If you’re a pet owner, you’ve probably had your fair share of trial and error when trying to find the right product for your pet to drink water from. While plastic water dispensers are great, they can get dirty quite quickly, and the actual bottle itself can be difficult to clean because of how small the nozzle is.
A classic drinking bowl works great, but if your pet drinks a lot of water like mine does, there might be an issue of ensuring that there is enough water in the bowl to last while you’re off at work.
The Enabot ROLA Smart Pet Water Fountain alleviated a lot of those problems but also came with a few minor issues as well.
Design
Inside the box, there was the Enabot ROLA Smart Pet Water Fountain, a USB-C cable, one filter, one sponge, and the user manual. It was an incredibly easy build, taking less than five minutes to put everything together. The product was also sleek and modern, which made it easy to blend in with the furniture around the house. The dogs seemed to think so too, and took to it almost immediately.
Unlike classic water bowls, because of the filter tray, filter, and stainless steel basin, the debris you may find in water bowls was all caught by the filter, and kept the water in the bucket clean. The separate parts also made it very easy to clean up once the filter needed changing.
Performance
I used the product as a wireless water fountain and found that the battery lasted about nine days before needing to charge again rather than the marketed 60 days. There was also no specific indication on the app on how much battery life the product had left, which meant I had to guess when the base had finished charging. But there is the option to keep the device plugged in at all times, which can be very useful if closeby to power points.
I also had a few issues with the Wi-Fi connection, which meant constantly troubleshooting in the app to connect to my Wi-Fi more than a handful of times to get the Enabot ROLA Smart Pet Water Fountain working again.
In terms of the product itself, the water fountain only had one button, which made it straightforward to understand with only four different status indicator lights. Flashing blue means the network was being configured, white means a continuous water flow, green meaning sensor mode, and red means low battery.
The 6-degree angle of the stainless steel basin also made it so easy for my dogs to drink a lot of water in one go and avoid backwash going back into the water bowl.
Software
The Enabot ROLA Smart Pet Water Fountain can’t be used without downloading the ROLA app or being connected to Wi-Fi. This could be seen as a barrier in setting up a simple water dispenser, but once the app was downloaded and it was connected to the internet, it was up and ready to go in no time.
The app has a whole bunch of different features to help view your pet’s drinking habits, and to also ensure that you as an owner are doing what you can to keep the product clean.
It provides handy stats like, the amount of times the dogs went to the water bowl that day (which could also be activated by a person walking past, so this might not be entirely accurate), water levels in the bucket, and the daily hydration (a log of the seconds the water dispenser was running for during each use, which could also be off due to what the sensor detects).
Some reminders tell the user when the equipment itself was last cleaned, and how long the filter has been in the filter tray since it was last changed. But with the box only coming with one filter, you would need to order a couple ahead of time to change it within the set 14-day period in the app.
Verdict & Value
The configuration of the app itself and the low battery life, made using the Enabot ROLA Smart Pet Water Fountain a bit frustrating.
That being set aside, and with what is currently out there in the market in terms of both ease of use for the pups and cleanliness, this was a fantastic addition to our pets’ lives that kept the water clean and fresh.
THREE AND A HALF STARS (OUT OF FIVE)
Highlights: Super simple to set up, and very easy to clean
Lowlights: The water filter needing to be changed every 2 weeks means that more money would need to be spent on replacing these filters; The battery life was lower than expected as a wireless device; The app was also quite glitchy with the Wi-Fi constantly disconnecting
Manufacturer: Enabot
Price: A$69.99
Available: Now
Review based on unite supplied by Enabot and is available via the official Enabot website.
