The Narwal Flow impressed me with its performance —but I wish it were easier to use

There’s no doubt in my mind that the best robot vacuum cleaners are getting closer in performance to their non-autonomous cousins every year, and I've tested my fair share.

Narwal might be a less familiar brand to some of you, but it’s one of five big Chinese brands that’s made a huge impact on the robot vacuum market. Narwal in particular has been focused on robots that mop as well as vacuum, and that's exactly what I tested here.

Over two months, the Narwal Flow primarily lived in the hallway adjoining my dining room and sitting room. With a busy period falling right in the middle of our testing window, it saw a fair bit of action in cleaning up after visitors. That included vacuuming our guest bedroom's low-pile carpet, and mopping our tiled kitchen and downstairs loo, and the vinyl in our bathroom. That's a lot of social pressure, so how did it fare?

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Narwal Flow Robot Vacuum & Mop Review: Price and availability

The Narwal Flow has an official RRP of $1,599.99 and is currently available on the US Narwal site for $1,399.99and at Amazon for $1,499

UK users can purchase this on Amazon or on the Narwal UK website for £1,330.

Narwal Flow Robot Vacuum & Mop Review: Design

The first thing that strikes you when the Flow arrives is its heft. It comes in a huge box that is marked as heavy – I'd suggest you heed the warning and have two people lift it.

Open the box from the top and there is a cardboard sleeve containing the rather sparse instruction manual (there are just five pages of instructions in English) and the two spinning brushes that clip into the base of the vacuum.

Lift this off and the vacuum and its docking station are held in place with a cardboard support. The vacuum is already housed in its base (with some polystyrene for good measure), and both are wrapped in a plastic bag.

Open the lid of the dock and you'll find two water tanks – one housing some pleasant surprises. First there's a spare dust bag (one was already fitted inside the dock), as well as a bottle of detergent, a spare vacuum filter (again, one is already fitted) and a spare 'insert bin' – the small bin that sits inside the vacuum itself and is emptied after every visit to the docking station.

It's nice to have these replaceable parts included, especially as it's probably the first time most of us will have bought a Narwal product. New dustbags will set you back $19.99 for two on Narwal's website, while a new filter costs $35.99, again for two. Narwal says a dustbag will typically last 120 before it needs replacing.

I was, however, a little disappointed that there were no spare side brushes at this price point. In my experience of robot vacuums, I've found these need replacing reasonably frequently. That said, Narwal's have survived two months of testing very well.

The Flow's vacuum design is pleasantly simple. It has an all-over white, slightly glossy finish, which I preferred over black – I find the latter tends to show up even the tiniest amount of settled dust quite badly.

Underneath, there's a mop pad that lifts by 0.47in/1.2cm when not in use so that you won't get carpets or wood floors damp, and shuffles left and right to get tight up against edges.

There are also those two side brushes that easily clip into place and can shift from a V formation to a "II" one and reverse direction so that nothing gets tangled in them.

Finally, there is a tangle-free roller brush, which rather ingeniously connects on one side only. This is meant to help hair to flow cleanly into the dustbin – and as I'll explain, worked brilliantly.

Initially, setting everything up seemed straightforward. The only extra bits I needed to attach were the two spinning brushes, which clipped into place easily. Everything else – the mop pad, the filter tray in the base of the docking station, dust bag, mini vac bin and water tanks were already in position.

As explained, I popped the the vacuum in my narrow hallway. Now, Narwal recommends leaving a 0.45m long space in front of dock so that the Flow can easily manoeuvre in and out. I only had a 34in/88cm-wide space to play with, but the robot seemed to take this in its stride. It is a bulky unit though, so you will need to think carefully about where it might live without it becoming a nuisance. Also, the 1.4m power cable will limit you in terms of nearby power sockets.

As the five-page instruction manual wasn't much help, I was eager to download the app and pair my robot to WiFi. Both processes were easy, I entered my router password, and the Flow was online in a handful of seconds. So far, so good — but then I had to deal with the app.

Narwal Flow Robot Vacuum & Mop Review: App Experience

When you first open the app, you'll be asked to select your model of Narwal, agree to terms and conditions, and then you'll be prompted to link to your WIFI.

Then, you'll be directed to set up an initial map for your robot. I did this without really thinking, assuming it would be easy to change later. But I suggest you pay close attention and prepare your main cleaning area beforehand. Otherwise, it gets a bit fiddly to change things, and the vacuum might take a while to respond.

