Score
Betta SE — Our verdict
The only cordless pool gadget I trust. Solar power makes it set-and-forget, the top-loading basket is the best design in the category, and after two years of daily duty the only casualties are some sun fading and a little motor punch.
The good
- Solar charging means it lives in the pool — no hauling, no charger
- Top-loading basket empties in 20–30 seconds while the unit stays in the water
- Handles Texas oak pollen season like a floating shop vac
- No app, no accounts, no firmware — a physical button and a simple remote
- Banks 30+ hours of charge, so it runs all night
The not-so-good
- Plastics are lighter and thinner than commercial-grade gear
- Deck fades noticeably after a couple of years of full sun
- Twin motors lose a little punch as the battery ages
Betta SE — key specs
| Power | Solar panel + lithium battery (30+ hours on a full charge) |
|---|---|
| Motors | Twin salt-chlorine-tolerant (SCT) jet propulsion, no exposed blades |
| Filtration | Fine-mesh top-loading basket, ~200 microns |
| Navigation | Ultrasonic wall detection + adjustable bumper rods |
| Controls | Physical power button and RF remote — no app required |
| Basket access | Top hatch; empty it without removing the unit from the pool |
| Extras | Snap-on carry handles, handled debris basket |
If you've read my Dolphin Premier review, you know where I stand on pool robots: corded wins. Batteries fade, suction drops, and hauling a wet robot out of the pool every day to plug it into a charger turns "automated" cleaning back into a chore. I've been burned by enough cordless gadgets that I stopped giving them the benefit of the doubt.
The Betta SE is the one exception I'll defend — and it's entirely because of the solar panel.
This thing operates the way a cordless robot should. You drop it in the pool at the start of the season and it just... stays there. It charges itself off the sun, runs more or less continuously, and catches leaves, bugs, and pollen on the surface before any of it gets waterlogged and sinks. Mine has been floating in my pool for two straight years now, and I cannot remember the last time I picked up a manual skimmer net.
So this isn't a first-impressions piece. This is what two years of daily, unattended use actually looks like — what's worn out, what hasn't, how it stacks up against the Dolphin Skimmi I bought to test against it, and why I'd buy another one tomorrow if this one died.
The Design: A Little Catamaran That Lives in Your Pool
The Betta SE is basically a tiny solar-powered catamaran. Two white pontoon-style hulls on the sides keep it stable and floating high, and the entire top deck is one big recessed solar panel. Between the hulls sits a wide mouth that funnels surface water — and everything floating in it — into a fine-mesh basket as the unit putters around.
Propulsion comes from twin salt-chlorine-tolerant (SCT) jet motors, one in each hull. There are no exposed propeller blades to snag hair ties or twigs, which matters more than you'd think for something that's eating debris all day. Steering is handled automatically: ultrasonic sensors detect the walls and turn the unit before it hits them, and adjustable bumper rods underneath keep it from beaching itself on steps or a tanning ledge.
Now, about build quality. My Dolphin Premier is part of Maytronics' commercial-grade ProLine series, and the Betta doesn't feel like that. It's lighter, the plastics are thinner, and nothing about it screams "commercial equipment." But here's the thing — it doesn't need to. It's not scrubbing tile or dragging itself up walls. It floats and it scoops, and for that job the lighter build is actually an advantage: less draft, easier to lift, and less strain on the little jet motors.
The Add-On Handles
One small design touch I really like: the Betta comes with snap-on handles you can add wherever you want them. You can see the gray handle bar I clipped onto mine in the photos — it gives you something solid to grab when you do occasionally need to lift the unit out for a rinse or end-of-season storage. The debris basket has its own molded handle too, so you're never fishing around in a tray of wet leaves with bare hands. They're simple pieces of plastic, but after two years of daily interaction with this thing, they're the kind of detail you end up appreciating constantly.
24 Months of Sun, Chlorine, and Wear
The real test of any pool equipment isn't how it works on day one. It's how it survives living in chlorinated water under direct UV, every single day, for years.
Battery and motors: There's been a slight drop in power. The twin SCT motors don't feel quite as punchy as they did out of the box, and it crosses the pool a touch slower than it used to. I want to be straight about that, because two years of daily charge cycles will do that to any lithium battery. But — and this is the part that matters — it hasn't affected the actual results. It still fills its basket with debris every single day. Slower, maybe. Less effective, no.
Aesthetics: This unit bakes in full sun on the water's surface all day, every day, so yes, there's noticeable fading on the plastic deck. You can see it in my photos. It's purely cosmetic. The UV-resistant coating has kept the plastic from cracking or going brittle, the hulls are solid, and the recessed solar panel itself still looks great and charges like it should. If a faded top deck is the price of two years of zero manual skimming, I'll pay it every time.
