The great Australian dream is owning a house. Once you have that house, a pool is great for the warmer months. But do you know how much work it takes to keep that pool clean? The neighbour’s gum tree never stops dropping leaves, and as much as we love the jacaranda trees, the purple flowers, leaves, and spines they drop are just more work.
Is there a pool robot that can handle jacaranda litter and give you back hours of your time? I recently tested the Mova Rover X10 to find out.
Mova Rover X10 features
A robot pool cleaner with Wi-Fi and sonar technology, the Mova Rover X10 hunts grit and grime from all areas of the pool, including the surface. In the box, you will find the robot, a wireless charging dock, a retrieval hook that fits a standard Australian pool pole, and a sonar sensor.
This sonar sensor floats on the surface of your pool and keeps your robot connected to the internet and your phone at all times. Because of this, you can remotely change cleaning programs or have the robot return to the surface. Bluetooth and Wi-Fi don’t work reliably in water, making sonar an important technology.
Box content. Image: Angus Jones.
The Rover X10 must be manually transferred between the wireless charging dock and the pool between each cleaning cycle. Mova quotes battery life of more than six hours of cleaning, but so far, with so many leaves in the test pool, I have not reached this figure. A full recharge takes 6.5 hours.
The Rover X10 has 15 motors, allowing it to manoeuvre on the surface to skim leaves, suck up leaves, sand, and grit from the floor, scrub grime and algae off the walls (including above the waterline), and clean steps and shallow sections of the pool. The unit is quite large and weighs almost 16kg. Compared to some other robots, it looks a bit like a tank, but with all its jets and scrubbing wheels, it manages to work its way around the pool like a ballerina.
The cleaning process uses 29 sensors and sucks 38,000 litres of water through its cleaning basket an hour. This waste basket can be configured in two separate ways: one where it filters at 180 µm (micrometres) and one where you add extra screens to the basket, where it filters at 3 µm. You would use the extra-fine filtration every few cleans; at this filtration level, it can remove algae, parasites, pollen, and fine sediments.
A full waste basket. Image: Angus Jones.
After setting up the robot with your smartphone and the Mova app, its laser scanner maps your pool to determine the best way to clean the surfaces. Combined with a camera, this also lets it hunt down leaves. If you leave your phone inside the house, you can also start the X10 and select different cleaning modes using buttons on the rear of the unit. Modes include complete, floor, walls, or surface.
There is no way of electronically tracking the condition of the paddle wheels on the X10, but they will eventually need replacing, and spare parts are available.
The Mova X10 will replace most of the manual vacuuming and skimming of your pool. The remaining work is lifting the cleaner in and out of the pool for charging. It’s a heavy robot and gets even heavier until the water drains out, so this is a job for a strong adult.
When you put the robot in the pool, it takes about three minutes to fill with water and submerge, and a similar amount of time to empty the water when finished. Charging is also required for the sonar unit. There is no solar panel, and a second charger is supplied to keep the sonar sensor powered.
Sonar for underwater communication. Image: Angus Jones.
Beyond communication, the sonar unit also reports temperature via an LCD screen and sends it back to your app. The sonar range is 15 metres, so it should be reliable for most Australian pools.
The cleaner has two tank-like treads to move forward, and three paddle wheels to scrub the pool surfaces and move debris into the cleaner’s strainer basket. When I first used the pool cleaner, I could see visible tracks on the pool floor where it had already passed. This showed clearly that this new style of cleaning the pool did a much better job than previous methods.
This cleaning was also effective in corners and on the pool steps. Other robots I have tested have not been as efficient in these tighter spaces. The Rover X10’s most impressive feat has been its ability to pick up jacaranda spines. Last year, the jacaranda litter was tricky to remove when the trees were in full bloom.
Image: Angus Jones.
This robot is large, but it also has power. Enough power to lift itself above the waterline to scrub the walls where algae will grow with sunlight, water and air. And enough power to hover to a step to clean where other robots may fall off, and to pick up sand and twigs to ensure your pool is cleaned properly.
Mova Rover X10 paddle wheels. Image: Angus Jones.
