Narwal Freo review

Vacuuming and mopping combo robots aren’t novel, however they’re more and more together with a brand new twist: the flexibility to wash, dry, and disinfect their mop heads after they’re completed cleansing your flooring. The enchantment is fairly clear as manually dealing with a unclean, smelly mop head absolutely ranks among the many most hated family chores.

The Freo is Narwal’s second stab at any such 2-in-1 flooring cleaner, the primary being the Narwal T10, however the outcomes are in the end a lot the identical: a fairly superior core product that wants enhancements across the edges to justify its excessive worth.

Design & Construct

The Freo base station has the kind of smooth, curved surfaces and pristine white end that at all times evokes to me the gleaming future aesthetic of “2001: A House Odyssey.” It’s a beautiful look, happily, as a result of there’s nearly no technique to conceal this factor in plain sight. The bottom measures 17.1 x 14.6 x 16.3 inches (HxWxD), and I had a tough time discovering wall house adjoining to an influence outlet to accommodate it with out resorting to an extension wire.

An LED touchscreen on prime of its base supplies standing info and capabilities as a management panel. You use it utilizing swipes and faucets, and it offers you complete command of the robotic’s primary cleansing modes. Narwal markets this as an app different for much less tech-savvy customers, however I discovered I merely most popular it to having to seek out my telephone and anticipate an app to launch simply to run a fast cleansing job.

Two water containers are inside the bottom: a 4.5-liter clean-water tank, and a 4L dirty-water tank. The clean-water tank features a slot the place you add Narwal’s lemon-basil scented detergent, which is used each to wash your flooring and the robotic’s mop pads. A 31-ounce bottle is included, and replacements value round $40 on Narwal’s web site (it’s additionally accessible at Amazon).

The robotic measures about 13 inches throughout and 4 inches excessive and is outfitted with the usual array of sensors to assist it navigate round furnishings and different obstacles. Probably the most notable distinction from typical robotic vacuums is the pair of rotating triangular mop heads on the underside that permit it to clean flooring like industrial flooring cleaners.

Michael Ansaldo/Foundry

Setup & Efficiency

Whenever you first energy on the Freo, the LED touchscreen prompts you to insert the robotic into the bottom. It then shows a QR code so that you can scan along with your telephone. That takes you to a hyperlink with an authorization code you could enter right into a keypad on the touchscreen to completely allow it. A fast setup wizard follows, displaying you how you can choose cleansing modes, begin jobs, entry settings, and so forth; you’re then successfully able to roll. Whereas most robotic cleaners rely closely on a companion app to regulate and customise them, you’ll be able to conceivably function the Freo solely from its base station when you want.

The Freo app, nonetheless, allows one other stage of cleansing customization, together with the flexibility to focus on particular rooms and areas for cleansing. Connecting it requires a second setup course of to create a consumer account and join the robotic to your Wi-Fi community. All informed, your entire setup course of took me about 10 minutes from begin to end.

The primary time you run the Freo from the app, it creates a map of your house and divides it into rooms. You’ll be able to edit the finished map to present the rooms correct names and make it extra correct by merging or splitting rooms. Finally, this lets you prioritize cleansing based mostly on which rooms want it most fairly than at all times having to wash the entire house. You can too add no-go zones and flooring varieties, the latter of which can immediate the Freo to regulate its cleansing setting accordingly. On hardwood flooring, for instance, it should change its humidity and mopping stress, and on cobblestone, it should enhance its suction energy.

Michael Ansaldo/Foundry

The Freo has 5 cleansing modes: You’ll be able to run vacuum-only and mop-only classes, or vacuum and mop concurrently. You can too have the Freo do a single vacuuming go, adopted instantly by a single mopping go. Lastly, there’s Freo mode, which turns inventive management over to the robotic. On this mode, the Freo makes use of Narwal’s DirtSense know-how to find out which flooring are the dirtiest and makes a number of passes to make sure they’re spotless.

The final turned the default mode for twice weekly cleanings of my downstairs stage’s laminate flooring. Though not fairly as efficient as a guide scrubbing with a stick mop, the rotating mop heads do a terrific job eradicating minor stains, moist messes, and small patches of stuck-on gunk. And although it’s clear the Freo prioritizes mopping over vacuuming—there’s no auto-emptying mud bag aboard the bottom station—it had no bother clearing my flooring of mud, pet hair, and different small particles.

Though the Freo doesn’t embrace any AI impediment detection, it managed to navigate my house with out too many mishaps. It simply bought into all accessible areas and largely averted hazards alongside the way in which. The lone exception was energy cables, which simply bought ensnared in its rotating mops. A bit of pre-cleaning decluttering of machine chargers and the like is necessary to make sure the Freo can get via a job with none assist from you.

The Narwhal app is serviceable, however not significantly polished. Maps are primary, nothing greater than outlines actually, with no shade coding or enjoyable icons to indicate furnishings and different objects (though you’ll be able to view them in 2D and 3D). Creating room partitions and no-go zones is difficult; you could use a finger to set and resize these, and it takes quite a lot of futzing to get them excellent. There’s additionally a difficulty with the app persevering with to point out a firmware replace accessible even after you’ve downloaded and put in it. However mode and map administration within the app are simple, and when you attain the restrict of your frustration tolerance you’ll be able to at all times flip to the bottom station’s management panel to handle primary cleansing wants.

Do you have to purchase a Narwal Freo?

The Narwal Freo’s sturdy cleansing efficiency, many customizable cleansing choices, and self-cleaning functionality ought to make it a simple promote for houses with plenty of arduous flooring surfaces.

However a $1,200 robotic ought to embrace extra refined impediment avoidance and a extremely polished app. The shortage of those tempered my enthusiasm for the Freo, regardless of its deserves, and can possible do the identical for different customers. Nevertheless, the worth is best when you’re in Europe. You should purchase the Narwal Freo direct from the model’s German web site for €849, which is a extra tempting provide.

If this isn’t the proper robotic vacuum for you, check out our round-up of the perfect robotic vacuums we’ve examined – all of which have at-a-glance summaries and professionals and cons lists, in addition to hyperlinks to in-depth critiques.

This overview first appeared on our sister publication, TechHive.

Narwal Freo specs

• Cleansing modes: vacuum and mop
• Charging dock sort: auto-clean station
• Navigation: LiDAR
• Suction: 3,000Pa
• AI impediment avoidance: No
• Dustbin capability: 480ml
• Mopping sort: rotating mop ×2
• Water tank capability: fresh-water tank: 4.5L, dirty-water tank: 4L
• Carpet detection: sure
• App management: sure (Android and iOS)
• Voice management: sure (Alexa and Google Assistant)