Housework sucks. We tried a robot vacuum/mop to see if it’d help save time & effort.

You know you're getting old when you begin to lust after your friends' home appliances.

I remember the first time I visited the home of an Actual Adult Friend. The ice cream machine! The dishwasher!

My 20-year-old self could not have been more starry-eyed if I'd been dropped straight into Narnia.

But the one thing that really stole my heart?

The robot vacuum.

Worth or nah?

So, my husband won't let me get a robot vacuum.

He's convinced we don't need one. How can a little machine without perfectly good arms do a better job of cleaning than a human with perfectly good arms?

What’s the point, given that we live in a three-room HDB flat that doesn’t take that long to clean anyway?

And won't it be a hassle to have yet another device to figure out, use, and maintain?

He had a point.

But when my colleague asked me to try out a new robot vacuum by home appliance brand Mova for a week, I naturally agreed.

I wanted to find out if my husband’s line of reasoning held any water — or if I’d win the debate once and for all.

I decided to grade it based on the following:

• Convenience (Is it easy to use and maintain?)
• Cleanliness (How thorough is it?)
• Cost-effectiveness (Does it save enough time and labour to be worth it?)

Putting it through the wringer

I was surprised to find that the model they’d sent me — the Mova Z50 Ultra — was actually a robot vacuum/mop.

It also had a bunch of fancy-sounding features, like auto-emptying, mop self-cleaning, hair-detangling and so on.

But I’m a tech noob, so I decided to start with the basics: turning it on.

First, I had to figure out the app.

In the app, I had the option of choosing between mopping, vacuuming, or both (either simultaneously, or one after the other).

I could further customise it according to how wet I wanted the mopping job to be, the vacuum’s suction power, and the route it’d take through the house.

Helpfully, I could also choose which rooms I wanted it to clean.

But more on that later.

Obstacle avoidance

I was initially concerned about how well the Z50 Ultra would avoid the obstacles in my house.

It’s not exactly a museum, but we do have some fragile items around: like my husband’s piano.

But I needn’t have worried.

The machine navigated the tight space of the piano pretty well, barely grazing the surface.

In the kitchen, it dodged the bin without even making contact.

One obstacle that the vacuum didn’t manage to traverse as successfully though? Our diatomite bathroom mat.

It rolled over it noisily, and tended to nudge it out of the way.

We eventually decided to prop the mat against the wall during vacuuming.

Clean as a whistle

The Z50’s vacuuming capability worked pretty well with dust, hair and debris.

But how would its mopping deal with harder-to-clean substances, like oil?

I was eager to test this out.

So one evening, I invited my family over for dinner, and told my husband to go all out with the stir-frying.

By the time he was done, the floor was slick with cooking oil.

I didn’t need a whole-house cleaning, so I used the app to zoom in on just the kitchen and launched the mopping operation.

It zipped straight through the house to get to the kitchen and finished the job in just five minutes.

I’m a sceptic at heart, and I’ll admit I wasn’t expecting it to do a particularly thorough job.

But when I asked my family members to check, they all remarked that the kitchen floor seemed perfectly clean.

“Better than last time,” my sister said, referring to our apparently inferior cleaning job the last time I had them over. (Rude.)

I did wonder how the machine did a better job than our good old-fashioned mop and bucket, however, and decided to do a little research.

Turns out, the Z50 Ultra mops the floor with 36°C hot water, apparently the optimum temperature to dissolve tough stains like oil.

This is a world-first that’s different from most other robot mops, which typically use cold water.

It also has a D-shaped track-type mop pad, which has a wider surface area that allows it to clean more efficiently.

Which was likely how it managed to finish the job so fast.

Other features

Over the week of testing, I also discovered a couple of other useful features.

One was the robot’s self-cleaning and auto-emptying features, which I mentioned earlier.

All you have to do is fill one of its three bins with clean water and a bottle of detergent. The mop will automatically rinse itself with hot water and dry itself after every use.

Plus, after mopping and vacuuming, it automatically empties the bad stuff into two bins — dirt, and dirty water.

As far as maintenance goes, you just have to regularly empty the dirty water bin, and replace the dust bag every two to four months.

Pretty convenient if you ask me.

I also grew to love the app.

Call me a boomer, but in general, I’m not a fan of devices that require apps.

But I found I could mop and vacuum the house while on the way home from work, and come home to a sparkling-clean house — which I did.

“So this is technology,” I thought to myself.

The verdict

Remember the three categories I mentioned at the start of this article?

Cleanliness, convenience, and cost-effectiveness.

While the Z50 Ultra had clearly exceeded expectations in the first two categories, cost remained an uncertain factor.

I decided to do some math.

There’s a launch promo for the Z50 Ultra from Mar. 2 at 8pm, during which it’ll go for a special price of S$1,499 (U.P. S$2,089) for the first 50 buyers.

It also comes with a free one-year accessory pack, including parts that need to be replaced, like filters and dust bags.

Even supposing the device only lasted as long as its two-year local warranty period, that would add up to a cost of S$62 per month.

This sounded pretty worth it to me.

But it wasn’t me I had to convince — it was my husband.

So I asked him.

“I think it’s okay,” he replied. “Can they consider giving us a discount?”

Good enough.

Reflections

Like all robot vacuum cleaners, the Z50 Ultra isn’t suited to every single home.

If you have lots of obstacles lying around for instance, it’s unlikely that it’d do a thorough job.

But I think it’s a pretty great product for those with limited time on their hands.

If you’d prefer a more hands-on approach, Mova also has other products, like the X4 Pro Wet & Dry Vacuum.

A combination vacuum-mop, it’s able to clean up stains like chocolate and milk with ease — a feature I imagine would be great for any household with kids, or just messy eaters.

Now that I’ve experienced life with such convenience, I’m not looking forward to going back to manual vacuuming and mopping.

Honestly, that’d really suck.

Writing this Mova-sponsored article allowed this writer to slack off on housework for a week. Thank you, Mova.

Top image by Ilyda Chua