A feature I previously found lacking in other pool-cleaning robots unfortunately continues to be a challenge for the X10. The fact that an underwater robot can also skim the surface is a major accomplishment in itself. However, the effectiveness is just okay. Leaves tend to get pushed to the side. That said, it does skim leaves, and having an all-in-one robot is a big plus.
When the cleaning is finished, the X10 returns to a designated spot, most likely set next to where the charging dock is located. You can, of course, use the app through the sensor to finish the cleaning early or even manually control the robot to clean a specific area.
Plus, you can also change the cleaning mode mid-cycle and set up a cleaning schedule. Since the X10 requires charging between cleans, a cleaning schedule is largely irrelevant, as you must manually place the cleaner back in the pool.
Screenshot: Angus Jones.
Mova’s app also reports on each clean, including area covered, litres filtered, time taken, and battery percentage used.
Who is the Mova Rover X10 for?
The Mova Rover X10 is a highly capable robot pool cleaner that cleans large pools well. It is priced at the top end, so its users are likely to have a larger pool with lots of overhanging trees, where cleaning is a real chore. Mova also offers cheaper models for those who don’t fit into this category.
A word of warning: at 16kg or more (when filled with water), you need to be strong enough to lift this unit out of the water and into its cradle.
Mova Rover X10
At the top end of robot pool cleaners, the Mova Rover X10 makes short work of all the plant litter and fine particles that reside in the water.
Converting handwritten notes and audio to text, while letting you ask built-in ChatGPT for insights, the iFlytek Ainote 2 aims to be the ultimate note-taking device.
Look around the room in any meeting, briefing or lecture, and you’ll see three types of people taking notes. Most are typing away on a laptop, while a few old-school relics like me still rely on their trusty pen and paper notepad.
The third type of person simply slaps down a digital recorder or smartphone to capture every word. This way, they can concentrate more on what’s being said and asking intelligent questions.
Upload the audio recording to an AI-powered transcription service, and you’ll get back a reasonably accurate transcript within a few minutes. Of course, you then need to go through it to pick out the important points, although that’s easier now that most transcription services offer excellent summaries.
You’ll also find combinations of the above. Journalists in particular are likely to place a recorder on the table and also write or type notes. I imagine this would also be extremely useful in university lectures.
Each approach has its strengths and weaknesses. Personally, I can write by hand faster than I can type, while paying more attention to what’s said.
The trade-off is that I often need to retype my handwritten notes, preferably straight away because my note-taking scribble is so illegible that even I struggle to read it unless it’s fresh in my mind.
Digital notes are also easier to store, search and share than written notes, especially if you have decades’ worth of paper notepads stashed away in a box.
That long preamble brings us to the $1,099 iFlytek Ainote 2, which combines all three approaches in an effort to create the one note-taking device to rule them all.
The Ainote 2’s screen is almost as white as a Kindle Paperwhite, offering excellent contrast against the black text so it’s easier to read. The plastic Mobius Carta e-Ink screen is less fragile than some e-Ink screens, making it less likely to be damaged in your travel bag. To safeguard the screen, you can opt for a protective case or a keyboard cover.
The beauty of e-Ink displays is that they make for thinner and lighter devices than traditional tablets, with a battery life measured in weeks rather than hours. As an added bonus, they’re easier on the eyes because they lack a flickering LED backlight.
Unlike some eBook readers, the iFlytek Ainote 2 lacks a front light, so – just like real paper and pen – you need a light source by which to work. Surprisingly, there is a front light built into the smaller 8.2-inch iFlytek Ainote Air 2, plus it has a rear camera for document scanning.
The main downside of e-Ink displays is that you need to make do with a monochrome display, except for a few top-shelf options like the Kindle Colorsoft and Kobo Libra Colour.
The 10.65-inch monochrome iFlytek Ainote 2 is primarily designed for note-taking, although it can moonlight as an eBook reader. There’s a basic public domain bookstore, plus you can sideload eBooks or install third-party reader apps from the Google Play Store (because it runs on a custom version of Android 14).
The Ainote 2 is incredibly thin and light, even more so than the 11-inch iPad Air and 11-inch Kindle Scribe. This makes it very comfortable to hold in one hand for extended periods.
The iFlytek Ainote 2 is barely thick enough to leave room for a USB-C port. Image: Adam Turner.
