The Narwal Flow is the latest flagship robot vacuum from Narwal. We had planned to release this review sooner, but it took a little longer than usual to complete—for reasons we’ll discuss shortly. However, the wait was well worth it. After purchasing the Narwal Flow robot vacuum for ourselves and evaluating it over several weeks, we are really impressed. In our Narwal Flow review, we’ll explain why we like it, outline all the pros and cons, and reveal its ranking on the Vacuum Wars Top 20 Robot Vacuum List.
Vacuum Wars tests robot vacuums using a rigorous 100+ point inspection process. All products are purchased independently and reviewed without sponsorships of any kind, making our results some of the most trusted in the industry.
The Narwal Flow is a robot vacuum and mop combo featuring 22,000 Pa suction power, a real-time self-cleaning FlowWash track mop, and dual water tanks that use 113 °F warm water and a scraper to maintain mop cleanliness during operation. It offers automatic mop washing, drying, and detergent dispensing, and includes 12 mm mop lifting to avoid carpets while vacuuming. A 2.5 L self-emptying dustbin allows for up to 120 days of hands-free use. The system uses EdgeReach technology with extendable side brushes to reach deep into corners and along edges, while dual RGB AI cameras and advanced obstacle avoidance help it navigate complex home layouts. The Flow also supports voice commands via the “Hey Nawa” assistant and can be controlled or scheduled using the Narwal app. It includes two anti-tangling side brushes, dust bags, filters, and detergent, and runs on a 6,400 mAh battery for extended runtime. See additional info
Price as of December 16, 2025
Auto Empty Station: Self Empties Debris | Washes Mop Roller | Washes Mop Roller with Hot Water | Dries Mop Roller | Dries Mop Roller with Heated Air| Self Cleaning | Dirty Water Sensor
Mopping: Lifts Mop Roller on Carpets | Extending Mop Roller for Hard to Reach Areas
Hardware: 40mm Threshold Crossing | Removes Hair from Brush Roll
Performance: Carpet Boost Settings
Mapping / Navigation: Multi Level Maps | Virtual Barriers and No Go Zones
Obstacle Avoidance: 200 objects recognized
Pet Features: Live Video Monitoring | Pet Checkup or Similar
Controls: Virtual Assistant Options
| Scores | Narwal Flow | Average Robot Vacuum Tested |
|---|---|---|
| Vacuum Wars Overall | 3.71 | 2.58 |
| Features | 4.07 | 3.28 |
| Mopping Performance | 3.51 | 2.39 |
| Obstacle Avoidance | 3.75 | 3.41 |
| Pet | 4.52 | 3.42 |
| Navigation | 4.63 | 3.21 |
| Battery | 4.83 | 2.56 |
| Performance | 3.89 | 3.56 |
| Official Battery Life: 190 Minutes | Navigation Type: Embedded Lidar |
| Official Suction Power: 22000 Pa | Dust Bin Size: 480ml |
| Obstacle Avoidance Type: Dual RGB Cameras, LED, & Structured Light | Objects Recognized: 200 |
| Multi Level Maps: Y | Virtual Barriers: Y |
| Detergent Capacity: N/A | Disposable Bag: 2.5L |
Design & What’s Included
The Narwal Flow is a robot vacuum mop combo that comes with a multi-functional dock. This allows the robot vacuum to automatically empty its dust bin and wash and dry its mop pads. It’s priced on the higher end of the spectrum, which is typical for flagship robots that offer the latest specs and features.
Evaluation and Performance
We’ve done a thorough review of the technology on the Narwal Flow. Here’s what we found.
Brush System and Hair Tangle Results
The robot vacuum uses a dual-side brush system where the two ends of the brush shift shapes automatically. It also has a main brush roll that’s unattached at one end to channel hair to one side.
Both of these somewhat unique brush features are designed to reduce hair tangles. And in our evaluations, it seemed to work well. The Flow got a perfect score in the 7-inch hair tangle assessment, where the average robot gets a fair amount of hair tangled.
Carpet Deep Clean and Hair Pickup
Its dual brush system effectively handled both sweeping and vacuuming on hard floors and carpets, performing well in our pickup evaluation across both surfaces and in more advanced cleaning tests.
In our carpet deep clean evaluation, it scored 83%, which is higher than the average of 76%. It also scored well above average in our flattened pet hair pickup assessment.
Suction Power and Dustbin
As far as raw power, the Narwal Flow had really high suction, even though its airflow was about average.
It also features a fairly large internal dustbin, part of which is removable and can be swapped out with a second one included in the package. This is a unique feature that’s presumably there in case the bin requires deep cleaning.
FlowWash Realtime Mop System
Another positive feature of the Narwal Flow, and one of its key highlights, is its new mopping system. Narwal calls it the FlowWash Realtime Self-Cleaning Track Mop.
The system uses Narwal’s first roller-style mop pad instead of the typical dual-spinning style used previously. Its roller is a track-style roller, meaning it’s flatter on two sides with a larger surface area touching the floor at any given time.
Other than that, the roller operates like other rollers. Water jets keep the roller wet, and it constantly squeegees out dirty water into an onboard dirty water tank.