The Filter Basket: Pollen Season MVP
The filtration setup is deceptively simple. There's no deeply pleated cartridge like you'd find on a bottom cleaner — just a fine-mesh basket, rated around 200 microns, sitting in the center of the unit.
And during heavy pollen season, that simple basket is the MVP of my entire pool setup. Every spring, Texas oak trees dump a thick yellow film across the surface of my pool. Before the Betta, that pollen would either saturate the water or sink and turn into a mess for the bottom cleaner. Now the Betta acts like a giant floating net running 24/7, and the amount of organic gunk it pulls out is staggering.
That photo is a single day's haul during peak pollen season. That's a solid mat of pollen and oak catkins that would otherwise be in my water.
The genius of the design is the top-lifting lid. You never pull the robot out of the pool to empty it. Press the release, the hexagon-pattern lid pops up, and you lift the basket straight out by its handle.
The whole routine takes 20 to 30 seconds: pop the lid, lift the basket, dump it, quick blast with the hose, drop it back in, close the lid. That's the entire maintenance workload of this machine. During fall leaf drop I do it daily; the rest of the year, every couple of days.
Betta SE vs. Dolphin Skimmi: Why Simpler Won
Because I'm apparently incapable of owning just one of anything, I bought a Dolphin Skimmi to run head-to-head against the Betta. Dolphin owns the bottom-cleaner market — my Premier ran for four years and I'd recommend it to anyone — so I expected their surface skimmer to embarrass the Betta.
It didn't. It frustrated me instead.
| Feature | Betta SE | Dolphin Skimmi |
|---|---|---|
| Basket access | Top-loading — unit stays in the water | Pull the entire unit out to reach the tray |
| Operation | Physical button and simple remote | App-dependent setup |
| Design | Light, streamlined catamaran | Heavier and clunkier to handle |
| Emptying time | 20–30 seconds | A dripping-wet production every time |
The dealbreaker is basket access. The Skimmi makes you haul the entire dripping machine out of the pool just to get at the debris tray. That's the exact daily-recharge chore I hate about cordless bottom cleaners, reinvented for the surface. The Betta's top-hatch design is lightyears ahead for the one task you do every day.
The Skimmi also leans hard into app integration, which brings me to my favorite thing about the Betta.
The App-Free Advantage
In a world where every appliance demands you create an account, join it to your Wi-Fi, and install another app, the Betta SE is a breath of fresh air. There is no app. At all.
No firmware updates to fail. No Bluetooth pairing dance. No server outage that turns your skimmer into a paperweight. You flip it on, drop it in, and it works. If you want to steer it manually — say, to chase down one stubborn leaf in a corner — it comes with a simple physical remote.
For a device whose entire job is to float in circles and eat bugs, the absence of an app isn't a missing feature. It's the correct engineering decision.
Answering the Common Questions
Every time this skimmer comes up with other pool owners, the same three questions appear:
Does it get stuck on steps or in the skimmer mouth? Rarely. The ultrasonic sensors detect walls and steer around them, and the adjustable bumper rods on the underside physically keep it from driving up onto a shallow ledge or beaching on the top step. In two years, I've had to go rescue it a handful of times — usually after a storm shoved it somewhere weird.
Does it block the main pool skimmer? No — the opposite, actually. Because the Betta catches something like 95% of floating debris, my built-in wall skimmer barely collects anything anymore. That basket used to choke on leaves constantly; now it stays clear, which means better flow to the pump and filter.
Will it run at night? Yes. On a sunny day the lithium battery banks enough charge to run 30+ hours, so it works all night and well into the next day even if the morning is completely overcast. In two years, mine has essentially never been dead in the water.
Final Verdict: I'd Buy It Again Tomorrow
The surface of the pool is your first line of defense. Every leaf you catch before it gets waterlogged is a leaf your bottom robot and your main filter never have to deal with. Since the Betta went in, my Clear UV has noticeably less to do, and my wall skimmer basket stays practically empty.
Two years in, the scorecard: a slight loss of motor punch, some cosmetic sun fading, and that's it. It still fills its basket every day, the top-loading design is still the best in the category, and the solar panel makes it the only set-and-forget cordless device I own. I loathe battery-powered pool equipment, and this is the machine that earned the exception.
If you're tired of manual skimming or a perpetually clogged skimmer basket, get the Betta SE. I'd buy it again without hesitation.