It’s so slender that it’s almost the stuff of science fiction, looking like the kind of digital slate that a Star Trek ensign would hand to the captain, listing the week’s duty roster.
“Slate” is perhaps the best term to describe it, harking back to the old slate chalkboards you might have used in primary school.
The Ainote 2’s 10.65-inch screen size sits between an A4 and A5 sheet of paper, with the same 3:4 aspect ratio (like an iPad) so it feels natural to hold and write on in portrait mode. The interface doesn’t auto-rotate when you turn it sideways, but you can manually switch to landscape mode.
The size is about the perfect compromise when it comes to ensuring it’s large enough to write on but still small enough to slip comfortably in your bag.
The iFlytek Ainote 2 sitting on an A4 sheet of paper. Image: Adam Turner.
The slate comes with a Wacom EMR stylus supporting 4,096 pressure levels. There’s a programmable action button and eraser, but thankfully it never needs charging like a typical active stylus. Magnets allow the stylus to cling to the side of the slate when not in use.
Its minimalist design won’t turn heads, but that’s good. When you’re conducting an interview or sitting in a meeting, you don’t want to draw attention to your tech and distract the speaker. (Spoiler alert: Ainote 2 also records audio, which is less intimidating and distracting than placing a recorder on the table).
You’ve got a power button at the top right with a built-in fingerprint reader, plus the device is protected by a PIN. There’s also a programmable button at the top centre, along with a USB-C port at the bottom for charging.
Fire up the iFlytek Ainote 2, and it looks excellent, with the low-glare 300 PPI screen as sharp as a laser-printed page.
Similar to a smartphone, you can drag your finger down from the top right to call up the settings menu. Alternatively, you can drag down from the top centre to see notifications, or up from the bottom to see recently used apps.
Running Android under the bonnet, the iFlytek Ainote 2 menus feel familiar in places. Image: Adam Turner.
Like all e-Ink displays, it’s slower to respond than a tablet when you interact with the screen.
You get used to that slight lag, but the bigger frustration is that all the menus and apps also feel sluggish. It could do with a bit more grunt under the bonnet to help it feel more responsive. Don’t expect great performance if you install demanding Android apps.
Of course, a less power-hungry processor (and display) means it should go for about a week between charges if you use it a few hours each workday.
However you like to take notes, the iFlytek Ainote 2 has you covered. Of course, depending on how you’ll use it, it might not always be the best tool for the job.
The Ainote 2’s primary use is taking handwritten notes, with support for 83 languages. It can convert your handwriting into text so it’s easily searched, stored in folders and shared. There’s also an onscreen virtual keyboard, although it’s not a great typing experience.
The screen is large enough, and the stylus nib fine enough, that you can write a reasonable amount of text on the page and even sketch ideas. Thankfully, you can adjust the width of the strokes if you prefer to write with a fine pen.
The nib slides smoothly across the screen and, unlike some touchscreen technologies, the device doesn’t get upset if your hand is resting on the screen. Meanwhile, small rubber feet on the back ensure it doesn’t slide when it’s resting on the desk.
To help with productivity, you can select from a wide range of blank page templates. Along with straight lines and grids, there are schedules, to-dos, planners, reports, sheet music and even analytical templates such as SWOT and Fishbone.
A range of blank page templates makes the iFlytek Ainote 2 a lot more flexible than a paper pad. Image: Adam Turner.
Once you’ve filled a page with notes, you can swipe up to reveal more paper or swipe left to start a new page. There’s also a Quick Bar strip across the bottom of the screen which supports gesture-based navigation and easy access to some features.
Your notes can be synced to a mobile app and your desktop, but it’s all done in the background via AWS. Thankfully, you can use the Google Play Store to sync it with OneDrive, with support for Google Drive and other options on the way.
That’s important; without access to your cloud of choice, it probably fragments your productivity ecosystem. It’s one reason to weigh up the iFlytek Ainote 2 against its more open rival, the reMarkable 2, or against a traditional tablet.
As a journalist, I see the iFlytek Ainote 2 primarily as a tool for rapidly taking notes during presentations and face-to-face interviews. Unfortunately, it doesn’t support shorthand formats like Pitman and Teeline (not that I ever managed to master them back when I was a cadet).
