The Narwal Flow is Narwal's 2025 flagship robot vacuum/mop combo. It features a crawler roller mop system, a zero-tangling floating brush, and anti-tangle side brushes designed to resist hair clogs. The robot vacuum uses dual RGB cameras, a laser distance sensor, and rear-mounted LiDAR for navigation and obstacle avoidance. The Freo Mind AI system adapts cleaning settings based on the dirt levels it detects. The dock automatically empties debris into a dustbag and washes the mop pads, with separate clean and dirty water tanks built in.
Our Verdict
The Narwal Flow is a bad choice if you have a mix of hard floors and carpets. This robot vacuum has pathing issues that cause it to miss large sections entirely or take inefficient routes that waste time without improving coverage. As a result, it leaves a lot of debris behind on both hard floors and carpets, so you'll likely end up having to clean manually anyway. Pet hair removal is similarly disappointing, so it's a poor choice if you have shedding pets. On the positive side, the dock handles maintenance automatically by emptying debris and washing mop pads, and the robot vacuum navigates well around furniture and obstacles without bumping into them.
The dock empties debris and washes mops automatically.
Effectively navigates around most household obstacles.
Struggles to pick up pet hair from carpets, leaving a significant amount behind.
Requires frequent maintenance across many parts.
Pathing issues cause it to miss large areas entirely.
Leaves debris along edges and in corners.
The Narwal Flow offers mixed performance for pet owners. If you have shedding pets, this robot vacuum is a poor choice because it struggles to lift pet hair from carpets, leaving a noticeable amount behind that you'll have to clean manually. On the positive side, it navigates well around everyday obstacles like pet toys. It does get dangerously close to pet waste, but it doesn't actually come into contact with it. The dock handles the messiest day-to-day tasks by automatically emptying debris and washing mop pads. Finally, it's quiet enough that it shouldn't startle nervous pets.
The dock empties debris and washes mops automatically.
Effectively navigates around most household obstacles.
Quiet operation won't disturb pets.
Struggles to pick up pet hair from carpets, leaving a significant amount behind.
Requires frequent maintenance across many parts.
The Narwal Flow is bad at cleaning hard floors and won't save you much time compared to traditional cleaning methods. It leaves most debris along edges and in corners, and only picks up some in open areas, so you'll need to follow up with a broom or standard vacuum for a thorough clean. The main issue is pathing software that causes inefficient routes and misses entire sections, especially in smaller spaces. It offers better performance in larger, open areas when the robot vacuum has more room to navigate, but it still requires multiple passes when it should only take one.
Poor hard floor pickup leaves most debris along edges and corners.
Pathing issues cause it to miss large areas entirely.
Leaves debris behind, even in open areas.
The Narwal Flow performs poorly on carpets. On low-pile carpet, it leaves behind a significant amount of debris, particularly along all edges and in corners, so you'll need to follow up with a traditional vacuum to finish the job. You can't rely on it to clean your carpeted rooms thoroughly because navigation problems cause it to miss entire sections. Performance is better on high-pile carpet, but navigation becomes even more challenging, with the robot vacuum occasionally pausing or getting its side brush caught under the wheel, requiring you to intervene.
Pathing issues cause it to miss large areas entirely.
Poor pick-up performance on all carpet types.
The Narwal Flow offers disappointing pet hair pickup performance, making it a poor choice if you have shedding pets. It leaves noticeable amounts of hair behind in areas it covers and drags hair around the floor rather than picking it up, meaning you'll need to supplement by vacuuming manually. Navigation issues cause the robot vacuum to miss entire sections where hair has accumulated, leaving you with patchy results.
Struggles to pick up pet hair from carpets, leaving a significant amount behind.
Drags hair around instead of collecting it.
The Narwal Flow handles obstacles well and navigates around most common household items effectively. It easily cleans under low furniture and effortlessly maneuvers around and under chair legs. However, there are some downsides. It comes uncomfortably close to hazards like pet waste, and while it avoids direct contact, it comes a little too close for comfort. Conversely, it sometimes gives other obstacles such a wide berth that it doesn't clean around them at all. Certain objects consistently cause problems on carpets, and the robot vacuum can get stuck on tasseled rugs, requiring you to intervene.
Cleans effectively under low furniture.
Navigates well around chair legs.
Avoids reflective items like mirrors after initial contact.
Gets stuck on tasseled rugs.
