u/Conscious-Food4255 — reddlx

I’ve been using the Narwal Flow 2 for about two days now. It’s my first Narwal robot. I also own the Mova Z60 and have tested quite a few high-end robot vacuums before.

My first impression of the Flow 2 was decent, but I immediately noticed that it lacks some features for its price point — especially when compared to the Mova Z60.

Let me start with the positives — because there are definitely some things it does better than the Mova and many other robots.

The navigation looks much smoother overall. It handles complex furniture, like sofa legs, very well. The Mova tends to get stuck or climb onto them briefly, while the Narwal avoids them cleanly. It also doesn’t seem to “hesitate” or pause much — it feels like a very active, almost restless robot that just wants to keep moving.

But is that always a good thing?

On open floors without carpets, cleaning looks quite solid. However, in tighter or more complex areas, the cleaning becomes inconsistent. The extendable side brush often misses corners because the robot approaches at an angle or stays too far away.

Another issue: during the initial mapping, the robot detects carpets — but it doesn’t properly update them later. In my case, I had a carpet in the bedroom that was split into two sections during mapping. This caused the robot to choose inefficient cleaning paths. In general, it behaves quite erratically in small or partially carpeted areas.

I remapped multiple times, and eventually it recognized the carpet correctly as one piece, which improved navigation — but I still wouldn’t call it “good.”
It does lift itself properly when going onto carpets, which is nice, but the navigation on carpets clearly needs improvement.

What’s frustrating is that the robot is otherwise fast and capable — so why does it struggle so much specifically with carpets?

I tested my bedroom alone around 10 times to see if it would improve — but it didn’t significantly.

This also made me question whether replacing the Mova Z60 with the Flow 2 even makes sense. When you compare both, the Narwal lacks several features:
The Mova loosens its brush roll, has a better extendable side brush, and can properly lift itself — which I actually use because it also struggles with carpets.

Overall, the Flow 2 feels more like a mid-range product to me.

I originally wanted to replace the Mova because its navigation feels slow and it also struggles with carpets. But it’s definitely more thorough. With the Narwal, it sometimes feels like speed is prioritized over cleaning quality:
Why go close to the wall when you can just drive past it?
Why reach into corners when you can stop earlier?
Why fully use the extendable brush?

These are things the Mova simply does better.

Personally, I liked the navigation of the Eufy S1 the most — that thing was a beast. The speed and carpet handling were incredible. Unfortunately, with the S2 they seem to have downgraded to a more standard camera system, and early tests already show worse reliability and navigation — which is why I decided not to try it.

Since carpet navigation is very important to me, I haven’t even tested the mopping function of the Narwal yet.

Another issue: the mapping is often inaccurate. Rooms get merged incorrectly, which is quite annoying.

At this point, I’m not sure if I should keep the Narwal. The Flow series is often praised for its mopping performance, but in tests the Flow (previous gen) was clearly worse than the Z60 — which is currently one of the top performers. There aren’t many tests for the Flow 2 yet, but since it doesn’t seem like much has changed, I expect similar results.

I still need to test how well and how fast it cleans the entire apartment and how it behaves while mopping.

Overall, I feel like there are still some missing features and settings.

Since the Flow 2 is still quite new, I’d be interested to hear from Flow 1 users:
Did updates significantly improve the robot over time?
And how good is Narwal support — do they actually work with users and developers to fix reported issues?