Narwal Freo Z Ultra
This is the latest and greatest robot vacuum from Narwal. It has some game-changing innovations that led to its being one of the top robot vacuums on the market. In this review I’ll go over the pros and cons of this robot vacuum.
PROS:
- Advanced auto-empty station.
- Large disposable bag lasting up to 120 days.
- Great mopping ability.
CONS:
- Below average performance in deep carpet cleaning.
Narwal Freo Z Ultra Basics
First, the basics The Narwal Freo Z is a robot vacuum mop combo with a fully featured auto-empty station that washes and dries its mop pads. It comes in two different colors and is reasonably priced for a flagship robot vacuum of its quality. As far as hardware on the robot, it has a top-mounted Lidar smart navigation system as well as front-mounted obstacle avoidance sensors. It has two side brushes and a single brush roller, which is tapered and unconnected at one end for better pet hair management. It also comes with a removable baseboard brush on the side, something that I haven’t seen before but is a wonderful idea.
Freo Z Features
Starting off with new auto empty station very Advanced it’s one of the areas that’s a major upgrade from their previous version the old version the Narwhal Freo X was a great mopping station but it didn’t have a way to empty the robot’s dust bin into a disposable bag which was one of the reasons that prevented me from recommending it but that’s changed with the Freo Z and and it now empties the robot’s dust bin into a 2.5 L disposable bag which narwhal says will last 120 days before needing to be changed.
The new station also automatically washes the robot’s mop pads, dries the mop pads, and refills the mop tanks with either water only or the water and proprietary Narwal detergent. It also has a rare water ionizing feature, which supposedly makes the water better for sanitizing. It’s also a self-cleaning station, which reduces the amount of manual cleaning you will need to do; though it does have a removable tray for that purpose, its actual mopping ability was another major pro. It uses two spinning mop pads, which are oddly shaped to reduce missed spots. Down the middle, the mop pads spin at 180 RPMs and have above-average downward pressure at 1.2 kg or 2.6 lb of force. All of that led to it being well above average with mopping ability. For example, in the dried-stained mopping test, it was even better than electric mops like the Bissell Crosswave.
Mopping Features
It also has some useful mopping features, such as adjustable water levels and cleaning along the floor direction, where you can set the direction that your floor panels lay in the app to prevent streaking. Its mop pads can automatically lift up 12 mm when it senses carpets, which allows the robot to vacuum and mop houses with a mixture of hard floors and carpets in the same run, making it much more efficient than robots that don’t have that feature.
Obstacle Avoidance
One of the biggest pros of the Narwal Freo Z is its new obstacle avoidance system, which is another area where Narwal made major improvements from their previous version. The new Freo Z uses a rare dual camera system with two advanced microchips. It’s also light-assisted for dark area cleaning; it has 120 objects pre-programmed for recognition, which is higher than average, and all of that resulted in this robot becoming the best in obstacle avoidance. I’ve seen so far—not quite perfect but very close.
Navigation, Mapping & Battery Performance.
It was overall very smart with general navigation and mapping as well; its navigation efficiency was higher than average robot vacuums in our tests. It mapped our floor plan in just under 5 minutes, and it had a 41-minute vacuum and mop time, which is shorter than average with excellent coverage. Its battery life was very good as well. Although Narwal hasn’t published an official battery life number. its battery efficiency in our tests, where we run it on various settings on a fixed floor plan, was power significantly higher than average. We calculated its square feet per charge at around 1,236 sf, which is also above average. It has a fast charging feature as well, which is somewhat rare and usually only seen on higher-end robot vacuums.
Sweeping & Vacuuming Performance
Another pro is that it was good where it really counts, which is the sweeping and vacuuming performance. One area where this really showed up was with our new pet features test. For example, it was above average with a 2 and 1/2 in pet hair pickup test on carpet, and its uniquely designed main brush roll was good at resisting longer hair tangles as well. For example, I did not see any tangles with the 7-in hair test, where the average amount of tangled hair on that test is currently 41%. Its general sweeping ability on hard floors and carpets was great across the board; it was able to pick up all the types and sizes of debris we tested it with nearly perfectly. Its crevice pickup test was right about the average amount, and it had slightly above-average suction power.
Impressive App
Its app was a big pro. I think it is one of the better apps out there, and it’s especially impressive considering that Narwal is a newer company; its score on the App Store is lower than average, which is probably more reflective of older versions of the app. It has most of the features you would see on higher-end robot vacuum apps, such as multi-level maps and individual room settings. lots of scheduling variability and the ability to modify bin behaviors virtual barriers Zone cleaning 3D mapping: it even has some of the more advanced pet features, like pet checkup, where it will go look for your pets without the vacuum on to make sure they’re okay, as well as video calling.
Narwal Freo Z Drawbacks
Moving on to the drawbacks, there wasn’t all that much to report but there were a few things for example the Narwal Freo Z performed significantly below average with our carpet deep clean test this test measures how well a robot vacuum picks up deeply embedded debris like sand from medium pile carpets and in this case it only achieved 55% however I don’t think this result is entirely reflective of its real world performance. There was no way to turn off its obstacle avoidance in the app like you normally do with these kinds of robot vacuums. Another thing was that it had below-average airflow in our tests, but considering it had above-average suction, it was sort of a draw. The main thing I would warn consumers about with the Narwal Freo Z, though, is not to do with its performance or abilities or features but rather the fact that it is new. That being said, Narwal’s online reviews are surprisingly good overall, and because customer experience is so important, we’ve started to take those online reviews into account when ranking products.
Final Thoughts
This is definitely one of the best robot vacuums on the market, packed with tons of features. This robot vacuum has the best obstacle avoidance and zero hair tangling. It comes with many great features like an auto-empty station, strong power suction, great battery life, exceptional mopping abilities, self-cleaning, and pet-friendly options. However, it struggles with deep carpet cleaning and enclosed spaces. Overall, it’s a solid choice with great consumer reviews and a price tag.