Clear the floor of obstacles, open doors where you want the vacuum to travel between rooms and close doors to doors you don't want it to clean. Also, be sure that the cleaning cycle is set to vacuum only. Otherwise you risk it mopping carpets, wood floors and other things that really shouldn't be wet.

I made the mistake of not properly clearing my floor, and it took a few days for the vacuum to realise where it was allowed to go.

Unlike the far less expensive Roborock Q7 M5 vacuum, the Narwal also didn't pick up on my kitchen in its initial mapping. While it mapped the dining room, hallway, and living room area reasonably successfully (albeit not picking up the correct position of the sofa), it didn't seem to 'see' the kitchen beyond, even though I took a risk and left the door to it open.

On the first pass it simply ignored the space. Then, on the second clean, it actually threw itself down the kitchen step in a dramatic move that left it upended and crying for help. So I wouldn't put total faith in its edge detection.

But one thing I did love about the Narwal Flow was its smarts when it came to detecting the surface below. It doesn't clean during its initial mapping so there's no danger of it trying to mop a rug, for example. But it was quick to spot surface materials (wood, tiles, rugs, carpet) and committed them to memory almost immediately. And while I have seen other reviews saying that the Narwal accidentally mopped carpet on occasion, I had no issues.

Scheduling cleaning in the app

Scheduled cleaning is also relatively easy to add and set up. You'll first need to select whether you want the Narwal Flow to Vacuum and Mop, Vacuum then Mop, Vacuum or Mop Next, you hit schedule (bottom left) and pick the next date you want it to clean. From here, you'll be able to set the time, date and frequency of when it cleans (you have options of every 1-6 days or 1-4 weeks), as well as the rooms to clean.

While you can't set it to do different tasks in different parts of the house on one schedule, you can set multiple schedules focused on different tasks.

I found this all really easy to do, and the Narwal Flow loyally followed my instructions each time.

Other app features

There's also a 'history' section where you can see how much cleaning your robot has done in the past day, week or year, including the area cleaned and time taken. To be honest, I'm not sure how useful people will generally find this, bar resolving a family dispute about whether the housework has been done!

There are two other key areas of the app worth pointing out. The 'Dock' icon on the bar to the left of the map will take you to a handy screen that lets you know if your dust bag needs emptying. And the hexagon on the bar to the top right takes you to various settings such as the language, voice (male or female) and volume of the voice, or pet-friendly mode, which you can activate to make sure the robot is extra-cautious in case it runs into any furry friends. This also does clever things like enable a 'pet cleaning zone' that will up the intensity of cleaning in certain areas.

My general feelings about the app were that it was a little slow, with some lag. A lot of functions were hard to find, such us the child lock (under general), and I found the map management quite fiddly. I did get used to it after a couple of months. But its worth spending some time to familiarise yourself with all the settings.

Narwal Flow Robot Vacuum & Mop Review: Performance

What's it like to use on hard floors?

Initially, I gave the Narwal Flow access to our hallway, dining room, and living room, leaving the door to the kitchen open to see if it would acknowledge the step down to this area. All three have solid wooden floors.

I also used the vacuum regularly on my tiled kitchen floor and in my lino-covered bathroom. The robot worked in a logical way, first working its way around the perimeter of the room, before crossing up and down. It felt that no spot was missed, and lots of dirt and debris was captured. I did leave a sprinkling of small debris along with things I didn't want it to pick up – including a Lego Minifigure. Impressively, my Lego friend was avoided while other scraps of paper were collected.

However, on close inspection, the edge cleaning wasn't exceptional. The Narwal Flow struggled to clean the dust that gathered under my radiators, and also when picking up dirt along the kitchen skirting boards. It wasn't just an issue of tight corners – it wasn't great along long edges either. On more than one occasion, I manually used a dustpan brush to sweep out debris from tighter corners to the main floor, where it was then successfully picked up.

I did like, however, how it avoided obstacles. As you are cleaning, if it encounters any, it will take a picture of what its seen. This then appears as an icon on the cleaning map, and if you click through, you'll see what it avoided.

And unlike other robot vacuums I tried, the Narwal Flow has less of a tendency to get stuck, thanks to its low profile and impressive navigation. Unlike the Roborock Q7 M5 it was able to glide under my sofa and TV bench with ease, and tucked under radiators, even if it didn't actually clean those edges very well.