Performance Usages
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Differences Between Sizes And Variants
We tested the Narwal Flow robot vacuum with the manual water replacement base station.
| Name | Dock Dimensions | Features | Notes |
| Narwal Flow | 16.6 x 15.8 x 18.1" (430 x 402 x 461 mm) | Auto Mop Washing and Drying, Freo Mind AI (Intelligent Dirt Detection), Auto Dust Emptying | N/A |
| Narwal Flow with Auto Refill & Drainage System | 16.1 x 17 x 11" (410 x 433 x 280 mm) | Auto Mop Washing and Drying, Freo Mind AI (Intelligent Dirt Detection), Auto Dust Emptying, Auto Water Refill and Drainage | Requires access to water and waste lines. |
Here's a photo of our unit's label. If you find another variant, let us know in the comments.
Popular Robot Vacuum Comparisons
The Narwal Flow is a high-end robot vacuum and mop that competes with flagship models from top brands, but the Flow has major software and navigation issues that severely impact the user experience and make it impossible to recommend. The software has a major limitation for mapping multi-level homes. Unlike the brand's older models, like the Narwal Freo X Ultra, this robot vacuum can only access its full range of settings when it starts from the dock. Any area you clean without the dock present is treated as a secondary map, and the app completely locks you out of changing cleaning settings. While you can move the dock for mapping, Narwal specifically recommends against doing this. As a result, you're stuck with one-size-fits-all settings on every floor except the one where the dock lives.
Beyond the mapping restriction, the Flow struggles with navigation and pathing in ways that other premium models like the Roborock Saros 10R and MOVA P50 Pro Ultra don't. Sensor problems further limit usability; cliff sensors can prevent it from operating on dark carpets without workarounds. These limitations mean you'll often need to manually clean areas it misses, free it when it gets stuck, and work around its restricted functionality. While the Flow includes premium features like automatic dust emptying, mop washing, and an optional water exchange system, these conveniences don't make up for its fundamental performance issues.
For more alternatives, check out recommendations for the best robot vacuums, the best robot vacuums for hardwood floors, and the best robot vacuums for carpet.
The Roborock Saros 10R is a much better choice than the Narwal Flow. The Saros has excellent hard floor pickup and decent carpet cleaning, while the Flow has poor performance on both surfaces due to severe navigation and pathing issues that cause it to miss large sections. The Saros also doesn't suffer from the Flow's critical limitation where it can only access full settings when starting from the dock, making the Saros far more practical for multilevel homes. The Flow only edges ahead with better station maintenance capabilities, but that advantage is meaningless when the robot vacuum can't actually clean your floors effectively.
The Narwal Flow struggles with fundamental cleaning performance that makes it impossible to recommend over the Roborock Qrevo Curv. While the Flow has better obstacle avoidance capabilities, this doesn't compensate for its poor debris pickup on hard floors and carpets, which stems from severe navigation and pathing problems, causing it to miss entire sections of your home. The Qrevo delivers excellent hard floor cleaning and adequate carpet performance. It also doesn't have the Flow's crippling software limitation that locks you out of settings on secondary maps. This makes the Qrevo far more versatile for multilevel homes where you need different cleaning configurations on different floors.
The MOVA P50 Pro Ultra is a far better choice than the Narwal Flow across every cleaning category. The MOVA has excellent hard floor pickup, good carpet cleaning, and solid pet hair removal, while the Flow struggles with poor performance on all surfaces. The Flow's navigation and pathing problems cause it to miss large sections of your home and follow inefficient routes. It also has the critical limitation of only allowing full settings access when starting from the dock, severely limiting its usefulness for multilevel homes.
The Narwal Flow and the Narwal Freo X Ultra are both high-end robot vacuum and mop combos from Narwal, but the Freo X Ultra has notably better debris pickup on both hard floors and carpets. The Narwal Flow has significant navigation issues, frequently missing large sections and struggling in smaller spaces. However, the Flow offers better stain removal and improved station maintenance capabilities compared to the Freo.
Test Results
The Narwal Flow uses premium plastic and rubber materials, featuring a glossy finish and metallic accents. It feels very sturdy, and all parts fit together tightly. The downside is that this tight fit makes removing and installing parts a little tricky. Overall, it's better built than the Narwal Freo X Ultra, mainly due to the upgraded roller mop system.
This robot vacuum has demanding maintenance requirements, with 12 different parts requiring regular cleaning. While the parts themselves are relatively easy to access once you know where everything is, the maintenance schedule is intensive, turning regular upkeep into a significant time commitment. You'll also need to be careful when removing the side brushes because they're somewhat fragile.
On the positive side, the brushroll design doesn't collect hair, and the auto-empty and mop washing features help reduce maintenance frequency slightly.
