REVIEW: The Mova Rover X10 Pool Cleaner – Designed to be the only pool robot you will need

Mova want to dominate the market on robotic appliances, both inside your home and outside. They have recently released a suite of robot devices designed to clean and in the case of robotic lawn mowers, maintain your garden as well.

The Mova Rover X10 Pool Cleaner complements the robot mowers by ensuring your back yard is maintained neat, tidy and clean.

The first thing you’ll notice about the Mova Rover X10 Pool cleaner is that it is big. I mean really big, and heavy. The box came in at 25kg so this is not a one-man lift (non-gender-specific term)

This is not a robot that you easily throw in the pool and let it do it’s thing then pull it out to charge. It takes an effort to use. With 29 sensors and 15 motors promising to solve all your pool cleaning troubles, this is a beast and weighs in at 15.8kg

As such we need to see if the hefty price tag that comes with it and the effort you need to wield it, can justify the price and keep your pool spotless

Before we do that lets look at the specs

• Features a 7-in-1 cleaning system. Consisting of Surface, Walls, Waterlines, Shallow Zones, Steps, Floor & Corners
• Powerful suction and premium surface cleaning with 38,000 litres per hour water flow
• A world’s first underwater Laser Distance Sensor (LDS)
• 360° AquaScan Mapping
• A 5 litre ultra-fine debris basket
• A 15,000 mAh battery resulting in 12 hour surface cleaning or 6 hours floor cleaning capabilities for pools up to 500 m² in a single charge
• Real time app connection
• Adaptive brushes for corners and edges
• Intelligent Debris Detection and Adaptive Optimization

At this point you need to be aware that every pool cleaner I have ever tested or owned suffers from the same issue. Once it is in the water you can’t communicate with it. Unlike robot home vacuums there is no mapping, no real-time indication of battery level and no notifications when finished. It is a real limitation and a compromise you have to accept. Until now.

The Mova Rover X10 boasts what they describe as a “world’s first underwater laser distance sensor’. With the aid of the included Aqua Sonar Float, which acts as a communication link between your network and the submerged robot. The way they do this? Sonar. Pretty nifty.

This means that you do get mapping. You do get real time battery levels and instead of just running the battery til it is depleted, the Rover X10 senses when it is complete and stops, awaiting retrieval

What’s in the box?

In the box, apart from the robot itself you will find

• A spare tri-fold ultra fine filter
• Wireless Charging unit (Pad, base, 2 support legs and charging cable)
• Aqua Sonar Float and charging cable
• Retrieval hook for attaching to your pool pole

Setup

This was a pretty straightforward process to attach the legs to the base and charging stand. Note: Both the base and legs are marked as left and right so you can’t get it wrong

The sheer size of this cleaner means that it is recommended you house it somewhere near your pool. Somewhere you can transfer between the pool and the charging pad without having to carry it too far.

It is a big battery so charging may take up to 7 hours but as mentioned before, the cleaner is smart enough to stop when the job is done, not when it runs out of juice. The most I used in all tests was about 66%. Therefore it will be rare you charge from zero.

Use the charging time to download the Mova App and connect the robot and float to your Wi-Fi

The first clean

It’s always a good idea for initial cleans from any robot cleaner to be a full clean. In the case of the Rover X10 that setting is called “Complete”

Complete cleaning starts with the floor, moves to the walls and waterline then lastly on to the surface to skim for floating debris such as leaves.

The initial clean took exactly 2.5 hours, covering 300m² and processing almost 50,000 litres of water.  It used 63% of the battery. This first scan also mapped my pool and prompted me to nominate the position in the pool where I would like the robot to swim to after future cleans.

Mapping

To be honest I was a bit disappointed that the map only vaguely resembled my pool.

The point of difference with this new approach to pool cleaners is the ability to accurately map and ensure there is intel on how a pool is covered, rather than just a random pattern. In the timelapse video you may have noticed it did not clean and therefore map my steps.

It was close but I gave it the benefit of the doubt and considered that it may improve over time. It didn’t. Nor did a deletion of the map and a second attempt make a difference.

My concern is that if the steps are not recognised, then how can the robot effectively climb them and clean them?

This machine has so many sensors and motors that I expected more. With new technology sometimes the hardware can outpace the software so perhaps future firmware updates can rectify this issue?

No shortage of sensors or motors

I am used to experiencing firmware updates with new devices and this robot was no exception. Over the first week of use I had 3 firmware updates so I suspect the people at Mova are finding issues and patching them. It would have been advantageous to list what they had fixed in the release notes of the updates so I could see if I needed to re-test a certain aspect. The notes however were empty.

