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Narwal, a robotics company with over $460 million in annual sales and serving 4 million households worldwide, recently launched its new innovation, Narwal Flow into the Australian market.
Narwal Flow is Narwal’s next-generation floor-washing robot vacuum cleaner and includes all of its flagship features, such as a self-cleaning track mopping system, ultra-intelligent bionic human-eye perception, and CarpetFocus Technology.
The flagship vacuum includes all the usual features we have come to expect from state-of-the-art robot vacuums, along with some of its own proprietary features such as:
It also features its own voice assistant and AI-Adaptive hot-water mop washing in the base station.
With every feature under the sun and a price of AUD $2,999, you would expect it to impress, and you’d be right. Read on to hear my thoughts on the Narwal Flow.
From above, the Narwal Flow looks extremely similar to other robot vacuums on the market. It is taller (thicker?) than others I have tried recently and has a prominent dark window on the back, which is no doubt full of sensors to perform all the smart functions I listed above.
Underneath, this vacuum has two side brushes which is different to most others. The two brushes are shaped differently to each other to prevent hair from getting caught in them.
The roller is part of Narwal’s DualFlow Tangle-Free System and somehow prevents hair from tangling. I’m not exactly sure how this works but this is possibly the first single roller brush I have ever seen that does not get tangled with pet and rug hair.
The mopping is also new and is part of the FlowWash Mopping System and the EdgeReach Mop System. It is different but not in a bad way. It is a thicker roller that not only cleans itself as it mops but also applies downward pressure for a deeper clean. At the edges of your floors, it slides out to the side to reach those hard-to-reach places.
This worked extremely well and managed to clean up to 5mm from the edge, unlike other vacuums I have used recently. The 12N of downward pressure allows it to clean even stubborn stains.
The Narwal Flow can climb over edges up to 40mm high thanks to its wheel system. Most flagship vacuums can do that these days so it is no surprise that this flagship, which seems to have everything, can do it too.
The base station is big, well it appears to be anyway. The design seems to wrap around the vacuum once it is docked. The base station is not the most glamorous I have ever seen and it will unlikely be a feature or match anything in your house but it works and works well.
The dock is an advanced system with clean and dirty water tanks, which appear larger than any others I have seen, and a hot-water mop-washing system for optimised hygiene.
Mapping is a simple thing for robot vacuums these days, and the Narwal Flow excels at that too. The vacuum quickly maps your house using some form of LiDAR and will attempt to split and name rooms as it thinks is correct. Once it has finished, you can go in and edit the map, split or merge rooms yourself, add or remove furniture, and, most importantly, add “no-go zones” to prevent the vacuum from entering areas where it might get stuck.
Multi-floor maps are possible, with up to 4 maps that can be stored. I’m not a fan of carrying my vacuum upstairs but if you need that then the Narwal Flow is capable of it.
The map was pretty good but not the best I have seen. It struggled to show exactly where obstacles, such as the island bench in my kitchen, were located, making it more difficult to specify zone cleaning locations.
On hard floors, vacuuming was a breeze, as you would hope it was. I tested out the vacuuming on my carpet with some breadcrumbs and some walnut pieces and it struggled. It picked up some of it but not all, moving a lot of the material out of the location to the hard floor — I put that down to the issue with the map not being as accurate. This was using the Freo mind (AI) vacuuming.
When I switched the vacuuming to manual cleaning and a thorough turbo clean with two passes. Even then, there were quite a few crumbs left behind — see images below. If carpets are your primary use for a robot vacuum, then this may not work out for you if you get dirty carpets like this.
If it is just for a quick once-over every couple of days, though, the Narwal Flow works just fine. When performing general scheduled cleaning, it worked well.
Hard floor cleaning is where the Nawhal Flow excels. It performed better than any other robot vacuum I can recall on hard floors. It was able to pick up both liquid and crumb/hard spills as well as an in-between, such as a thick tomato sauce. Not only that but it did it quickly and very quietly. The mopping solution on the Flow is obviously an effective solution and I dare say we will see other manufacturers adopt it in the future.
If you have mostly hard floors, this may well be perfect for you.
Bear in mind that this is the first time I have used a Narwal robot vacuum, which may account for the learning curve I had while using the app. It wasn’t incredibly easy to use at first but it is similar enough to all the other apps I have used for me to get my head around it eventually. If anything, I’d say it was closest to the way you use the Roborock app.
Scheduling jobs is different and it doesn’t show up in the list immediately so I ended up creating three different tasks for the same job at the same time. Also, even though you set your original location as Australia, the time zone is out. It doesn’t use the phone’s time, unfortunately but luckily I had Google to help me.
If you run into the issue of the robot not knowing the correct time, you need to go into the vacuum’s settings, then “Device,” and then “Device Position”. Here, set your location to Melbourne, Australia, for me.
Narwal has a setting called “Freo Mind” where it uses its sensors to perform a ‘smart’ clean based on how dirty it deems the floors to be.
Nawa is Narwal’s voice assistant. You can set it up and use it if you want, and while it worked for me, I doubt I would ever use it. Most of the time, the only vacuuming mine does is on a schedule, and if I need an extra clean, I will need to draw a zone or area for it to clean.
The Narwal Flow also includes a camera that can automatically take photos of pets and obstacles in your home. You can also use it to cruise around and check out what is going on in your home – a roving security camera, if you will.
The Narwal Flow vacuum looks impressive on paper and works exceptionally well on hard floors, both vacuuming and mopping. With a more difficult clean on carpets, it struggled, but, to be fair, it was possibly the most difficult vacuum-clean you could attempt with it.
