,399.99, which is the best value in the range and beats the more expensive S1 Pro. For a flat above-ground pool, the Scuba SE at $269.99 and nothing more.
Is Aiper sold in Australia officially?
Yes. Aiper run an Australian store with AUD pricing and local shipping, so you are not buying a grey import. Several models are also stocked by Australian retailers.
What is the difference between the Scuba X1 and the S1 Pro?
The X1 has about 11% more suction (roughly 6,657 GPH against 6,000) and costs $100 less. The S1 Pro’s advantage is caterpillar treads, which grip better on steep transitions. Aiper have labelled the S1 Pro for phase out, so the X1 is the sensible choice.
Why does Aiper quote suction in different units?
Some models are advertised in litres per hour and others in gallons per hour, which makes them look further apart than they are. 25,200 LPH is about 6,657 GPH. Convert before you compare.
Can I control an Aiper from my phone while it is in the pool?
Not on most models. Water blocks the signal, so the app loses connection once the robot submerges. Only the X1 Pro and X1 Pro Max support Aiper’s HydroComm accessory, which is what gets around it. The standard X1, S1 and SE do not.
Do I still need to run my pool pump?
Yes. The pump filters and circulates the water, which is a different job from picking debris off the floor. A cordless cleaner means running the pump for filtration alone, which usually means fewer hours.
How long do these take to clean a pool?
The Scuba SE runs 90 minutes. The S1’s Eco mode goes to 270. Match that to your pool honestly, because a machine that needs two cycles means waiting for a recharge in between.
Can I leave it in the pool between cleans?
No. They are designed to be taken out, rinsed and stored. Leaving one submerged permanently is outside what any of them are built for and will shorten the battery life.
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How we put this together
We haven’t had these machines in a pool. What we have done is read every price, stock status and specification off Aiper’s own Australian store as an ordinary shopper on 12 September 2026, and convert the suction figures to a single unit so the models can actually be compared. Where Aiper advertise a discount we’ve said it’s their figure, not ours. Where Aiper don’t publish a number — the S1’s suction, the V3’s filter rating — we say so rather than filling the gap with a guess.
Prices in this category move faster than most. Between our 6 September and 12 September checks, three of the nine changed: the S1 rose $100, the EcoSurfer’s discount ended, and the PilotFlow was cut $170. Availability moves too, so where a model was between shipments or on pre-sale when we looked, we have said so rather than leaving you to find out at the checkout. If you are reading this well after the date above, check the current price before you decide.
ServiceBot earns a commission if you buy through the links on this page. It doesn’t change the price you pay and it hasn’t changed what we’ve recommended. The machine we’ve named as the pick is the second-cheapest of the four, and we’ve told you not to buy the $2,999.99 one.
Still deciding on the category rather than the brand? Our best robot pool cleaners guide covers the field, and the cordless explainer deals with whether to cut the cord at all. The full Aiper range is here.
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