MOVA Z50 Ultra is a cleaning robot from the future that actually works

When I was young, I wanted a robot more than anything.

Not because it would help around the house or because I wanted a friend, but simply because of what it represented. As someone who grew up with the books of Isaac Asimov and films like Forbidden Planet and Star Wars, robots meant the future was here.

Fast forward almost thirty years, and the future isn’t quite what it was hyped up to be. In fact, most of it just feels downright… stupid.

But I’ve also spent the last three weeks with the Z50 Ultra, a robot vacuum that’s making its way to Europe from China with an intent to take on the stuffed market of choring bots. It’s smart and efficient, but more than that, it’s personable.

Meet MOVA.

Who’s It For?

I’m not good at chores. It’s not that I don’t mind them, but with the combination of ADD and autism, my focus and executive functioning is almost nonexistent. It leads to a vicious circle: I forget to clean, so things get dirty, and then it becomes overwhelming. I’m working on it, OK?

So when MOVA arrived for review, I was skeptical and hopeful all at once. I wanted to believe this was finally, if not a permanent solution, but a help to some of my issues. It’s very first-world in terms of problems, but we play the cards we’re dealt.

MOVA is a cleaning robot, and there are plenty of those around, but its company ethos is aggressively consumer-oriented. For this review, I visited their launch event in Stockholm, where the company reps expressed their goals as “eliminating the competition”, which struck me as amusingly hostile.

But that single-mindedness does lead to results. For example: MOVA is so easy to set up, activate, and forget entirely, that it’s the first one of its kind that I could recommend to anyone. It’s one of the rare kinds of products that just works.

For people with cognitive or physical disabilities, MOVA presents a compelling case of technology as a tool that makes life easier. Unlike many other smart home appliances, MOVA doesn’t invent problems that it then creates answers to. Instead, it tackles the fundamentals with the kind of innovation you’ll actually notice.

After almost three weeks with MOVA roaming the apartment, I can safely say that my home has never been cleaner. But more than that, MOVA has helped me find order in my daily routines. When I hear the familiar whir of the robot moving around the house, I know it’s time for chores, and that alone gets me moving. It’s a fascinating Pavlovian response, but I’m not going to question it.

The Technology

The review copy I received is the MOVA Z50 Ultra, which sits just below the top-of-the-line model in price. At €1199, it’s not exactly cheap, but for the first time in ages, I can see where the price comes from.

The Z50 Ultra has what MOVA calls the HydroSync Mopping technology. In essence, it’s a way of self-cleaning the roller mop that is built into the robot alongside the vacuum. Depending on the surface and mess, MOVA uses real-time dirt detection to change its approach in cleaning. When viewed from a distance, it doesn’t seem like much, until you start to think about the logistics behind it. There’s a logical underpinning that we take for granted. The first time MOVA encountered cat food that our monsters had dragged across the floor, it understood that a simple vacuuming wouldn’t do. Instead, it collected bits and pieces first, ran a light vacuum, and returned with a double mopping.

I watched this entire process happen in a mixture of confusion and awe. I recognize the result is a series of complex mathematical processes designed by talented engineers, yet the combination of anthropomorphic visuals, the light hum of the robot, and the happy jingle it plays when finished, all made it seem like I was watching an intelligent machine figure things out.

You’ll find the device comes loaded with the buzzword of the year: AI. How much of it is anything beyond technology we’ve already had before, now rebranded, is a mystery to me, but a lot of it is impressive, nonetheless. The base station, where MOVA rests between work, has its own cleaning function that detects which parts of MOVA need self-care between shifts. It also alerts the user when the water tank needs a top-up or replacing entirely.

Part of the AI processing is that MOVA knows when it needs to apply fresh water to its mop, and when it needs to heat the water to a constant temperature (36 degrees Celsius, in this case).

The LIDAR detection system understands gaps, changes in elevation, cords, socks, and even pets. The first time MOVA came online, it spent about a half hour just wandering the apartment, looking for unexpected obstacles and figuring out how things look. In the end, it delivered a rough floor plan of the cleaning areas to the app, which I’m sure is a security nightmare for many.

From there, I could adjust the places I wanted it to avoid, or even clean extra carefully. Pet areas can be marked separately, same with carpets and changes in floors. It sounds overwhelming at first, which is why MOVA has a smart clean function by default, that adjusts itself as it goes. For the first couple of days, that’s all I used as I was getting comfortable with the new family member.

On a technical level, MOVA has a maximum suction power of 19000Pa, a battery capacity of 6400mAh, it takes about 4 hours to charge fully, and the dust bag capacity is a respectable 4 liters. The water tank used for cleaning is 4.5 liters, while the used water tank is 4 liters.

For obstacle avoidance, it uses a mixture of Dual-laser detection, AI and an LED fill-light to keep itself out of trouble. Over the course of three weeks, I had to save MOVA only twice. The first time it had unexpectedly tangled itself with a cat toy. The second time one of the cats decided to pounce on it from above. If you have young children or rambunctious animals, MOVA will take some adjustment before it can roam entirely unchecked.

