The robot uses Bluetooth to communicate with your phone and uses 2.4-GHz Wi-Fi to connect directly to your home network for over-the-air updates (but not real-time management). Onboarding requires connecting to a temporary network on the device and bridging it to your home network, a quick process that gave me no trouble during setup. Firmware updates will likely be available, but note you’ll need to check the Device Information menu for them. Mammotion didn’t proactively push or suggest any updates during my testing, and these over-the-air updates often required multiple attempts to install successfully.

The app is decidedly limited, allowing you to select from the standard four operating modes and make a few small additional adjustments, including configuring the maximum speed of the robot and opting into a couple of beta features. These include a “Turbo Cleaning” mode that increases the power of the suction at the expense of battery life, and an option to improve the way the unit cleans steps and platforms. (Why this feature isn’t always on is a mystery.)

Leaves Left Behind

Photograph: Chris Null

Throughout my test runs, I saw fairly consistent performance results. The Spino E1 offers acceptable cleaning capabilities, though it’s far from perfect. With synthetic leaves, the unit averaged a cleanup rate of only about 80 percent, leaving behind a significant amount of material uncollected. This material wasn’t just isolated to corners and steps; it was scattered all around the pool. I also noticed the unit cleaned steps and platforms well, but it struggled heavily with obstacles, particularly at the waterline.

I saw similar results with organic debris, and the E1 struggled particularly with smaller particulate matter like dirt. On one run, I could best describe the pool as looking a bit like some of the debris had been smeared around on the pool floor instead of sucked up into the debris basket. All of this is unusual and suggests not that the unit has coverage issues, but rather that the device simply may be underpowered.

ScreenshotSpino app via Chris Null

Good news: The Turbo Cleaning mode available through the app was visibly more effective and bizarrely did not impact battery life at all. The bad news is that this option, still in beta, has to be manually activated in the app before each run of the robot. Hopefully, Mammotion will simply make Turbo Mode the default soon.

When finished, the Spino E1 climbs the pool wall and waits by the waterline for collection—at least momentarily. The problem is that the robot doesn’t push a notification via the Mammotion app to alert you when a cleaning cycle is done, and since the robot has to run its propulsion jets to float, you only have a limited time (about 10 minutes) before the battery dies and the robot sinks. A hook is included in the box to aid with pole-based retrieval in this event.