Neither the physical nor the online manual includes maintenance information; you'll need to consult the Narwal website or app for guidance.
This robot vacuum has high recurring costs because you'll need to replace the following parts regularly:
- Dust bags (2-pack)
- Dustbin filter (2-pack)
- Crawler mop
- Replaceable base station cleaning filter
- Zero-tangling floating brush
- Anti-tangle side brush set
- Dustbin insert
- Carpet cleaning main brush cover (not currently available separately)
- Floor cleaning solution (optional)
The brand also sells an accessory bundle that includes multiple replacement parts, and may be more economical than buying items individually.
The Narwal Flow has a small internal dustbin and doesn't have an indicator on the device itself to tell you when it's full. If you have a large home, this robot vacuum might need to return to the dock often to self-empty.
This robot vacuum's dock has excellent maintenance capabilities, handling many day-to-day tasks automatically. There are a few issues, though.
The optional automatic water exchange system refills the water tank with clean water and drains dirty water, eliminating the manual water tank maintenance typical of robot vacuum mops.
One quirk is that the dustbag relies on friction to stay in place instead of a secure clip. As it fills and expands, it can push itself forward toward the front panel, which may falsely trigger the sensor into thinking the bag has been removed. The dock features a dustbag health indicator, but it didn't trigger during capacity testing, so you may need to check the bag manually.
Vacuum components:
- 2x disposable dustbin inserts
- 2x dustbin filters
- Dustbin frame
- Robot vacuum frame
- Dustbin lid
- Mop roller frame
- Mop roller
- Brushroll
- Right side brush
- Left side brush
Dock:
- Cleaning fluid (200 mL)
- Dock base
- Dustbag cover
- Mop tray
- Cleaning filter
- Clean water tank
- Dirty water tank
- 2x dust bags
- Power cord
Miscellaneous:
- User manual
- Quick start guide
- Safety manual
This robot vacuum has excellent battery life. On its most powerful suction setting (Super Powerful), it returns to the dock at 10% battery after a solid cleaning session. When using the Quiet setting, the battery life more than doubles, allowing the robot vacuum to cover significantly more ground on a single charge.
The Narwal Flow offers the quality-of-life features you'd expect from a flagship robot vacuum. A standout feature is Freo Mind, an AI system that automatically adjusts cleaning settings based on the level of dirt it detects. This model also includes carpet-specific features such as Priority Cleaning for Carpet and Intensive Carpet Cleaning modes, as well as two obstacle-avoidance sensitivity settings.
The side brushes are articulated, allowing them to change shape and extend their reach based on the direction they're rotating.
This robot vacuum offers poor hard floor pickup performance, largely due to navigation issues. The robot vacuum struggles with consistent coverage in small spaces, often missing entire sections and failing to follow a logical cleaning pattern. It struggles to pick up debris along edges and in corners, leaving most of it behind, and performance in open areas isn't much better.
We encountered significant issues when trying to operate this robot vacuum in our testing environment. It can only run its main map when starting from the dock, and when cleaning secondary areas without the dock, the app locks you out of adjusting any cleaning settings, forcing default settings that you can't change. We tried to place the dock in the testing area to access the main map and full settings, but it blocked too much of the camera's view. As a result, we had to proceed with a secondary map using locked Standard settings for suction power, pathing precision, and cleaning passes, which means we couldn't test the robot vacuum's full capabilities in our standard testing area.
Because of these issues, we deviated from our normal testing procedure to see how the robot vacuum performs in larger rooms with the dock present. Under these conditions, it performs significantly better, clearing most debris in the center of the room when it has more space to navigate. However, it still requires many passes to complete the job, and user reports confirm similar navigation struggles in smaller spaces, suggesting this is a consistent software limitation rather than an isolated issue.
As we noted in the hard floor pickup section, the Narwal Flow is plagued by navigation and software issues. This results in mediocre performance when using the default Standard suction with Standard pathing. Debris pickup is inconsistent; the Flow leaves a lot of fine debris along edges and corners, though it does a better job in open areas.
Navigation is erratic, to say the least. We had to block the cliff sensors with tape and paper because the dark color of the high-pile carpet caused the robot vacuum to think it was approaching a cliff or ledge, preventing it from starting at all. Even with this workaround, the device would still pause while cleaning. On top of that, the Flow frequently identifies carpets or heavily soiled spots that it should "Cross, Don't Clean," then avoids those sections completely, even if they're part of the same carpet it's already cleaning.