Your mileage will vary depending on how you’ll use Ainote 2 and the legibility of your handwriting. That’s where I run into trouble.
The faster I write, the worse my handwriting gets. That’s common, but I don’t just get messier; on a bad day I’m also more likely to skip or shuffle letters and make other mistakes (a fun quirk of my health issues). All of this makes it especially tough for the Ainote 2 to decipher my scrawl once I get up to speed, and it’s a shame you can’t train it over time.
If I slow down, my handwriting improves, as does the recognition accuracy. That’s fine if I’m simply jotting down my thoughts, although for me it’s slower than typing. That’s okay, because some people think better with a pen in their hand when they are brainstorming. Yet, I don’t want to slow down when I’m madly scribbling notes as someone speaks.
You can see below that the handwriting recognition handled my headline and first two paragraphs quite well, when I’m simply writing down ideas. Things get murky from here as I approach the speed at which I would be scribbling down notes in a live interview. It helps if I don’t use cursive writing, although this slows me down. The handwritten page actually says:
TEST I can write with my hand leaning on the screen I have terrible handwriting, big and messy, plus I skip letters and get them out of order Even I have trouble deciphering it, which is why I need to go over it soon after notes are usually scraps, not clear words and sentences maybe better if I avoid cursive but that slows me down useful point checkboxes and filling out forms doesn’t does it auto sync? recognise if I go back to correct a word?
Images: Adam Turner.
The iFlytek Ainote 2 understandably struggles with my scrawl, which gets worse when I write more quickly.
Other note-taking features
If handwriting recognition alone isn’t enough to seal the deal, the iFlytek Ainote 2 has a few other impressive tricks that might win you over. The downside is that the wider software support is quite clunky in places, not helped by the lack of grunt.
The Ainote 2 has a built-in web browser, plus you can access your email, calendar and to-do list. Realistically, it’s easier to perform these tasks on other devices.
Where the slate is especially useful is that you can dictate text rather than write with the stylus, with support for 17 spoken languages. Even better, it can record and transcribe audio as you take handwritten notes while someone else speaks.
The microphone quality is surprisingly good, and you still get a decent transcription if someone is across the room or speaking on a PA system. As with all speech-to-text tools, it works best when listening to one clear speaker after another, rather than a robust panel discussion full of interruptions.
If someone speaks slowly and clearly, it produces a very good transcription. It understandably struggles if they speed up and start to run their words together, but still copes surprisingly well. You can re-run the transcript afterwards to get more accurate results.
The slate lacks a built-in speaker, but if you connect Bluetooth headphones, you can listen back to a recording to check what was actually said. You can also click on your handwritten notes to hear that segment of the audio.
Along with a full transcription, you can generate a summary and list of meeting action items, alluding to the fact that the iFlytek Ainote 2 also supports onboard ChatGPT and Google Gemini Flash.
The iFlytek Ainote 2’s AI-generated summary of a conversation about its recording capabilities. Image: Adam Turner.
You can use ChatGPT-5.2 for free, but iFlytek’s Ainote Care+ subscription ($5.99 a month or $59.99 annually) offers more access to AI models along with offline voice transcription and unlimited notes sync.
ChatGPT is a welcome addition, considering that it has its place as a genuine productivity tool and not just a way to ask AI to write your homework. You can ask it questions about the note you’re working on and ask for summaries or new content based on the contents.
Unfortunately, interacting with ChatGPT via the Ainote 2 is clunky, not helped by the fact that its speech recognition isn’t as smooth and accurate as when it’s recording a meeting in a note. For me, it’s much easier to interact with ChatGPT on a computer, smartphone or tablet.
Another frustration is that ChatGPT can draw content from the note you’re currently using, but not from across your entire note library. It would be much more useful if it could draw on your entire body of knowledge stored in all your notes, similar to the way Gemini can draw together information from across Google Drive.
The workaround is to select multiple notes to aggregate when asking questions, but this still isn’t a true global search. Instead, you have to rely on a basic keyword search across your notes.
Who is the iFlytek Ainote 2 for?
If you’re looking for the best of both worlds – combining the ease and flexibility of handwritten notes with the productivity benefits of instant digitisation – then the iFlytek Ainote 2 is certainly tempting.
