Narwal Flow 2
pros and cons
- It’s the best-performer at obstacle avoidance.
- Features effective mopping, thanks to the track mop and washing system.
- Takes photos of obstacles to give you insight into what it avoided.
- The Narwal app isn’t the most intuitive.
- Suction on medium-pile carpet was only average.
on Google.
For the last few years, Narwal has been working to improve the navigation and obstacle avoidance of its robot vacuums. It has enhanced its devices’ ability to navigate around objects, recognizing what they are as they go — even taking photos to let you know what it avoided.
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The Narwal Flow 2
In this photo, the robot is so close to the table leg that it looks like it’s touching it, but its bumpers aren’t depressed, and it never actually touched the leg. This robot did the same for every single obstacle I used, even pencils, which means it hasn’t once needed me to rescue it during a cleaning session, earning top marks from me.
Track mop vs. roller mop
Note that the Flow 2 has a track mop instead of a roller mop. Not sure of the difference? A roller mop is a cylindrical mop pad that spins continuously while it’s sprayed with clean water and scrubbed clean as it turns, sending the dirty water to a separate tank. The track mop also spins and is constantly washed as it turns, but often outperforms roller mops, as with the Narwal Flow 2.
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The track mop has a larger contact patch with the floor than a roller, so it distributes downward pressure more evenly across the track. A track mop is like a moving microfiber belt rather than a rotating roller, which Narwal calls a treadmill-style design. Inside the Flow 2, the mop is sprayed with hot water to effectively remove everything it picks up. In my tests, this combination of features produced the most effective mop for dried messes I’ve tried thus far.
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Our in-home tests give us the real-world experience to better interpret the lab results, and they often coincide, but not always. I found the Flow 2 to live up to its lab tests, and it did surprisingly well on low-pile carpet. The vacuum’s suction power is very strong, and, while it didn’t outperform the Roomba 10 Max Combo on carpets, it did well removing visible pet hair and most dust.
ZDNET’s buying advice
The Flow 2 likely isn’t a great fit for mostly carpeted homes, since the mopping feature would be largely wasted, given how central it is to its feature set. If you have a mix of carpets and hard floors, I definitely recommend the Narwal Flow 2 for your cleaning.