Next, let's focus on the noises it makes. I've come to realise that most robot vacuum cleaners like to talk, and the Narwal Flow is no exception. As soon as 'she' (there is an option for a male voice if you prefer, but the default is female) is prompted to clean via the app or the button on the top of the dock, she will tell you 'vacuuming starting'. When she's done, she returns to base and says 'self cleaning started', then 'charging started'. There's lots of other chat in her repertoire, too, depending on whether she's mopping, or just plain stuck.

One thing the Narwal Flow has over some other robots though, is that it responds to voice commands. Say "Hey Nawa, start cleaning the living room" and it will. I also asked it to "stop cleaning", "go back to base" and "adjust suction power to super powerful" and all instructions were obeyed. It also reassuringly says 'I'm here' whenever you command it, so you know it's listening.

There is a little trial and error involved. If you haven't set room names in the Map Editing area, it's not automatically going to know what you mean by 'vacuum the kitchen'. And it didn't respond to 'return to dock' or 'reduce suction' – you do need to be quite specific. But once you've mastered the specific commands, the voice control is really useful. Especially if you have your hands full and want to clean a spill quickly without reaching for your phone.

As more of a scientific test of its cleaning abilities, we cleared a 5ft x 5ft area of both a tiled and carpeted floor, and asked the Narwal Flow to pick up 20g each of Cheerios, kitty litter and a mix of dog and human hair. The results were as follows

In general, the Narwal Flow seems great at picking up ground-in dirt, but seemed to struggle with larger pieces of debris.

I was quite surprised that when I weighed things out, it actually picked up a larger volume of kitty litter than it did Cheerios on both carpet and hard floors. Instead, it seemed to push these items towards the edges of the room, where they weren't always collected. Increasing the suction to 'super powerful' did help, but cereal was still left behind.

The same went for the small clumps of hair (a mix of human, pet and artificial), that I littered the floor with. The Narwal didn't always do the best job of picking them up. At one point it did wonder if it was actively avoiding them! However, the hair it did pick up generally got sucked into the dust bin and little got caught in the brush roller which I was super impressed with.

Noise levels

Using a sound meter app, I measured the average volume of the Narwal Flow while standing around 1m away in these different scenarios:

Cleaning wood floors: 55dB (Quiet) to 74dB (Super powerful)
Cleaning carpet: 49dB (Quiet) to 68dB (Super powerful)
Cleaning ceramic floor tiles: 55dB (Quiet) to 71.5dB (Super powerful)

The moral is, when the Narwal is quiet, it's very quiet, and when it's loud, you don't really want to be in the same room. That said, the noise really does convince you of its suction power!

What is it like to use on carpet?

Anyone that read my review of the Roborock Q7 M5 will know that I was pleasantly surprised regarding its performance on carpet, but the Narwal Flow took things to another level when it came to extracting dirt and dust.

The picture below shows the nastiness extracted from the same bedroom carpet that had been vacuumed two weeks before (yikes). I was in equal parts impressed and horrified...

As the Cheerios/kitty litter/hair testing data shows, it was marginally better at picking up hair on carpet compared to hard floors. Otherwise, the vacuum performed better on hard floors when it came to picking up cereal and grit.

This was good news in a way, as hair tends to collect on my bedroom carpet, as it's where I blow-dry and style my 'do. I don't tend to eat or wear shoes in the carpeted parts of our home, so I wasn't too concerned about its performance in the other tests and would still highly recommend it based on the dirt I saw it remove.

What is it like to use as a mop?

If there is one good reason to buy the Narwal Flow, it's that it is brilliant at cleaning floors. I was actually amazed at the job it did – in fact, it actually beat out a plug-in Bissell steam cleaner when it came to cleaning up dried-on ketchup.

The only suitable floor to test the Narwal's mopping ability on was our kitchen, which meant relocating the dock down a step to the kitchen floor. This is because the Narwal will periodically return to the dock to empty any dirty water and pick up some fresh water-detergent mix. As a task, this was cumbersome, but if your hard floors are all on one level, it won't be an issue.

