r/NARWAL

Hello I got Narwal flow 2 at early deal for $1500 Canadian!
It is a big investment and so far I do like it specially with mopping!
I get in to another Vacuums reviews and get in a limbo when I watch reviews like vacuum wars …

I want to invest this money for the best Vacuum in the market for such amount…

Do you guys recommend to keep the Narwal Flow 2 or get another Flagship Vacuum from Dreame or Movo?

Please advise as it’s a big investment and I’m looking to get a quality Robot Vacuum for what I paid for?

Thanks in advance and looking to hear from you guys..

Full review forthcoming but at this point all I can say is WOW! what a pleasant experience. Those who know me here also know I’ve had countless robots from at least 7 brands over the years so let’s just say I approach every new purchase with skepticism born out of experience. IOW I’m cynical to say the least.

Yes there have been a few glitches - a couple ongoing - but that’s to be expected and should work themselves out in future firmware updates.

But overall performance has been superb and user experience has been an unprecedented highly pleasant one.

This thing is the smartest robot I’ve used and keeps learning and keeps impressing me with its uncanny intuitiveness.

However your robot shopping list’s priorities are sorted, I firmly believe the F2 will meet your needs - only exception I can think of for some might be high threshold climbing because that is not among its many strengths.

Love the machine - love how it performs, how it moves around confidently and quickly, how it navigates well doesn’t get stuck, etc

But the lack of response from their customer service is unacceptable and may mean this thing goes back through no fault of its own

Sent email to their customer service 6 days ago laying out 3 issues I’m having and asking them to either help me resolve them or provide a return authorization

Issues were 1) after 2 weeks it abruptly stopped clearing our 4 rugs treating them as an obstacle - gratefully another user here told me he had same problem and how to fix 2) it correctly identified those 4 rugs when it mapped and even though it’s now cleaned them 2 dozen times it identifies them as new carpet every single time and me telling it to use the default setting to clean them in the future doesn’t stop it from identifying them as new carpet again and again and 3) the unlimited object recognition and sending picture to the cloud to use AI to identify ones it doesn’t have stored onboard is complete BS - it doesn’t work - basically it identifies everything as a shoe or other and no amount of me telling it that’s wrong and picking one of its limited list of common objects and correcting it stops it from just re-identifying it as a shoe again next time

Yes these are mere nuisances but I’m concerned about the support I’m going to get after my 30 days are up and I’m under 1 year warranty or worse extended warranty if something major like a hardware failure occurs

I’m being told their customer support is in China and they have some national holiday but honestly that’s not my problem

By contrast I’ve also been testing a new Ecovacs model and have had several occasions to reach out to them. I’ve heard so much on here about how bad their customer service is but my experience doesn’t line up w that
Each time I start a chat in 1 minute flat I’m talking to one of their pleasant US based customer service reps - usually Maggie we’re on a first name basis now - in Grand Prairie TX and I quickly receive real help and have a pleasant experience

Truth is the N probably mops slightly better and is faster and navigates more confidently than the E but if you asked me right now which one gets to stay and which one goes I’d probably sadly say the N goes just based on the difference in after sales support

I have used my Bissel Crosswave for 6-7 years and has done well. It still works as expected but I'm getting tired having to clean it meticulously as much as possible to maintain it.

I've been considering the S30 pro and the Flow 2. I decided to get the Flow 2 during the promotion period. I finally got around to using it and it is pretty amazing. It took a half day to really get a good mapping of my first floor, and i was able to clean the whole house after editing it to my liking. I don't have animals, but currently have 6 people in the house. It mops well and I'm satisfied with it.

I am still in the 30 day return period and I am still looking at the S30 Pro as I did enjoy using my Crosswave, so I figure the S30 pro would be a nice upgrade.

I haven't found any decent comparisons on the internet between the two, I'm certain because they are for different expectations.

Does anyone here have any experience using both? I'd like to get someone's opinion about the moping and vacuuming capability of both along with any other pertinent topics.

Just confirmed yesterday after reading online, the Flow 1 doesn't have a carpet sensor, so i checked my Flow 2 and it also doesn't have it, why would they do that on a 1500 robot?

