By Justin D. • August 8th, 2024
Hey there, and welcome back to the Pool Nerd. I’m Justin, your resident pool aficionado. And today I’m reviewing the Aiper Seagull Plus. The Seagull Plus is a step up the Aiper ladder from the Aiper Seagull SE and is the little brother of the Aiper Seagull Pro, which I was not a fan of.
The Aiper Seagull Plus cleans for longer, charges faster, and has slightly more suction power than the Seagull SE. But it has the same flat filter, static brush, and low-output cordless design, so there’s not enough improvement.
Battery Life and Convenience
Always charging.
First off, I want to start with owning the Seagull Plus is not a hands-off experience. While cordless sounds great, to run the unit daily, it takes 2 and a half hours to charge to run for only about 1 and a half hours. And you have to charge it after every single clean, which becomes a major pain.
My daily routine while running it was this: I’d have the unit charge overnight, drop it in the pool, let it run, then come fish it out of the pool with the little included hook I attached to my pool pole. Compared to a unit such as the Dolphin Cayman, you can simply leave it in the pool, set it to run daily with a Weekly Timer, and only have to touch it once a week to clean the basket.
Pool Coverage
Next, let’s get into the coverage of Seagull Plus. The Seagull Plus can only cover the floors of your pool, and has no smart navigation system. This means the Aiper Seagull Plus doesn’t clean most of your pool, leaving you to clean and scrub the walls of your pool. It bounced back and forth across the pool rather quickly, but can’t handle any weird shapes or steep inclines well.
Even the lower-cost Dolphin cleaners, like the Escape and Cayman, can clean the walls of your pool and smartly navigate your pool for more efficient cleaning. Without either of these features, the Seagull Plus will leave a lot of pool cleaning for you because it will only clean about 50% of your pool before it needs charging.
Not to mention the half that it can clean has no way of mapping or navigating, so most likely it will only clean random spots, and miss others entirely. In my testing, when it came to coverage, the Seagull Plus barely covered any of my pool and wasted most of its time bumping into the same few spots.
Cleaning Ability
Sadly, even the spots the Seagull Plus did cover were not cleaned thoroughly. I can say that the upgraded motor did vacuum up more loose debris than the Seagull SE, but larger leaves, debris, and cloudy water were left on the bottom of the pool. Without an actively spinning brush and no ultrafine filter, the Seagull Plus cannot remove and contain algae on the floor or remove microscopic debris.
In other words, the Seagull Plus only provides basic suction, once again leaving you with a lot of work to do. It won’t actively scrub, brush, or filter water. Speaking of work, the flat filter doesn’t hold fine debris or remove algae from the water. While it may be easy to clean, it allows algae and far too many particles to pass through.
The flat filter design just doesn't cut it. It's hard to clean, ineffective, and disappointing. Compared to the Aiper Seagull Pro and Dolphin Cayman, which both utilize a basket design that is easier to clean, the Aiper Seagull Plus' filter isn't great.
The captured debris got vacuumed into the body of the robot, which you have to spray out every time. Instead of just cleaning a filter basket - if it was me, I would save your money and go for a robot with a basket or even better - the new MaxBin that's on the new Max-Series
Features and Longevity
The Seagull Plus has no special features other than being cordless. The Seagull Plus does include an LED light this time to make it easy to tell when the unit is fully charged, but the biggest problem is still the battery life. Previous Aiper units I have tested only lasted a year before not holding a charge. The Seagull Plus may last longer, but my previous experiences do have me questioning its longevity.
The Seagull Plus has a one-year warranty, which doesn’t make me feel any better about its possible battery issues. The concern is the warranty will run out right around the time the battery will no longer hold a charge.
Final Verdict
So what’s my final verdict on the Aiper Seagull Plus?
It’s Pool Nerd Disapproved.
Even with a few improvements, the Seagull Plus still cannot clean your pool half as well as robots from the major manufacturers. There are also concerns about its longevity past its one-year warranty. Instead, I would look to Dolphin units like the Escape and Cayman, which are long-lasting units that can efficiently clean your pool walls and floor.
If you want to keep nerding out over your pool, check out the rest of our website to keep learning how to make pool maintenance way easier. View my comparison page and see all the differences between the many robotic pool cleaners out there. Until then, enjoy that pool and check back soon for more pool maintenance tips and insight.
Your resident pool aficionado.
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