I looked into Pongbot quite a bit before buying my Amicus Prime about 18 months ago. It's very well reviewed in China, and both the software and hardware are quite capable. Their robots are also a lot cheaper than the Amicus Prime, but in the end I was concerned about after sales support.
Based on my research the Pongbot machine has a few key pros and cons compared to the Amicus Prime (aside from the software/motherboard, the PowerPong Omega is the same as the Amicus Prime):
Pros:
Software - If you've never used the Amicus Prime's software, you have no idea how stupid it is. It's been out for many years and it literally can't even get simple things like changing the name of a drill consistently correctly. The software for the Pongbot machine appears to actually be something from 2024 and not from 2004.
Ball direction control - The Amicus series ones use a deflector to change the direction of the ball. This has some big downsides. First is that when you serve the ball to the corners the deflection creates a LOT of sidespin, making the ball very unnatural when you want to practice say a BH/FH transition drill. Second is that it's very limited in services, as the first bounce cannot be very close to the table's edge. This really limits the type of services you can practice against. The swivel head mechanism used by the Pongbot robots have far less issues with that, and you can further increase versatility using the Halo or Nova robot which you can move around more easily.
Ball spin control - The Amicus series has 5 levels of backspin and 7 levels of topspin, which gives you 5+7+1(no spin) = 14 levels of spin. The Pongbot series allows 23 selectable levels of spin and you can supposedly adjust it even further, they say infinitely. This is quite important, because on the Amicus a +5 spin level topspin is like your average counter, pretty meh, but a +6 level topspin is God-like, unreturnable at higher speeds. There really should be something in between those 2.
Cost - well, self explanatory. It's a little more than half the cost, especially now that apparently they're available on Amazon.
Cons:
Ball frequency - Amicus can go up to 120 balls/min, while the Pongbot ones can go up to 90. Now, 90 is pretty fast, but if you're doing a close to the table drill sometimes you might want to push the limit which is a bit over 100. It's not a huge deal to me though.
After sale support - Both the Amicus and PowerPong have support based in the US, I know for sure I can get replacement parts and guides on how to replace them if I need it. I have no idea what's available for Pongbot. In the end that was what convinced me to go with the Amicus Prime, because at the time I only had options to buy from 3rd party vendors from AliExpress. Now that they're available on Amazon maybe there's a support network set up?
Looking back, the Amicus would've been behind the PowerPong for sure, as PowerPong's better software is definitely worth it. If I can get assurances from Pongbot about after sales support, however, I think I would've picked them. As it is, I'm if they can offer the support needed then I'd consider picking up a Nova bot to complement my Amicus Prime. I also have one of those Suz table top bots right now, they're much better at simulating services or high balls due to the flexibility in placement, but it's very annoying that it's not programmable.