One of the big benefits of roller-style mop pads is that they can pick up small amounts of wet liquid. They process that liquid and move it into an internal dirty water tank. In contrast, spinning-style mop pads are designed for dried stains only and tend to spread wet spills around.
Mopping Evaluation and Performance
The Narwal Flow scored significantly above average in our mopping evaluation, both with stain removal and water usage.
It had one of the highest combined mopping performance scores we’ve seen. In fact, it ranked in the top seven of all time.
The robot vacuum also has several mopping-related functions:
- Its mop roller can automatically lift almost 11 mm to keep carpets from getting wet.
- It can also vacuum carpets first before mopping floors to ensure your carpets stay dry.
- The mop roller even extends to the side automatically for better edge coverage, which is a nice bonus.
Dock Features and Self-Cleaning System
An essential part of the Narwal Flow’s mopping system and a pro in its own right is the multi-functional dock. The robot vacuum automatically empties the contents of its dustbin into the included 2.5L bag and washes the mop roller with 176-degree water using a jet spray stream.
It then dries the mop pads, dust bag, and other components with hot air, a feature that is increasingly common and beneficial for sanitation.
Obstacle Avoidance and AI Camera Technology
Another huge advantage was its obstacle avoidance system. It has a dual camera system and an AI chipset trained on over 200 objects. It’s also paired with an LED light for dark areas.
In our various obstacle avoidance evaluations, the Narwal Flow avoided 18 out of 24 objects, which is slightly above average. It wasn’t quite as good as the Freo Z robot vacuum, which has a similar but slightly different system.
Still, it was far better than Narwal’s earlier attempts at obstacle avoidance, like with the Freo X and its tri-laser system.
Navigation and Mapping
Narwal Flow uses a semi-internal spinning LiDAR mounted on the back about midway down. This LiDAR turret can see about 180° at any given time, but it’s a slight downgrade from top-mounted LiDAR, which can see 360°.
However, the semi-internal spinning LiDAR makes the Narwal Flow slimmer, allowing it to get under furniture easily. The Flow is approximately 3.7 inches tall, compared to the taller Freo Z, which measures 4.3 inches.
In our navigation efficiency evaluations, it was slightly below average. But it performed notably well in our home evaluation, where it quickly mapped and navigated without getting stuck. In general, it was smart and seemed to make good decisions compared to the Ecovacs Deebot X11, which was running at the same time.
The X11 took about 30 minutes longer to finish and seemed much less intelligent overall compared to the Narwal Flow.
Battery Life and Efficiency
The Narwal Flow robot vacuum’s battery life was a real strength. Officially, it’s rated for 190 minutes on low power, which is above average but not particularly noteworthy. However, in our real-world battery evaluation, it had the best battery efficiency score we’ve seen so far.
Even with slightly slower navigation, it achieved a very high estimated square feet per charge score of 2068.
Cons of the Narwal Flow Robot Vacuum
It can’t all be good, and our Narwal Flow review won’t be complete without discussing the cons. So let’s get to it.
Quality Control Issues (and the Fix)
We had some quality control issues with the Narwal Flow. Our review was delayed because we encountered the same problem with two different units we had purchased. Eventually, we fixed the issue by priming the pump with a syringe of bottled water.
Narwal assured us this wasn’t a common issue, and we haven’t seen many others report it. So we’ll chalk it up to bad luck.
Hard Floor Pickup
Another con is that, although it performed well in sweeping debris on hard floors overall, it seemed to require multiple passes. Specifically, various passes were made to clear everything completely when it came to fine debris (e.g., coffee) in our hard floor torture evaluation.
App Experience
In general, the app had some issues that the average customer won’t notice. It has all the main features you would expect from a flagship, and it works relatively well; however, there were just a few minor issues.
For example, ours was defaulted to avoid carpets. We had to go into map management, select carpets, and tell the robot vacuum to clean carpets. Otherwise, it would avoid them.
Missing Features and Other Minor Issues
Narwal Flow offers less control over its systems compared to other robot vacuums. For example, there’s less control over its obstacle avoidance settings, and that does come into play. When we conduct our mopping evaluation, we need to physically cover the Narwal Flow’s cameras. Otherwise, the robot vacuum will see the mop stains as objects that it needs to avoid, which is somewhat odd on several levels.
The robot vacuum also lacks an automatically dispensing detergent system in its base. It comes with a mopping solution, but you have to add it manually to the water tank each time, which is a downgrade from previous Narwal models.
Narwal Flow Review: Conclusion and Recommendation
Most of our negatives are minor and not dealbreakers. So we’re joining the ranks of people praising the Narwal Flow robot vacuum. It performed exceptionally well over multiple weeks of evaluations at our studio and at home. It’s currently ranking an amazing number two overall on the Vacuum Wars Top 20 Robot Vacuum List (updated weekly).
The Narwal Flow is an excellent buy and a good representation of a top-tier robot vacuum.
We review robot vacuums constantly, and new models launch nearly every week—so our top picks can change quickly. Want to see if this one still ranks? Check out our latest Top 20 list here.
