Narwal Flow 2 Review – Trusted Reviews

Introduction

With its unique mopping system, the original Narwal Flow proved to be the best robot at removing stains that I’d tested, but it wasn’t quite up there when it came to overall flexibility. With the Narwal Flow 2, the company is back to sort that.

There’s the same clever track mop system, but a lot more suction power and a redesigned docking station. Is it all enough to make the Flow 2 the best robot vacuum cleaner, or is more work required? Read my full review to find out.

Design and Features

• Self-empty, self-clean dock
• Track mop
• Powerful obstacle avoidance

You can buy the Narwal Flow 2 in black or white, a choice that covers both the robot and its docking station. Aside from the way the robot looks, there’s no difference between the colour variants in terms of performance or features.

Narwal has completely redesigned its docking station for the Flow 2. The new one looks more like something that Roborock would ship, rather than continuing the more curved design of the original.

One change is that the new dock now has a front ramp that needs to be attached to the front, sticking out slightly. The old dock didn’t need this and contained the robot fully inside.

There’s also a status light bar on the new dock that glows to give a visual indicator of the robot and whether or not it’s ready to go or has any issues. That’s fine, but I’m actually a fan of fewer lights, and only having them when there’s an issue.

On top are the two water tanks. There’s a 4.5-litre tank for clean water, and a slightly smaller 4-litre tank for dirty water. Given that some water ends up on the floor after use, when the dirty tank needs emptying, the clean one will need filling.

This docking station can use 100°C water for mop washing, plus it can use detergent, automatically mixing it. Narwal keeps the detergent holder underneath the water tanks. There’s a sample of the company’s own hard floor cleaner in the box, but the design means you can use your own cleaner if you prefer.

Also under the tanks is the 2.5-litre disposable dust bag, which Narwal says can hold 120 days’ worth of dirt.

Pulling the main robot out, it’s quite similar to its predecessor in looks. With no LiDAR dome on top, the 95mm tall robot can slip under a lot of furniture without trouble.

At the front are the Dual RGB Cameras and Side Structured Light, which let the robot spot and avoid obstacles. Narwal says that this robot has unlimited obstacle detection, with Free FlowMove effectively allowing it to move around any issue and keep cleaning.

There’s a small dust bin that can be removed to be cleaned out, which also contains the Flow 2’s filter.

On the underside is the FlowWash Mopping system. This shares some similarities with a roller, but the track mop system means there’s more surface contact with the floor. A cloth is dosed with clean water, and then pulled along the floor with 12N of pressure to remove dirt.

In addition, the robot can use its cameras for stain detection, focusing on areas that need to be cleaned more.

When carpet is detected, the FlowWash system can be lifted 10mm off the ground to avoid soaking carpets. That works well enough on short pile carpet, but for more varied flooring you might prefer a robot that can either block off its roller or one that can drop its mopping pads off at the dock.

In addition, the Flow 2 can climb double thresholds of up to 4cm or single thresholds of up to 3cm, so it should be able to navigate most basic obstacles.

Control of the robot is via the Narwal app. It’s quick to get the robot connected to Wi-Fi, and then the initial mapping run. At the end of mapping, the app suggests the room layout, but I could merge or split to get the layout that I wanted.

Alongside the regular options, such as no-go zones, there are advanced options. Set the Room Character, for example, and you get to choose to say that a room is High-soil or Low-noise, which helps the robot adjust its cleaning strategy for that area.

Furniture can be added to the map, and then selected as a zone for quick cleaning, which is handy, say, for cleaning up after eating a meal. Otherwise, cleaning options including rooms of your choice or zones that you draw on the map.

There’s a choice to vacuum and mop, vacuum then mop, vacuum, or mop. For each choice, you can use the Freo Min option, which cleans automatically based on the environment and detected dirt level, or you can override and choose your settings.

For vacuuming, there’s a choice of four power modes, and two coverage choices (depending on how thorough you want the robot to be), plus up to three passes. Mopping has the same basic coverage settings but three choices of mop humidity.

I like that with the vacuum-then-mop setting that I could pick different numbers of passes for vacuuming (one or two) to mopping (up to three). This makes it much easier to customise how the clean works.

Performance

• Excellent vacuuming power
• Removes most stains fast
• Brilliant navigation

I put the Narwal Flow 2 through its paces around the Trusted Reviews Home Technology Lab. Starting with the carpet test, I added a teaspoon of flour to the test carpet. With 30,000Pa of suction, this robot is one of the most powerful and it shows. After two passes, the carpet is back to its original state.

I had the same result on the hard floor with dust in the middle. This was all gone after vacuuming only.

My edge test proved tough in the vacuum-only test, with the side brushes not quite enough to tease out all of the dust. 

Things get a lot better when mopping is added, and the Flow 2 managed to run along my kitchen plinth mopping up that mess, leaving only a fine trace of dust behind. That’s as good as I’ve seen from any robot vacuum cleaner.

I then moved to the mopping tests, starting with the dried-on coffee stain. I had set the robot to three passes, but it only needed one to quickly wipe this up.

Similarly, the dried-on red wine stain was removed with just that single pass, leaving a streak-free finish.

My mud stain was first vacuumed, removing the loose debris, and then completely cleaned after two mopping passes.

My ketchup stain is the hardest to remove, and this did prove tricky, especially as the abnormally hot weather had really dried the stain out. After three passes, the stain had been hugely reduced, but was still visible.

Given how hard the stain had set, I gave it a quick spray with kitchen cleaner, left it for five minutes, and then let the Flow 2 go about its work. This time, it picked up everything: the mopping system really is impressive.

I put some human hair down on the carpet, and then let the Narwal Flow 2 collect the mess. Turning the robot over, there was one loose strand of hair, but nothing wrapped tightly around the roller.

Object detection and avoidance is very good, too. I didn’t have any issue with the robot running into fake pet mess, shoes or cables that I left out, neatly navigating around them while still cleaning.

Sound is good, too. I measured the robot at just 50.5dB, which makes it very quiet.

Battery life is as good as you’d expect, too. Even with three passes set, the Narwal Flow 2 could easily manage to clean the entire Lab with a single charge.

Should you buy it?

FAQs