NARWAL T10 Mop Robot, 4-in-1 Robot Vacuum and Mop with Self Cleaning Station, Self Washing and Drying Robot Mop with LiDAR Navigation, Smart Mapping, 2 Suction Mode for Hard Floor and Pet Hair, White

Product Information

The Narwal Freo mobile app falls somewhere in the middle between the five brands of robot vacuums I tried in 2021 and 2022. Most functions are accessible with a few taps, but the app isn't overly cramped or crowded. If you're curious, iRobot's Roomba app still takes the cake as the best-designed robot vacuum app.

This cryptic error message popped up repeatedly as I was trying to partition rooms on the app’s map of my home. The Narwal did a much better job than the cloth-dragging hybrid vacuum/mops I’ve used, and about as good as I would do with a Swiffer. There was a blob of unidentifiable gunk the consistency of children’s putty that I thought sure I’d have to scrape up manually, but the Narwal scrubbed it off with no problem. Best of all, I didn’t have to clean that or any other dirt off the mop once the job was done—I just emptied the dirty water tank.

A whale of a time

Despite this unique self-cleaning mechanism, you’re going to want to pull off the pads from time to time and wash them properly by hand. Even after a cleaning in the base station, the pads were still quite dirty, so you’ll want to make sure that the pads are properly cleaned every few cycles. Most of his writing has revolved around service journalism and helping people understand the latest pieces of technology. But he has done features on Pandora radio, NBA Top Shot, and what goes into building the perfect playlist. He has also written for the Library of Congress and submitted his own emoji proposal to Unicode. The mobile app features scheduled cleaning, map management, and will show the robot's real-time cleaning process, among other things. It wasn't a groundbreaking app in any way, but it didn't need to be.

If your floor has multiple levels you may need to move the entire base station and device to the floor you wish to clean A new robot vacuum is on the scene by way of Eufy. The RoboVac X8 is now available, and it produces 2,000 pascals of suction in each of its twin turbines. A hybrid model is also available that includes a mopping function and a 250-milliliter water tank. Though cleaning power is important, the X8's ability to navigate the home is the real convenience here. All of this may sound somewhat familiar because the RoboVac X8 series models are merely rebadged versions of the RoboVac L80 that were first introduced earlier this year at CES 2021. Our test apartment consists of tiled floor with one large medium pile rug in the living room under the couch. We started off with the vacuum module attached, so that we could clean up the area of dirt and debris before mopping. You can choose from 12 names to assign to the rooms in your home. You don’t get more than 12, and you can’t change any of the existing names—even if you don’t have a cloak room or a restaurant or you don’t care to map your corridor.The Narwal T10 is a great mop and a very good vacuum; unfortunately, it’s nearly undone by an app that’s a bit of a mess. You can’t use the robot without the app, so don’t buy this robot vac/mop hybrid unless you’re willing to tolerate a steep learning curve—and a few bugs. I’ve concluded that the labor-saving benefits here are worth the pain, but my job has me learning and mastering new things almost every day. If you’re more of the “I just want it to work” mindset, steer clear of this product. Michael Brown / IDG You can of course program the robot to clean on a schedule—with separate programs for vacuuming and mopping. But you’ll need to gain an understanding of Narwal’s idiosyncratic menu language before you can do that. The Narwal T10’s most attractive feature is its mopping capability. Most competing robot vac/mop hybrids carry a small tank of water around and dampen a rag that gets dragged across the floor as they navigate the room. On the Narwal T10, you detach the brush module that sweeps dirt into the path of its vacuum nozzle and mount a pair of six-inch triangular mop pads to its motorized spindles. Each of these pads has several hundred twisted fibers, each of which are about 3/8 of an inch long. Michael Brown / IDG What makes the T10 so unique is that after about five minutes or so of mopping, it will return to the base station to clean itself. Yes, you heard that right – it cleans the pads before resuming its mopping duties. Again, water is sprayed onto the pads which rotate inside the base station and rub against small grooves to dislodge dirt. And some of the available names are just…strange. You can’t label the room where you eat your meals “dining room,” but you can call it “restaurant.” There is a “kitchen” label, fortunately. You can name your master bedroom as such, but you can have only one other bedroom, and it will be labeled “secondary bedroom” or “children room.” You can have a “study,” but not a home office; and you can have a “living room” but not a home theater, great room, or rumpus room. You can have only one bathroom. Your remaining choices are “cloak room,”“corridor,”“balcony,” and “other.” Michael Brown / IDG

I can see how the Narwal T10 Robot would be a lifesaver for larger homes with either kids and/or pets. If you find yourself constantly having to clean the floors or vacuum up your pets’ fur balls, the Narwal robot will make your life infinitely easier. When you need to mop, simply swap out the vacuum module for the two triangular pads, press the start button on the base station, and the T10 takes care of the rest. The base station first sprays clean water onto the pads, after which the robot will head to the room that’s furthest from the base station and start mopping. The logic behind this is so that the dirty pads aren’t dragged over already-cleaned surfaces.

Does Narwal Make Sense For Your Home?

For example, because you can start vacuuming or mopping with a few taps on the screen, it means other people in the household can operate the machine without your involvement. You can also change some settings and do other minor things from the control center as well. The touchscreen felt fluid to swipe around on and was easy to read. Three Mop Drying Modes: Mop pads can be foul if not drying well after mopping. Freo robot vacuum and mop combo feature dual air tunnels with 40℃ gentle heat, ensuring the mop pads are thoroughly dried after every use. Every mopping is simple and sanitary. Mopping starts at the farthest distance from the base station to avoid dirty mops covering already-cleaned floors. Tyler first started freelance writing for Fast Company after spending a decade as a computer technician repairing computers and networks in peoples’ homes. Since 2013, he has contributed to dozens of publications, including The New York Times, WIRED, PCMag, Vice, Newsweek, and many more. What we really like about the base station from a design perspective is that it almost entirely hides the T10 inside when not in use, so there's no risk of anything tripping over it.