You need to consider where and how you’ll use it. Taking meeting notes and organising your thoughts are potentially great use cases, but recording lectures and jotting down a few points might be your killer app. Or perhaps reading on the move, or reviewing and annotating PDFs with handwritten notes. Alternatively, it would be great for short-form writing tasks like scheduling, to-do lists and completing forms. But certainly not for writing articles, blog posts or reports.
The limited integration with your cloud ecosystem of choice might hamper its usefulness, but might not be a deal-breaker.
Keep in mind, if you need to produce articles or reports based on your interview notes, you’ll write them on another device – so you need an easy way to get notes off the Ainote 2. It’s far too clunky for actual long-form writing work, even with the benefit of avoiding constant pop-ups and distractions like social media.
The other challenge is that the Ainote 2 takes time to master and is cumbersome in places. Combined with the potential challenge of recognising messy handwriting, $1,099 is a lot to spend (at least in my tax bracket) on something you hope will prove genuinely useful.
Keep in mind that the iPad Air starts at $1,249 and – with the right stylus, apps and ecosystem – solves a lot of these problems. Of course, in return, you miss out on the e-Ink display, extended battery life and lightweight design that make the iFlytek Ainote 2 such a tempting option for those of us who take copious notes every day.
iFlytek Ainote 2
Converting handwritten notes and audio to text, with ChatGPT for insights, the iFlytek Ainote 2 brings old-school note-taking into the digital age.
In a rare move, Blackmagic Design has discounted a collection of its pro-level film editing tools, including an elusive sale on DaVinci Resolve Studio.
Widely considered one of the most powerful video editing apps on the market (with a feature-rich free version), DaVinci Resolve Studio is nearly $100 off until 20 November. It’s great timing for anyone keen to invest in professional-grade video editing software, but it’s terrible timing for me.
Why is it terrible timing for me, you ask? Because I only just bought a copy of the software at full price earlier this week. It always feels like big sales start immediately after you make a purchase. So, for everyone else, you’re welcome.
Blackmagic Design, an Australian company, timed the sale to take advantage of the new PCs beginning to use Nvidia RTX Spark and Apple M6 chipsets. Apple is expected to announce a new range of MacBook Pros next week, with the laptops running on the company’s latest silicon.
AI is a big focus for DaVinci Resolve Studio, with features like upscaling footage and automatic masking and subject tracking running locally on machines. Blackmagic Design’s free version, DaVinci Resolve, doesn’t get most of the AI features, but it’s still a powerful editor all the same.
Alongside the software discount, there’s also 20 per cent off some of the company’s hardware, including some very high-level gear:
Amazon increased the price of its Prime subscription service in Australia overnight, raising the monthly cost to $12.99, while annual plans now cost $99.
Previously $79 for a 12-month Prime subscription, Amazon’s new price is a 25 per cent increase. Meanwhile, increasing the monthly price from $9.99 to $12.99 is a 30 per cent bump. The new pricing takes immediate effect for new subscribers, while existing Prime subscribers won’t see an increase until 25 November.
Amazon explained the price change in an email to customers, saying “the range of products and benefits available through Prime has continued to grow”. At this stage, no other changes apply to Prime. Access to free delivery, exclusive sales, music streaming, and ad-supported Prime Video remains in place.
Apple has locked in a late-October event, where it is expected to debut the company’s first MacBook Pro with a touchscreen.
Scheduled for 29 October at 4:00 AM AEDT, Apple’s event carries the tagline “Pro and tell”, hinting at what has become a traditional time of year for new MacBook Pro and iPad Pro devices. Bloomberg‘s Mark Gurman reported that Apple intends to show off MacBook Pro models running on Apple’s latest M6 silicon, including a laptop with a touchscreen.
Despite the ubiquity of touchscreens across many Windows-based laptops, Apple hasn’t followed suit. Reporting over the years has long suggested that Apple valued a clear distinction between its Macs and the company’s touch-based iPads. With next week’s announcement, it’s highly likely those two streams will cross over.
Whispers around a touch-enabled MacBook have circulated for years, including a 2023 report from Gurman. Earlier this year, more concrete reports surfaced, predicting a late-2026 launch for what now seems like an inevitable touchscreen MacBook Pro announcement.