The Narwal's base station has two water tanks – one purple, for your clean water and detergent, and one for dirty water. Narwal recommends adding one to three capfuls of detergent for every full tank of water, which I measured to be approx 4.6 litres using a jug. In our tests, we decided to go for two capfuls – I'd imagine the bottle would last as long as 6-8 tankfuls of water, and given I'd use less than half a tank for each wash, that's at least 12-16 cleans of my kitchen.

Narwal does recommend you only use its own cleaning solution in the tank 'otherwise the device may become faulty', according to the instruction manual.

Once you have added the water and detergent you simply reload the clean water tank, and command the robot to mop. It takes a few minutes for the tank to heat up the water, and you'll hear a lot of gurgling as it does so. It then works around the room, again starting at the perimeters and then working back and forth, up and down.

The water that comes out of the mop steams hot, and leaves the floor reassuringly warm and slightly damp. I was impressed that there were never any puddles of water on the floor, which can often be left by the Bissell cleaner I'm currently testing, and that this careful release of water cleaner effectively yet dried quickly.

The Narwal Flow will repeatedly run the mopping cycle until it deems the floor to be totally clean. In the case of the kitchen, it ran four cycles, going back to the base each time to reload with fresh water. My kitchen measures approximately 6 sq m (2 x 3m), and the whole process took 27 minutes.

Beforehand, I deliberately left some ketchup to dry overnight on the tiles, and you can see the results below. The Narwal cleaned the mess almost instantly – going over the area twice. But I was impressed at how quickly the ketchup lifted from the surface.

You can also see the dirty water collected by the Narwal at the end of the cleaning cycle.

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Narwal Flow Robot Vacuum & Mop Review: Ease of cleaning and maintenance

In the main, the Narwal Flow is very easy to look after. The large water tanks are very easy to wipe clean, with few awkward nooks and crannies, and the dust mag is extremely simple to unclip and replace.

Usually the bane of my life when it comes to vacuums, the brush roller on the Narwal is one of the best I've ever encountered. To remove it, you simply press down on a purple catch and push in and up to unclip the cover. As the roller is only secured to one side of the main body of the vacuum, it's then just a case of pulling it out. As the roller is slightly tapered, any hair naturally works its way down the roller and gets sucked into the dust cavity. I would occasionally have to remove hair that had been tightly wrapped, but this happened rarely and was easy to pull free without scissors due to the design.

My one major bugbear is the two side brushes. Once clipped in, there is no obvious way to remove them. For now, that's not an issue, but if you did want to replace them down the line, I'm not sure how you'd do so.

Narwal Flow Robot Vacuum & Mop Review: Comparisons

As mentioned, I have recently tested the more basic spec Roborock Q7 M5, which doesn't have the self-emptying function, and costs a fraction of the price. In my opinion, the Roborock is superior to the Narwal Flow in its suction power and ability to pick up larger pieces of debris, and I also found its app and mapping easier to use and navigate. And the fact the Q7 M5 takes up a lot less space will be a boon to many.

However, if you are looking for a vacuum-mop hybrid, the Narwal Flow wins hands down. Its mopping ability is simply superb. And the Narwal is also more suited to allergy sufferers, since all the dust is collected up into a bag – as long as you're happy to pay extra for the dust bags.

I will also give the Narwal some credit for its voice control feature, which works well once you've mastered the commands. And I did like certain aspects of the app – for example, that it takes pictures of any obstacles it encounters so you can see what's causing issues from your phone. It's one of those little details that might no be particularly necessary, but is still clever. And imagine if you have pets you'll really appreciate it!

Narwal Flow Robot Vacuum & Mop Review: Verdict

There is a lot to like about the Narwal Flow. Top of the list are its exceptional mopping capabilities and easy maintenance. It's also on the quiet side for a robot vacuum, particularly on carpet, where its powerful suction pulls out deep-seated dirt with ease. And while it sometimes struggles with larger clumps of hair, it's unlikely you'll find them tangled in the brush roller for once!

I found the Flow less successful at edge cleaning and picking up very large particles such as cereal. My other main bugbear is that if you want to use it in other rooms that aren't on the same level as the base station, it can be temperamental or unwilling to co-operate.

Be aware that replacement dustbins and cleaning solution are quite pricey, so ongoing usage may be more costly. And the app take some getting used to. I did like the easy scheduling though, and was impressed by its AI smarts, such as floor material detection.

However, I'd recommend the Narwal Flow for homes with large living areas on one level and for those that prize good mopping skills. It's definitely worth considering.