The Narwal Flow 2 looks slick, but its performance misses the mark for a $1,500 robot vacuum

From smarter tracking to habit observing, the notion of the best robot vacuum that can fit into your daily life is certainly an appealing one, and the Narwal Flow 2 promises a lot.

It offers "unlimited object recognition" alongside smart obstacle avoidance, and even throws in strong suction power and mop functionality with it. But, to get all those nifty little features, Narwal is asking for a lot of cash for its smart robot vacuum, so it has to outperform its cheaper competition.

I've now spent a few weeks with the Flow 2 making its way around my house (not consecutively, the battery isn't quite that good), and I can say I'm both a little impressed with it and yet paradoxically, underwhelmed. Like the AI you'll find on your phone every day, it is pretty clever, and clearly has the infrastructure to back it up, but I'm not fully convinced it's better than the traditional methods.

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It's a little unproven in its features and too expensive to get the stamp of approval from me, even though I quite like it. Here's how my time with the Narwal Flow 2 went.

Narwal Flow 2 robot vacuum review: Price and availability

The standard Narwal Flow 2 is priced $1499.99 on Amazon.

What's more, there’s a smaller version with an autofill and drainage system that you connect to the water in your house that fetches $1599.99 on Amazon.

Narwal Flow 2 robot vacuum review: Setup

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The Narwal Flow 2 is very easy to set up, even though it’s quite bulky and relatively heavy. Simply take the robot vacuum out of the box, plug the base in, take the extra bits that are stored in the base out, and get it on charge.

It does come with detergent in the box, so you can pop that in the base for the mop mode. From here, get the app downloaded and let the Flow 2 map your apartment. It managed to pretty much nail the mapping of my apartment on the first go, navigating around chairs, doors, and even human beings.

From the app, you can tell the Flow 2 to go around, with either the vacuum or mop function, and you can watch it go from room to room, monitoring its progress as it goes. The benefit of this is that you can catch any spots it missed or any locations that have been blocked off by items. The base station holds debris for up to 120 days and has a self-cleaning water tank.

Set up is pretty smart in a lot of ways. Once you've sent the mop around, the base station will dry it with internal heating to prevent any mould. It's relatively low maintenance, outside of keeping the detergent bin topped up.

Narwal Flow 2 robot vacuum review: Design

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The Narwal Flow 2 has a lot going for it. The AI functionality helps it spot debris and map the home, but it's also used in voice controls, which means you rarely have to control it from the app if you don't want to. That AI functionality also makes the Flow 2 swap between a loud or light vacuum depending on the surface and the level of cleaning each surface needs.

Oddly, you can entirely control the robot vacuum from your phone, using its built-in webcam. This is a decent way of keeping track of the home while you're away, and its speakers mean you can actually talk to people through it. This mostly ended in me chatting to my partner from afar, but I can see some practical uses here, like chatting to pets, or even just checking if you've left the oven on.

It has a pet mode for finding your pets, and you can cycle through vacuum power intensities, should you feel a more thorough clean is needed. It's very neat, though very niche.

The Flow 2 sells itself on being effortless, and this is partially done in how it deals with waste, but also in some smart software. It has systems to reduce battery wear over time (which is certainly welcome with the 1-2 hours of battery life), and it can technically recognise an infinite number of obstacles, which is an infinite amount higher than the 200 the Flow can pick up.

Narwal Flow 2 robot vacuum review: Performance

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This is the most important part of using a robot vacuum, and, unfortunately, performance is pretty mixed for me when considering the price.

In our testing suite, it entirely failed to pick up many Cheerios scattered around a confined space. It would regularly push them around the floor or crush them under its wheels. A few of them got stuck behind the wheels, and I’m not entirely convinced I’ve got them all out even now.

This means similarly sized debris simply won’t be picked up by the Flow 2. It’s not entirely uncommon that you would drop a piece of cereal while moving with a bowl or any other food, and the Flow 2 is more likely to squish it into the floor than pick it up.

I'm not entirely sure if this is a physical problem in how it picks up debris between its brush or with the AI tracking failing to register that it needs to give extra juice to the engine at the right point, but my money is on the latter.

When it comes to picking up hair, it does decently. On a low-pile carpet, it needs to go over the same patch multiple times to pick it up, and it won’t necessarily do so naturally, which means having to send it around again. I have managed to get it to pick up everything in a single go, but there's no magic touch here. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't

On tile or otherwise flat floor, its 31,000 PA suction power is more than enough to get up any dirt that gets into its path. If you’re thinking of getting a Flow 2 for a very tile-heavy apartment, it will likely perform to your expectations, and its mop mode is solid too.

It's intuitive and looks after itself. I did find it a little better at getting specific stains than just generally mopping an area, though, which I think is partly what the vacuum is going for in the first place.

Kitty litter was picked up absolutely fine in a single go, and with no issues. For everyday dirt, the Flow 2 does just fine.

Using it week to week, the Flow 2 certainly cuts down on the amount of manual vacuuming I have to do, but it’s also significantly more expensive than equally viable performers, even at its discount price.

I also found the mapping system to be good, but it struggled occasionally with finding its own base. When I moved it ever so slightly, the Flow 2 vacuum struggled to make adjustments to find its new home (just inches across).

One place the Flow 2 really does struggle is with corners and edges. The robot vacuum is pretty big and doesn't have edge-to-edge coverage, so you will likely have to go over these yourself. This is a tad disappointing for such a smart vacuum, though not entirely unheard of.

Narwal Flow 2 robot vacuum review: Verdict

I really like the Narwal Flow 2 - in concept. It is definitely smart, and it has tonnes of niche little features I think are just plain neat.

However, when you're approaching north of $1,000, neat doesn't quite cut it, especially when it struggles with some of the fundamentals.

As an additive tool to my regular hand vacuuming, the Flow 2 certainly fits in a good spot, and I didn't find my flooring to be very dirty after a few weeks of using it, but there are cheaper options that get similar results.

The Flow 2 is certainly a bit better than budget robot vacuums I've tried, but is it three times better? No, not nearly. That doesn't mean it doesn't do its job; it's just not offering a price-to-dollar ratio that is as smart or efficient as its software.