The nominated retrieval point feature was also a no-go. At the end of a cleaning task I had nominated that the robot park itself at the steps at the shallow end of the pool. It never did. Each clean saw a new finishing spot. Admittedly they were always on the surface so easy to grab so the pool hook was not needed.

Float tips

Tip # 1: A small annoyance was that the instructions call for you to turn it off or on by holding the power button for three seconds. If you hold it longer than that it will go into pairing mode. That is fine for your initial setup but I found over several weeks of testing it is too easy to hold it too long. The reason? The temperature display takes more than three seconds to turn off. It is delayed by a few extra seconds so if you buy this robot, always let go of the power button when the light goes out, not when the display does.

Tip # 2: The float comes with a cord to tether it to something like your pool railing or another stable object. I learnt the hard way after the robot swallowed the cord in its brushes on clean number one so tie it so it sits to the side of the pool, not float freely.

Modes

There are several modes available for you to select but one glaring omission

Choices are

• Complete
• Floor only
• Walls only
• Surface only
• Floor edges
• Shallow area

Each mode has various options such as increasing the number of passes from 1 to 2 and also the suction power you wish to nominate.

You can set timers to schedule cleans on certain days at certain times. The long battery life ensures you can pre-program several cycles in advance.

But where is the floor plus wall option? For my particular pool where surface debris is rare it is the most common combination I use. The previous Mova pool cleaner I reviewed, The A10 Diver had this option.

My only choice is to clean walls and floor is “Complete” which includes an unnecessarily long time skimming the surface of the pool. The other option is to wait til the walls are done, then select another cycle for the floor.

That brings me to another quirk. It is SLOW. Now slow to move around the pool is fine as it avoids disturbing dirt and gives the robot the best chance to suck it up, but when using the app, nothing works quickly. Starting a clean sees you waiting well over 3 minutes for it to submerge and commence cleaning. If you change your mind and want to alter your mode then you can wait patiently for it to reach the bottom, get back to the surface and be pulled out to get it to be ready for a changed mode selection. That can be frustrating.

Battery usage

The huge battery in Rover X10 ensures you don’t have to worry about it running out before the job is done

Mode	Time (minutes)	Coverage	Water throughput (litres)	Battery % used
Complete	150	300 m²	49,360	63%
Walls & waterline	50	99 m²	17,065	28%
Floor only	58	116 m²	26,986	18%

Steps

As mentioned earlier, the promise of reaching every corner and every edge as outlined in the 7-in-1 features didn’t quite live up to expectations either.

Floor mode didn’t reach the surface of the steps, wall mode didn’t either nor did surface mode. I even tried to drive the robot up to the steps using the remote control option. A gallant attempt but all it did was drive up to the base of the steps, not up and over

I feel I need to pause here as I realise that this review is not exactly bathing the robot in praise. I truly believe the Rover X10 has the capability to do everything advertised but is let down by software. The machine itself should be able to live up to expectations but Mova need to fix these annoyances. The Rover X10 is their flagship product and not cheap (RRP of ,699) so it needs to perform better than the current setup allows

Whilst I am complaining about software I have two other criticisms

1. Apple watch app failed to work either. I had two options displayed (Home and Start), but neither of the “buttons” had any effect on the operation
2. The “waterline” cleaning mode sees the robot approach the waterline but not actually breach the surface. Someone needs to adjust the settings to make the robot climb just that bit higher

Remote control

One thing that you won’t see on other robot pool cleaners, courtesy of the sonar is the ability to remotely guide the robot to where you think it needs to concentrate. That may be a particularly dirty area that you just want to target as a quick clean rather than running a full cycle. It worked well and was a bit of fun

Cleaning the cleaner

The debris basket in this cleaner is huge and there is very little chance of filling it on a normal pool. It is equipped with a tri-fold ultrafine filter plus you are supplied with a spare. It was easy to remove, clean and re-insert

The verdict

The good

• Cleans floors, walls and surface
• Connectivity is streaks ahead of other pool cleaners
• A large battery
• Cleans til the job is done, not when teh battery is depleted
• Notifications when finished
• A huge debris basket

The not so good

• Heavy
• Steps were a challenge in testing
• Waterline scrubbing needs to be improved
• Slow to respond
• Software not supporting the impressive hardware

I really wanted all these features to work as, on paper this robot cleaner is a cut above all others and represents true evolution of pool cleaners. The delivery however let it down. The hardware is impressive but more work needs to be done to justify the flagship price tag by having the software complement the tremendous array of sensors and motors.