If there is one thing that brings me a strange kind of fleeting joy almost as much as seeing the bottom of the laundry basket, it’s having clean floors. You know, when you get out of bed bare foot in the morning and tramp down the corridor to the kitchen to make coffee and the skin on the soles of your feet can feel how insanely clean your floors are. You know that feeling? If you’ve got kids and pets and a busy work/home life, you may have no idea what I’m talking about. Because, let me tell you, it’s a whole new experience for me too, since the Narwal Flow robotic vacuum and mop entered my life!

With 2 cattle dogs (that moult profusely year-round), a cat and three teenagers who bring a steady stream of friends into our home on a regular basis, having showhomesque clean floors had long since been a dream I’d given up on. Even when I was vacuuming daily and pushing the mop around every other day, it felt like a never ending, thankless chore. It’s one of those annoying household jobs that nobody notices if you have done it, but everyone notices if you haven’t…especially when large dog-hair tumble weeds blow past them down the corridor!

But everything has changed over the last couple of months of trailing the Narwal Flow, and if sourcing out household jobs you hate to robots is wrong, then I don’t want to be right! I’ve hung up that mop and I’m not looking back!

What The Narwal Flow Promises

The Narwal Flow sits firmly in the premium category of robot vacuums. It combines powerful suction with an innovative roller-style, continuously rinsed mop (more on this later) all coordinated by a fully automated dock. For those of you who like all the techy details, it uses 22,000 Pa suction to pick up dust, debris and pet hair and the roller mop applies around 12 N of downward pressure to scrub hard floors thoroughly. Navigation relies on dToF LiDAR technology plus dual cameras, allowing the robot to map rooms, avoid obstacles. My daughter and I watched the other day as it expertly manoeuvred between my usually very reactive rescue kelpie’s legs and around him without him even noticing.

For those of you, like me who are less interested in the techy details and more interested in whether it’s worth the premium price tag…let’s get into it.

First Impressions

The first thing you are likely to note about the Narwal Flow when you first unbox it, is the large dock. So, yes, it is going to take up some space. (402 x 430 x 461 mm). But considering it houses both clean and dirty water tanks along with the dust collection system, it’s willing to work for the real estate it takes up in your home, and both the robot and the docking unit look clean and sleek, so the size doesn’t make them an eyesore in your home.

Vacuum Performance

The Flow’s vacuum is impressively strong. It picks up everyday debris, pet hair and dust with ease. However I will admit that I haven’t entirely hung up my cordless stick vacuum for regular daily cleanup, mainly to make the disposable dust bags in the Narwal Flow last longer and minimise ongoing costs (It comes with 2 x bags included). Since I work from home, it’s easy to push the stick vacuum around while the kettle is boiling or I’m taking a quick lunch break.

For those who are out of the home during the day and love walking into a freshly cleaned house, the Narwal Flow is ideal. With the app, you can schedule cleaning while you’re out, check in on pets via the camera, and even use the robot’s audio function to say hello to them. For homes with fewer or less hairy pets or people willing to purchase replacement dust bags regularly, the Flow could manage the vacuuming entirely — but for me, it’s real magic lies in the mopping.

Mopping Performance

This is where the Narwal Flow has completely blown me away. The roller mop continuously applies clean water while simultaneously removing dirty water, ensuring your floors are scrubbed thoroughly with rather than simply wiped. No pushing dirty fabric around your floors. The microfibre in contact with your tiles, vinyl or wooden flooring is always clean and fresh, so unlike robots that use spinning mop heads, it even makes light work of sticky spills, dried stains, kitchen grease, and in my case, muddy paw prints. (The joys of living in Queensland during the wet season!)

I probably shouldn’t tell you this, and I honestly thought that my mopping efforts every other day was good enough, but I was both shocked and a little horrified to see the colour of the water collected in the dirty tank after the first time I used it, especially as I had vacuumed and mopped myself just the day before. Thank goodness, largely due to being pet owners, no one in my house subscribes to the 3 second rule, because unbeknownst to me, my floors were far from clean judging by the colour of that water!

With regular use, that dirty water is a lot less dirty, but you can see its definitely still getting a lot of dirt up off the floors!

I love walking barefoot around my home now, and the kids’ socks are visibly less dirty on the bottoms. My floors have that genuinely deep-cleaned feel and I love how polished and fresh my wooden floor and tiles look. But beyond this, it’s also given me so much time back. No more scrubbing or mopping several times a week, and I get to actually take 10 minutes to myself when I’m talking a brain break at work, instead of feeling like I’m constantly multitasking and juggling work and home commitments.

One of the really clever features of the Narwal Flow is how the roller extends out to get right up to the edges of your floors, something that other robot cleaners can struggle with. Not only that, but even after months of use, thanks to the way this robot cleans itself, the roller still looks brand new.

Dock Automation

Much of the Flow’s convenience comes from its dock. It automatically empties dust, washes the mop and dries it, reducing the manual work to simply refilling clean water and adding the Narwal cleaning solution, and emptying the dirty water tank. For bust parents, this automation is transformative. It really feels like having an extra pair of hands around the house, giving me to focus on other important things while the floors are being cleaned to a standard that my old mopping routine had no chance of achieving.

The App

I will say that it wasn’t love at sight for me with the app. It’s not intuitive and took me a couple of weeks to be able to navigate with confidence. The initial set up and room mapping was fairly easy, as was sending it on its way to start cleaning, but there are many other menus and functions that it took me a while to figure out. But maybe that’s just a case of a bad workman blaming his tools.

But once you’ve got the hang of it, the Narwal app allows scheduling, room mapping, creating no-go zones and monitoring cleaning progress. The video feature is a fun novelty that lets users check in on pets, talk to them and even take video or photos, but I have to admit, it’s not something I have much use for working from home.

We definitely had some fun with it and it even helped me to locate some long lost items – like the dog’s tennis ball! (Just look at the dust under that couch!)

I should also mention that it can be voice controlled too, if that’s your thing.

Verdict

The Narwal Flow Robot Vacuum and Mop has transformed the way I maintain our busy household. While I continue to use a stick vacuum for daily hair management to reduce dust bag costs, for me the Flow’s mopping function alone makes it a standout. My floors are cleaner underfoot, visibly shinier and require far less time and effort to maintain. Seeing the dirty water after a cleaning session has been eye-opening, and I know that my floors are now far cleaner than I was ever able to achieve manually.

For families who want to walk into a freshly cleaned home without spending hours scrubbing, the Flow is a game-changer. It allows you to check on pets during the day, automate floor cleaning and feel confident that your floors are spotless – even when unexpected guests come a-knocking. (Seriously, this used to cause me no end of anxiety despite my husband telling me not to worry about it. Easy for him to say though. Nobody walks into a family home, looks at the state of the floors and thinks the man of the house is a slovenly what’s-a-ma-call-it and hasn’t been keeping the home clean, do they?)

So, bottom line: if you are in the market for a robot that can vacuum and mop your floors to very near perfection (the inner-most corners are almost impossible for any robot to reach in fairness), and you’re willing to pay premium price for a luxury-end product that leaves your floors gleaming and your to-do list lighter, the Narwal Flow is a remarkable unit, and possibly the best mopping system currently available.

Disclosure: I was gifted the Narwal Flow robot vacuum and mop for the purpose of providing an honest review. All thoughts and opinions expressed here are my own.

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