In addition to the new MacBook model, Apple is also expected to announce a new M6-powered iMac. If true, it will replace the M4 iMac model launched in late 2024.
Rounding out the speculated announcements is an iPad Mini with an OLED screen. Apple’s current iPad Mini, which launched in 2024, runs on an A17 chip and uses an IPS LED-backlit display. Whether the new Mini sports the same tandem OLED technology as the iPad Pro remains to be seen.
Video doorbells are almost commonplace in Australia, but there’s still plenty of room for the technology to grow. TP-Link’s smart home sub-brand, Tapo, is the latest to bring its front door technology to Australia, launching the D260 Doorbell Pro and DL130 Smart Lock.
Tapo advertises the $399 D260 as being a smarter doorbell, one that records clearer footage and produces fewer false alerts. It supports 4K footage, capturing a 180-degree diagonal field of view that can see visitors and packages left at the front porch.
Tapo’s doorbell uses a combination of radar and dual motion sensors to detect passersby. But unlike many video doorbells, the technology is meant to differentiate between actual people and unimportant things, like a tree branch swaying in the breeze.
There’s a split between smart home brands that gate premium features behind paid subscriptions, and those that include them with the cost of the device. Tapo sits within the latter category. AI-powered detection — running locally on-device — of people and packages, for example, sends alerts to your phone without requiring a subscription.
The Tapo D260 works as both a wired and a wireless device. As for the latter, Tapo claims up to 180 days of battery life between charges. When hardwired, the doorbell supports 24/7 recording and pre-roll footage, giving you a glimpse of what happened immediately before a motion trigger.
Reading your palm for entry
Also coming to Australia is the $499 Tapo DL130 Smart Lock, which can read fingerprints and palms to unlock the front door. According to Tapo, the lock recognises palms via vein patterns in “under 0.33 seconds”, regardless of whether your palms are clean, dirty or sweaty.
Like the video doorbell, Tapo’s smart lock relies on local AI smarts, not cloud technology. Any biometrics, like fingerprints and palm data, remain on-device.
“A lot of what happens at the front door is everyday stuff, like your kids getting home before you and realising their keys are still on the kitchen bench,” said Neville Wang, Managing Director, TP-Link Australia and New Zealand. “You want to see who’s there and let them in, without your face or fingerprints ending up in the cloud.”
“That’s why we built both the doorbell and the lock to keep that data on the device itself.”
As a backup, the DL130 also supports customisable passcodes, which can be one-time or scheduled for specific times. Inside is a rechargeable battery, plus a backup battery. Failing that, you can plug in a phone or a power bank via USB-C to supply power in an emergency.
Power bank technology is in a transition phase, with newer developments promising better safety and more capacity in smaller form factors. Australian brand Laser drew attention to Lithium Iron Phosphate (LiFePO₄) as an alternative last year. Now it’s getting in on the semi-solid-state battery trend with a new range of ChargeCore power banks.
Starting at $49.95 for a 10,000mAh model, the latest ChargeCore Everyday power banks are Laser’s first to use semi-solid-state battery technology. It’s a technology designed to improve energy density, squeezing more capacity into devices that use it. From a safety perspective, semi-solid-state batteries also use a more gel-like chemistry, which reportedly also improves battery safety.
“We’ve been closely following semi-solid-state battery development for some time, since first visiting an EV factory several years ago, and advancements since that time mean that it can now move into smaller, more compact options,” said Chris Lau, Laser CEO. “Simply put, I believe that semi-solid-state chemistry makes this the safest power bank technology available in Australia today.”
In addition to the 10,000mAh power bank, Laser also launched 20,000mAh ($69.95) and 27,000mAh ($99.95) models, the latter of which supports up to 35W USB-C PD charging, while the two cheapest variants support up to 20W charging speeds.
Each power bank includes a digital display showing the power bank’s current charge level. All models in the range come with two USB-A ports and one USB-C port.
Laser’s semi-solid-state ChargeCore range is now available in Australia via Harvey Norman and Laser’s online store. At this stage, black is the only colour available for purchase, but other colours are coming soon. Laser also plans to launch more power banks in the range, including models with magnetic charging and waterproof designs.
