The Narwal Flow has advanced features not previously seen on premium robovac/mops. How about an extendable warm water FLOW mop and a very good carpet vacuum.
It is interesting to see the differences and advances after just having reviewed two Gen 6 robovac/roller mops.
- ECOVACS DEEBOT X11 OmniCyclone robovac/roller mop lets the good time roll (review)
- Eufy Omni S2: Robovac with a roller mop exceeds clean (review)
Each has strengths and very few weaknesses, and I am hesitant to declare a ‘winner’ as Roborock has its new P20, Dreame Aqua 10 Ultra roller, Mova Z60, and more will launch into this category soon.
Narwal Flow mop
The differentiator is that this uses a 27cm full-width roller track mop instead of a cylindrical roller mop. It enables the mop to have a 12 Newton downforce and a larger cleaning surface. In our opinion, it has produced the best hard floor mop yet. Mind you, it is only a tad ahead of the Eufy S2.
Another differentiator is that it refills the onboard clean water reservoir with 45° C warm water every time it docks. The theory is that warm water cleans better than room temperature water, and we can neither confirm nor deny that.
By comparison, Eufy S2 roller mop uses ozonated water, a powerful oxidant that destroys microorganisms like bacteria and viruses and adds to grease cutting.
In the end, our panellists called it a draw as both have a full-width mop versus Ecovacs X11 at half-width.
Australian Review: Narwal Flow robovac/mop and cleaning station
As of 13/10/25. Firmware: 01.01.20.10
| Website | Narwal Australia US Product Page (care US$ pricing). This will be updated to AU on launch. Manual |
| RRP | $2999, but the launch price is $2499 |
| Colours | White |
| From | 13 October Narwal, Harvey Norman and Amazon 27 October JB Hi-Fi, The Good Guys, Costco, Big W, and Bunnings. |
| Warranty | Two years (30-day return and 45-day replacement) |
| Support | WeChat, SMS, Call, email |
| Company | Narwal Robotics Corp is a Chinese company located in Dongguan and managed by founder Junbin Zhang. It was a startup in 2016, and its first products were crowdfunded in 2019. Its investors include DJI, Tencent, and ByteDance (TikTok). |
| More | CyberShack tech cleaning news and reviews CyberShack Narwal news and reviews |
Ratings
We use the following ratings for many of the items below. CyberShack regards 70/100 as a pass mark. You can click on most images to enlarge them.
- Fail (below expectations), and we will let you know if this affects its use.
- Pass(able) rating that is not as good as it should be.
- Pass (meets expectations).
- Pass ‘+’ rating to show it is good, but does not quite make it to Exceed
- Exceed (surpasses expectations or is the class leader).
First Impression – Narwal has a distinctive look
The dock is kind of squat, curvaceous and classy in brushed silver and white. It looks a lot less industrial than many brands. The design cues extend to the robot with nicely rounded edges.
The robot is 351.2 x 363.5mm x 95mm x 5kg. It is slightly larger than standard round robots that are 34-35cm. Its turretless design means that it’s 95mm tall and capable of getting under 100mm cupboard overhangs and low furniture.
The faux turret is a light ring that tells you what is happening.
- Dynamic spinning blue: Task Underway
- Dynamic breathing blue: Task paused
- Smart spinning blue: Nawa response status (its voice is called OK Narwa)
- Flashing red: During an error
- Breathing red: Disconnected
- Breathing orange: Pairing/Updating
- Dynamic colour: Device startup
It’s beautiful and well-made.
App
The app is comprehensive and can be daunting with all the choices. Out-of-the-box defaults are fine if you just let Freo Mind do its AI thing. Maybe Narwal could have two app interfaces – one for those that want to control everything, a.k.a. driving a manual car or a simplified version for Freo Mind, a.k.a. Tesla self-driving.
Narwal goes to great pains to ensure all data and images are processed on the local AI chip — not in the cloud. Full TÜV-certification means your home space remains private.
Setup
It can use 2.4 or 5GHz Wi-Fi and is Mesh aware. It also has BT 5.0 BLE.
Quick Map takes about 10 minutes for 50m2 (slower than average), and it makes one of the most accurate 2D maps we have seen with excellent straight lines, most room names and obstacle icons. You can show a 3D map, but due to the turretless design, it is more of an estimation. It can store four maps, but as usual, you must move the base station to each level.
Gen 6 – yes, a new category of AIBot
If you read our guide Five tips for choosing a robovac/mop (2025 cleaning guide), you will see that we identify five generations of robovac/mops from DumBots to SmartBot. Apologies, but we have to do an almost complete rewrite to accommodate the new Gen 6 AIBots and new technologies like roller and roller pad mops.