The software includes everything as well, although it could do with a bit of polish around scheduling and the map. It is still a great app and covers everything you could ask for — it just has a few quirks.
For hard floors, you really cannot go past the Narwal Flow, given how good it was but if you have a lot of carpets, it may be wise to look at something similar from Roborock or Ecovacs instead.
The Narwal Flow is available now for AUD
The roller is part of Narwal’s DualFlow Tangle-Free System and somehow prevents hair from tangling. I’m not exactly sure how this works but this is possibly the first single roller brush I have ever seen that does not get tangled with pet and rug hair.
The mopping is also new and is part of the FlowWash Mopping System and the EdgeReach Mop System. It is different but not in a bad way. It is a thicker roller that not only cleans itself as it mops but also applies downward pressure for a deeper clean. At the edges of your floors, it slides out to the side to reach those hard-to-reach places.
This worked extremely well and managed to clean up to 5mm from the edge, unlike other vacuums I have used recently. The 12N of downward pressure allows it to clean even stubborn stains.
The Narwal Flow can climb over edges up to 40mm high thanks to its wheel system. Most flagship vacuums can do that these days so it is no surprise that this flagship, which seems to have everything, can do it too.
The base station is big, well it appears to be anyway. The design seems to wrap around the vacuum once it is docked. The base station is not the most glamorous I have ever seen and it will unlikely be a feature or match anything in your house but it works and works well.
The dock is an advanced system with clean and dirty water tanks, which appear larger than any others I have seen, and a hot-water mop-washing system for optimised hygiene.
Mapping is a simple thing for robot vacuums these days, and the Narwal Flow excels at that too. The vacuum quickly maps your house using some form of LiDAR and will attempt to split and name rooms as it thinks is correct. Once it has finished, you can go in and edit the map, split or merge rooms yourself, add or remove furniture, and, most importantly, add “no-go zones” to prevent the vacuum from entering areas where it might get stuck.
Multi-floor maps are possible, with up to 4 maps that can be stored. I’m not a fan of carrying my vacuum upstairs but if you need that then the Narwal Flow is capable of it.
The map was pretty good but not the best I have seen. It struggled to show exactly where obstacles, such as the island bench in my kitchen, were located, making it more difficult to specify zone cleaning locations.
On hard floors, vacuuming was a breeze, as you would hope it was. I tested out the vacuuming on my carpet with some breadcrumbs and some walnut pieces and it struggled. It picked up some of it but not all, moving a lot of the material out of the location to the hard floor — I put that down to the issue with the map not being as accurate. This was using the Freo mind (AI) vacuuming.
When I switched the vacuuming to manual cleaning and a thorough turbo clean with two passes. Even then, there were quite a few crumbs left behind — see images below. If carpets are your primary use for a robot vacuum, then this may not work out for you if you get dirty carpets like this.
If it is just for a quick once-over every couple of days, though, the Narwal Flow works just fine. When performing general scheduled cleaning, it worked well.
Hard floor cleaning is where the Nawhal Flow excels. It performed better than any other robot vacuum I can recall on hard floors. It was able to pick up both liquid and crumb/hard spills as well as an in-between, such as a thick tomato sauce. Not only that but it did it quickly and very quietly. The mopping solution on the Flow is obviously an effective solution and I dare say we will see other manufacturers adopt it in the future.
If you have mostly hard floors, this may well be perfect for you.
Bear in mind that this is the first time I have used a Narwal robot vacuum, which may account for the learning curve I had while using the app. It wasn’t incredibly easy to use at first but it is similar enough to all the other apps I have used for me to get my head around it eventually. If anything, I’d say it was closest to the way you use the Roborock app.
Scheduling jobs is different and it doesn’t show up in the list immediately so I ended up creating three different tasks for the same job at the same time. Also, even though you set your original location as Australia, the time zone is out. It doesn’t use the phone’s time, unfortunately but luckily I had Google to help me.
If you run into the issue of the robot not knowing the correct time, you need to go into the vacuum’s settings, then “Device,” and then “Device Position”. Here, set your location to Melbourne, Australia, for me.
Narwal has a setting called “Freo Mind” where it uses its sensors to perform a ‘smart’ clean based on how dirty it deems the floors to be.
Nawa is Narwal’s voice assistant. You can set it up and use it if you want, and while it worked for me, I doubt I would ever use it. Most of the time, the only vacuuming mine does is on a schedule, and if I need an extra clean, I will need to draw a zone or area for it to clean.
The Narwal Flow also includes a camera that can automatically take photos of pets and obstacles in your home. You can also use it to cruise around and check out what is going on in your home – a roving security camera, if you will.
The Narwal Flow vacuum looks impressive on paper and works exceptionally well on hard floors, both vacuuming and mopping. With a more difficult clean on carpets, it struggled, but, to be fair, it was possibly the most difficult vacuum-clean you could attempt with it.
The software includes everything as well, although it could do with a bit of polish around scheduling and the map. It is still a great app and covers everything you could ask for — it just has a few quirks.
For hard floors, you really cannot go past the Narwal Flow, given how good it was but if you have a lot of carpets, it may be wise to look at something similar from Roborock or Ecovacs instead.
The Narwal Flow is available now for AUD $2,999 on the Narwal official website and at Amazon, Harvey Norman, Big W, The Good Guys, Kogan.com, and more.
Scott is our resident open technology expert. If you can mod it, or want to use it your way, Scott has probably done it. From Laptops to phones, headphones and game consoles, he’s played with it and wants to see the next generation.
Scott is our resident open technology expert. If you can mod it, or want to use it your way, Scott has probably done it. From Laptops to phones, headphones and game consoles, he’s played with it and wants to see the next generation.
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