It can also clear obstacles at a height of 22mm, which it detects in real-time and during the first session calibration. There is also voice recognition to activate the robot without the app, and even video monitoring remotely, if you opt-in to the function. (Which I didn’t do because of privacy concerns.)

What this means for daily use is that MOVA is self-sufficient for days at a time. If you don’t need it to work constantly, you won’t need to do much. Beyond changing its water and cleaning out the filters, MOVA is the easiest and most efficient robot of its type that I’ve encountered.

In daily use, MOVA itself looks spiffy, but it’s also dust and fingerprint magnet. After one cleaning, during which MOVA took an unfortunately close look at the cat box, the poor thing came away covered in dust and grime. So, if you want the device to look as presentable as it does in the marketing materials at all times, you’ll have to pay close attention to wiping it down every day or two.

Daily Use

After three weeks, MOVA’s work has settled into a routine. I’ve set it to clean the entire apartment every two days, during which it first vacuums and then mops the floors with its deep clean setting. This takes about 45 minutes to an hour, during which MOVA charges lightly once, when it goes back to the station to empty out the dust and clean the mop.

Most of the time, I don’t notice MOVA working. I might hear it from my office, but I only register it in the same way that I notice the dishwasher running. The best compliment I can give MOVA is that it’s part of the apartment, as if it always belonged there.

I even call it MOVA, because it sounds like Nova, and the little robot is a constant source of fascination to our pets. When MOVA encounters them in the hallway, and if the cats do what cats always do, it takes a picture and a GIF, which it sends to the app. These are deleted after a while, but they’re fun reminders of the ways MOVA works when you’re not looking.

Our apartment is not the easiest environment. There are a ton of bookshelves, cables, and pet items everywhere. Our cats are long-haired mixes between Ragdoll and Satan, so they shed like crazy. Even our dog, a Border Collie, generates a mess just by lying on the sofa.

Despite this, I’ve been surprised and happy to notice that MOVA handles the excess amount of hair surprisingly well. It has what the company calls an Anti-Tangle mechanism, that is specifically designed for households with pets, but I’ve been let down way too many times with promises of pet-friendly devices.

But after three weeks, I’ve only had to properly take a look at MOVA’s moving parts just once. After taking a longer time than usual to clean out the large Iranian carpet in the living room, I noticed MOVA had come across a wad of cat hair the size of a small family car. Lesser devices would have been sent for maintenance, yet MOVA persevered.

Similarly, the mop, with it’s FlexBrush and cleaning technologies, has made an impression. Every single time MOVA mops the floors, the apartment smells nicer. Thanks to the efficient sensors, it uses less water than I would when mopping the floors with a bucket and mop.

One of my favorite functions about the mop is the EdgeXtend technology, which pops out from the side to clean corners and hard to reach places. I’m no good with details, so watching MOVA deliberately move between chairs, bookshelves, and odd angles to get even the smallest bits clean is a game changer for me.

Now, there is the question how long these parts will last, that remains a mystery. MOVA is aggressively pushing for Nordic domination, but despite a three year warranty program, it’s still unclear just how accessible spare parts or maintenance will be.

At the launch event, I was told by a company rep that MOVA has a support team in place for the Nordic customer base, but a device as expensive and necessary as the Z50 Ultra would really need more information on self-repair at this point.

The Competition and Verdict

MOVA’s representatives told me the company wants to position itself as a premium brand in the Nordics, which means they’re in direct competition with the likes of RoboRock and the iRobot Roomba. At its price point of €1199, the Z50 Ultra is on the higher end of the spectrum, but it also delivers more — and more consistently — than others in its class.

For me, it’s become an essential part of daily life. That’s something I didn’t anticipate or even believe to be possible. As someone who struggles with cognitive issues, I can attest that MOVA has made my life easier and more manageable. Which is precisely what this technology should do. I don’t think about cleaning, but when I notice that MOVA is working, it prompts me to pick up a chore as well. It creates the illusion of a social event, even if the counterpart is a robot.

While I still have my questions regarding longevity and maintenance, I can recommend MOVA Z50 Ultra to everyone. The price is a sticking point in this economy, especially as the global trade war is heating up. But if you’re in the market for a new vacuum, and you’re specifically interested in making a big change in the way that you clean, there is no better step forward than the Z50 Ultra.

In Short

Most future technology creates a problem that needs a solution. MOVA’s Z50 Ultra is a solution to a timeless one. It doesn’t eliminate cleaning from your life entirely, but it does make it so easy that it feels like a genuine change in the way that I perceive chores in the future.

Easy to use, reliable, and thoroughly impressive in its implementation of cutting edge technology, the Z50 Ultra is everything we were promised by The Jetsons, only real and accessible. You have to see it to believe it.