In general, AI means that the robot has a limited ability to think and react to its surrounds. It may be to work out the best way to get out of a dead-end to avoiding an obstacle. In our opinion, AI still has some way to go. For example, AIBots so far have been too timid, giving obstacles too wide a berth. As they use AI, they don’t need to recognise what the obstacle is – just make a wireframe image to avoid it. Or they spend a lot of time getting their spatial bearings. These are things that will be fixed with firmware updates over time. Narwal is ahead of the AI curve.
Now Narwal Flow is a true Gen 6 – let’s call it Mark 1.
- AI TOPS: It has 10 AI TOPS (trillion operations per second) and an NPU AI chip (roughly equivalent to a mid-range smartphone).
- Navigation: Embedded rear-facing 120° 2D/3D LiDAR. To be turretless, the LiDAR is under the back, and we estimate it can see about a 145° horizontal and 60° vertical slice. You will see it spin around during Quick Map. It makes an excellent 2D map. But the limited vertical slice means it does not ‘see’ floor to ceiling, and it’s a faux 3D map (which no one uses anyway). It is similar to the Roborock Saros 10R solid-state LIDAR design, but Narwal stuck with the proven spinning LiDAR for greater accuracy.
- Obstacle Avoidance: It has binocular vision obstacle avoidance via two 120° FOV RGB cameras. Tri-Laser Structured Light supplements this, giving it superb obstacle identification. Unlike most AIBOts, it has over 200 objects in its onboard database and can access some 1.5m wireframe (Point cloud maps). The outcome is probably the best and closest obstacle avoidance we have seen.
- Right Edge: A 20mm laser edge sensor bounces laser light off the wall or kickboard for accurate edge measurement. The key difference is that it is smaller than the bumper, so it will get closer to the edge and under cupboard overhangs unless the bumper is activated.
- Bumper: As all bumpers do, it’s the last point of obstacle avoidance. But we noticed that it often swung around to let the rear LiDAR have a look, and combined with feedback from the front cameras and structured light, then made a move.
- You can adjust sensitivity if you don’t want the bumper to make contact, but it means a wider berth around obstacles.
- LED headlights: It has a bar of bright LED headlights for dark rooms and under furniture.
- Cliff sensor (note that if you forget to turn on ‘no stairs’ at setup, this sensor won’t stop it from going over the stairs!)
- Ultrasound carpet sensor
Navigation – Exceed
Despite having a rear LiDAR, it did not display the hesitation that others do. On rare occasions, it spun on its axis to refresh bearings, but on the whole, it navigated beautifully.
This is a logical robot in that it performs the U-shape clean without the usual ‘confusion’ of other robots that sometimes clean the same area several times. After a few runs, it knows the home and reduces the cleaning time through efficient routing.
It also has decent Wi-Fi reception and no issues with swapping to mesh satellites.
Vacuum tests: Exceed
It has 22,000 Pascals of suction (Eufy S2 is 30,000), and over carpet will boost and enable Carpet Focus. In essence, this pushes the rotating brush and cover plate down onto the carpet, meaning a better use of the suction.
It has a single ‘DualFlow’ Tangle-Free rotating brush that seems to work well on long human and pet hair, although it did clog the internal dustbin. The cure is to set more frequent dock empty cycles.
It has dual whiskers. The right side is longer and articulated (hinged) and can clean well outside the robot body. We did not experience any ‘flick’ of larger detritus either. When it detects a corner or cupboard overhang, it will crab walk to allow the right whisker to get further into the area.
Narwal says it can do up to 20mm thick, but ideally it should not exceed 7mm. The mop lifts 12mm. Narwal recommends selecting to vacuum carpets first, then vacuum and mop the remaining hard floor. If you have longer carpets, choose this option.
The results are using Freo Mind AI, vacuum boost, and 1/2 passes.
- Low pile 6mm: 83/89% (well above average, like the Eufy S2). Freo Mind not only did two passes (east/west and north south) but stopped on soiled areas and did repeat cleaning. This was great to pick up fines and static charge tissues.
- Medium Pile 9mm: 79/84% (well above average). The Carpet Focus really gets into the pile and removes far more than the average.
- Long Pile 20mm: It can do this if it is plush cut pile.
Vacuum and Mop, hard floor: Exceed
It has a FlowWash oblong track mop (not cylindrical). This is supposed to be superior to a roller mop in that it has a larger cleaning area and 12 Newton downward pressure. But what really sets it apart is that it uses 45° warm water to mop. Every time it goes back to the dock, it refills the internal clean water tank with warm water.
Water is controlled from evenly spread 16 sprays (volume is adjustable). I like two Freo Mind features. It reverses and repeats (changes the mop spin direction) and remops until the area is clean.
When we disassembled the mop system, it was clear that the dock wash did a very good job – no residue from over 20 runs.
- Vacuum and Mop Hard floor: 96/98% (almost perfect).