Finally, the side brush occasionally gets caught under the wheel, causing a fatal error that requires you to manually power cycle the robot vacuum. If this happens while you're away from home, the robot vacuum will remain unusable until you return to reset it.
The Narwal Flow offers poor low-pile carpet pickup performance when using Standard suction with Standard pathing. Debris pickup is weak; it leaves behind a significant amount in open areas, and even more along edges and in corners. The device also drags a lot of debris around or embeds it into the carpet without picking it up. Finally, the robot vacuum had major pathing issues, missing some areas completely.
The Narwal Flow offers disappointing pet hair pickup performance when using Standard suction and Standard pathing. It continued to experience pathing issues, missing some areas completely. It leaves hair behind in even areas it does cover, and drags some hair around rather than picking it up.
This robot vacuum has great airflow, but there's a limitation worth noting: the highest airflow setting isn't available as a default option and can only be selected once a cleaning task is already in progress. If you're manually controlling the device with the remote, the maximum airflow mode runs in 15-second bursts, with a mandatory 30-second cooldown between bursts.
This robot vacuum is relatively quiet when using the Standard suction setting on bare floors and the Standard + Carpet Boost mode on carpets.
The Narwal Flow is great at navigating around everyday obstacles. It easily cleans under low furniture and effortlessly maneuvers around and under chair legs. When it encounters reflective items like mirrors, it barely makes contact before identifying and avoiding them completely. The Flow also does well around thin, tall objects like coat racks, cleaning underneath as much as possible without moving or bumping them. The one thing this model can't handle adeptly is tasselled rugs; the robot vacuum can get stuck on them and requires you to manually free it.
The Narwal Flow offers excellent obstacle avoidance, using dual RGB cameras, a laser distance sensor, and a rear-mounted LiDAR sensor. It successfully avoids most obstacles, without making contact, but performance is uneven, with certain items consistently causing issues. The device comes uncomfortably close to hazards like pet waste, and while it avoids making direct contact, this narrow margin is concerning. Conversely, it sometimes gives obstacles such a wide berth that it often leaves noticeable gaps in coverage around them.
Pathing is another weak point, with the robot vacuum often spinning aimlessly or making multiple pointless moves. Docking isn't smooth either; it can hit hard enough to disconnect the power cord or fail to properly align with the charging contacts.
Though the Narwal Flow has an embedded LiDAR system, it still can't effectively navigate under low furniture. The robot vacuum is only 9.3 cm (3.66 inches) tall, but its suspension makes it bounce as it moves, causing it to bump into 9.5 cm (3.74 inches) high barriers.
The Narwal Flow has excellent threshold clearance. However, this doesn't quite match the brand's marketing claims that it can handle 4 cm (1.57 inches) without lifting. In reality, the robot vacuum needs to lift its chassis to clear even 2.54 cm (1-inch) thresholds. It may initially refuse to cross high thresholds but can manage them when given enough space to approach.
The Narwal Flow doesn't effectively contain fine particles. If you're concerned about allergens or air quality in your home, this isn't a good choice; the filtration system focuses on odor removal rather than trapping fine particles.
The Narwal Flow performs poorly when cleaning debris from cracks. When using Standard suction with Standard pathing, the robot vacuum mostly lifted and spread debris around rather than picking it up. It actually made the area dirtier by removing debris from the cracks and leaving it scattered on the floor. If you have tile floors with grout lines or hardwood with gaps between planks, the robot vacuum will likely make a mess rather than clean it up.
This robot vacuum is a good option for removing stains. On Normal mopping with Standard pathing and 2x passes, it removes a significant portion of dried-on stains. For stubborn stains, you'll need to run multiple passes; four additional passes removed more of the stain.
While this model is a combination vacuum/mop, it can't pick up liquid spills without risking damage to the device.
While you'll need the app for advanced functionality, both the robot and dock feature multi-function buttons for basic controls. Learn more in the user manual.
The Narwal Flow has an excellent companion app. It's responsive, stable, and packed with all the features you'd expect from a flagship robot vacuum. Unlike the Narwal Freo X Ultra's app, which had bugs and mapping issues, the Flow's app works smoothly without crashing or glitching. You get full map customization with 2D or 3D views, two sensitivity levels for obstacle avoidance, and the ability to designate pet cleaning zones or high-soil rooms. Scheduling is fully customizable, and you can manage dock settings like mop drying intensity and auto-emptying behavior. The only minor omissions are the inability to switch between maps directly in the app and the lack of suction level adjustments on secondary maps while the robot vacuum is running.
See the app in action in our video.