I’m considering buying the Narwal Freo X Plus, mainly because the product seem better compared to many alternatives in this price range.

But before finalising, I want realistic feedback from Indian users regarding:

Service experience in India

Carpet climbing ability

App quality and reliability. This is important

Software bugs/issues

Mapping/navigation consistency

Long-term durability

Consumables availability (brushes, filters, mop pads, etc.)

Customer support responsiveness

Thanks

[ Removed by Reddit on account of violating the content policy. ]

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?

Poco fa si è aggiornato alla versione v. 01.08.00.07. Subito dopo l'aggiornamento c'erano delle nuove opzioni e altre aggiornate, dopo poco è tornato tutto come prima. Si è aggiunta una sola opzione di segnalazione di oggetti preziosi, non ho notato altro, non ho fatto nessuna verifica di miglioramento per il momento. Qualcuno di voi ha ricevuto l'aggiornamento e verificato qualche cambiamento?

Aggiornamento: l'ho fatto partire per la pulizia della casa e prima di uscire ho solo potuto verificare che è tornato a pulire gli angoli come prima, avanti/indietro con inversione della spazzola. Aveva smesso di farlo un paio di aggiornamenti prima. Ho controllato sull'app e sembra riconoscere gli ostacoli, non i soliti 2 ma diversi. Sembra che inizia a funzionare come promesso???? Vedremo! Aggiorno quando verifico altri cambiamenti

I bought two Flows about 6 months ago. I was pretty happy with them for the most part. Narwal’s customer support was normally very responsive. Unfortunately, one of the Flows stopped working several weeks ago. I sent it to Narwal for repairs, but that just made it worse.

Narwal then said they would replace the Flow. But that was 10 days ago and that was the last I ever heard from them. I've emailed them multiple times trying to find out when the replacement unit would be shipped, but I’ve received zero responses.

I’m not sure what to do now. Contest the original charge with my credit card company? Has anyone heard from Narwal customer service recently?

Quick and simple. Love it. Had a 360 S10 before - this is a huge upgrade.

Mapping quick and simple. First full house vacuuming only was efficient and super quiet.

Open plan living space - I edited the map to divide the open plan into living/dining/kitchen. Now I can have it go clean sections of the house.

Currently doing a vaccum/mop run - works great, wood floors look beautiful.

Very happy with purchase.

it took me a bit to get the Matter integration to work with home assistant, but I finally did. For those curious I'm fairly convinced it was due to an ipv6 issue on my home network.

I have a couple of comments I would like to see Narwal improve the matter integration to make it more functional.

1.) The status doesn't seem to indicate dock operations such as "drying the mop".

2.) The cleaning options seem to be variations of "auto", "mop only", or "vacuum only", but no mop&vacuum.

3.) I would like to see maintenance items displayed as their own entities, how much time is left on the brush, the scraper, the filters, etc.

4.) I'd like to see water tank status as it's own entity. I don't know if there's a sensor that knows how full/empty the water tanks are, but if nothing else i'd hope there's one to know if the tanks are present (roborock has this with the Home Assistant Integration). Why you may ask? well i can create automations based on it of course. Have the water tank been emptied/filled since the last time it ran? If the tank has been removed/replaced I can assume the tank has been emptied/filled, and if the tanks have not been addressed i can have some sort of notification on my home assistant dashboard.

Hey guys, I tested the new update.
For me it’s a big downgrade, I don’t know what Narwal has done here. How is your feedback?

My flow 2 detected an area on my hardwood floor as carpet incorrectly. I market that spot as ignore in the map management but it continues to treat that spot as a carpet and refuses to mop. I’ve asked it to vacuum the room multiple times since.

Anyone else seeing this problem?

EDIT: I managed to get it to work. Had to restart the robot a bunch of times, and ensure I update only one phantom carpet zone at a time.

EDIT2: It almost looks like there is a synchronization issue between the database for the App and the actual configuration that lives on the robot. That’s why a lot of the other folks are finding that restarting the robot is fixing issues (forces an update from the app I guess).