You can set the mop to return for wastewater empty and cleaning from 15, 20, 30 m2 or by room. Panellists were asked to test this based on their flooring, and we recommend cleaning after 20m2 for dusty environments and 100% hard floors to 30m2 for well-maintained floors.
Pet Poo test – Pass+
Pet poo is a robot killer. Most robots plough straight in and clog the whiskers, rotating brush/throat/internal dustbin, wheels and mop pads. It is a horrible job to clean this properly.
It correctly identified the faux pet poo and steered around it.
Family with Pets programs – Pass, but a good start
It takes a cautious approach to pets and allows you to nominate if you have dogs, cats or both. It asks you to set up a pet zone (bedding) where it will enter if they are not there and turn on maximum cleaning.
It has a cleaning interrupted mode where a pet enters the zone and will return later.
It monitors the volume of pet hair and can return to the dock for a clean. It may also increase the frequency of manual parts inspections to alert you to extra wear.
The best pet program we have seen is on the Dreame X50.
AI liquid detection: Passable
I am sure this is a simple oversight, but the robot frequently does not identify clear or semi-opaque liquids.
As such, it can plough through, clogging side whiskers, the rotating brush and sucking it into the vacuum, leaving a horrible internal mess to clean.
Narwal claims that it turns off the vacuum, arcs the front of the body, and simply mops, but we found its whiskers were still dragging in the liquid.
As it is probably a hardware design limitation, Narwal should include a default ‘avoid liquid spills’ in the app.
The Eufy S2 identifies 40+ liquids, raises the whiskers, body, main brush and turns off suction and just mops.
Obstacle detection – Pass+
The binocular cameras and tri-structured light are an excellent combination, able to ‘see’ from about 10cm to 10m in front. It has a blind spot in the 10cm area where small items like Lego blocks and pencils smaller than the bumper gap can be missed. It did a great job on USB and power cables.
Unlike pure AIBots, it has a visual library of over 200 obstacle families and knows intimately how best to avoid these. We believe it can also reference over 1.5m wireframe objects in the cloud.
The result is it’s not timid and cleans very closely to the obstacle. It knows which it can push around (shoes and toys) and which to give a wider berth.
This means it can achieve the Gen 5 nirvana of one-pass, whole-of-home, unattended cleaning.
Torture test – Pass
We have a blind alley test that has only one way in and the same way out, with limited room for the robot to manoeuvre its way out.
It took a few tries, including crab walking, reversing and even a tentative push, to find its way out. We noticed on subsequent runs, it took the test in its stride – straight in and out.
The 95mm height and no turret mean it can get under most cupboard overhangs. The smaller 20mm right side sensor does not see the cupboardboard as the wall, so it fits as long as the bumper lets it.
Edge and corner clean on hard floors: Pass+
Edge: It extends the mop close (<.5mm) to the skirting board. The right whisker also articulates and gets most detritus in the corners.
It also has a left whisker – most robots don’t. It was above average.
Edge Clean corner on carpet: Passable
The mop lifts 12mm over carpet, leaving the 15cm rotating brush to clean. The robot is 35cm wide, leaving about 1000mm on either side that can’t be vacuumed. All round robots have this issue.
This is slightly better as it has dual left and right whiskers to help clean, and the auto-suction boost gives the robot a little more coverage. Corner clean on the carpet is adequate, and it will ‘crab-walk’ (corner in) if it detects more detritus.
Sil climb – Pass
Narwal Flow’s maximum climbing capability of 40mm refers to its performance with double thresholds; for single thresholds, the maximum climbing height is 30mm.
It had no issues.
Clean time and coverage- Pass
It is really hard to gauge speed. For example,
- 2 x 50M2 hardfloor vacuum and mop tests (Freo Mind and Mop and Vacuum) took a similar time – 50m2 in 60 minutes.
- Intensive carpet vacuum, took 5.5 minutes per m2.
- Vacuum only on the hard floor was 1 minute per m2.
As our panellists all found the third and fourth clean took far less time as its AI DirtSense 2.0 had already cleaned what was slowing it down.
Battery life per 50m2 hard floor vacuum and mop was 30% so it should be able to reach 150 m2 and a run time of 150 or more minutes.
This also equates to water used. 50m2 uses about 30% of the clean water.
Noise – Pass+
60dB vacuum and mop and up to 70db during bin empty.
Battery – Exceed
The manual states 14.4VC/5.9A/85W (5900mAh), but in all marketing it is 92W or 6400mAh. It’s not an issue, but Narwal should ensure consistency.
Narwal claims 190 minutes (vacuum hard floor)/ Our vacuum and mop tests were 150+ minutes.
Recharge time was slower, with panellists finding about 3 hours. It supports fast charging.
Robot Internal Capacities
- Clean Water: Undisclosed but estimated at 200ml. It returns frequently to the dock for a hot water refill.
- Wastewater: Undisclosed, but it does not leave much water on the floor, so around 150ml.
- Dustbin: 480ml with a replaceable insert and washable filter.
Voice
Its native voice is Hey Nawa. The only issue is that we could not find a list of commands, and there is nothing in the online manual. It also integrates with Alexa and Google. Matter support is coming.
I suspect this is a work in progress, but not made clear.
Build quality – Superb
The robot and dock ooze quality and great design. Plastics are thick and heavy.
We cannot comment on longevity except to say it is built like a keeper. It has a 2-year warranty and local support contact [email protected] or +61 1800 370 713. Or via your retailer.
Dock
The dock is 430 x 402 x 461 mm x 10.2kg (plus 5L water). It
- Self Empties Debris into a 2.5L dustbag
- Washes Mop Roller
- 80° Washes Mop Roller with Hot Water
- 40° Dries Mop Roller with Heated Air
- Self Cleaning
- AI dirty Water Sensor for extra mop washing
- 5L water tank
- 4.75L wastewater
Power-wise, it is quite hungry
- Water heat 1350W (we suspect this is a pretty rapid heat and maintain so its not always on)
- Dust collection 450W
- Drying 100W
Missing is a detergent dispenser, but you can use Narwal’s own cleaning solution diluted in the clean water tank.
Maintenance
There are no accessories or parts yet on the AU site. Some parts are Narwal Freo Z10 compatible. Figures in brackets are recommended replacement hours.
- Zero tangle brush $39.95 (150)
- Dustbags 2-pack $49.95 (90)
- Internal dustbin insert TBA (90)
- Internal dustbin filer 2-pack $49.95 (90)
- Cleaning solution 930ml $69.95
- Articulated whiskers TBA but US$29.99 plus local tax (150)
- Roller TBA but US $29.99 plus local tax(150)
These are pretty expensive, and many Narwal owners buy kits at a lot lower cost. Or there are generic kits on Amazon and other online marketplaces.
Inbox
- Robot
- Multifunctional Dock
- Anti-tangling side brush *2
- Power cord
- Dust Bag *2
- Detergent
- Replaceable insert bin
- Dust bin filter
- Replaceable Cleaning Filter
You really only have a spare dustbag.
CyberShack’s view: Narwal Flow is a premium device with lots of upsides
Having the Ecovacs X11 and Eufy S2 robovac/roller mops here meant that our panellists could compare all three.
If asked what the best was, the universal answer was that Eufy S2 tips the scales but not significantly over the Narwal Flow. And while Ecovacs X11 scored third place, it was not too far behind either mainly losing points for the half-width roller.
Panelist comments
Remember this is on four houses x 4 cleans plus me as the reviewer.
- Pet Poo avoidance is great.
- Clear liquid avoidance is not great.
- Not timid like other AI obstacle detection (although you can set it that way)
- Instant stop – important if kids and pets are around
- Mop cleans forward and backwards
- Great mop self-cleaning
- Warm water mop (gets heated water from the dock)
- Wood floors: This is the best clean I’ve seen from any robot vacuum to date.
- Excellent navigation
- Decent battery life
Panellist’s summary:
- Strength: Mopping. The barefoot test feels squeaky clean, and it eventually removes dried-on stains.
- Above Average: Carpet Focus vacuum
- Hard floor Edge clean: The mop is suitable for cleaning up to about 5mm from the wall
- Obstacle avoidance: Superb and very close clean
- AI: Taking over the world. Let it make the decisions because it is better than I can.
- Criticism: None really. It’s a very good device, but the app needs to have dumb and smart modes.
- My take: It has every Gen 6 feature that you need, and it is hard to think what comes next.
Verdict: While rotary mops have a place in well-maintained homes roller or flat roller is clearly better.
Narwal Flow rating
It is a Gen 6 AIBot that can do one-pass, whole-of-home, unattended cleaning with little to no home preparation.
- Features: 90. It has every expected feature plus exceptional extendable mopping, obstacle avoidance, dual whiskers and developing AI software.
- Value: 90. Its RRP $2999, but $2499 on launch.
- Performance: 90—It’s 10/10 for mopping, but overall, it does a similar job on carpets to other premium Gen 6 robots.
- Ease of Use: 85 – It is Easy to set up, and the quick map is excellent. Loses points for the expensive consumables.
- Design: 90 – well thought-out and extensive under the bonnet improvement on Narwal Freo X10 Ultra.
Pro
The Flow oblong roller mop does an excellent job on old stains
Excellent obstacle avoidance and navigation
Battery life 150+ minutes
Fast charge for 3 hours
Freo Mind AI is very powerful
95mm tall means get under overhangs
Con
Clear liquid identification needs work
Expensive consumables – shop around
CyberShack Verdict
Narwal Flow robotvacuum and track mop
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