Narwal Freo 20 Robot Vacuum review

Narwal’s Freo 20 robot vacuum continues an aesthetic trend toward rounded designs found in some of the best robot vacuums.

It has a white body and dock, and looks that are meant to largely disappear in your space — which is why the Freo 20 fits seamlessly in my home.

But more importantly, its super cool mopping features are perfect for my ample vinyl plank flooring and really make the Freo 20 shine. In fact, it’s the only robot vacuum I’ve tested so far that doesn’t leave streaks after the mopping session — which is ideal if you have plenty of hardwood floors.

Despite a little difficulty adjusting its cleaning route, it’s a solid unit, especially if you’ll be doing more mopping than vacuuming. Here’s what happened when I tested the Freo 20 in my home.

Narwal Freo 20 robot vacuum review: Price and availability

The Freo 20 costs $1,099 on Amazon and on Narwal’s website.

Narwal Freo 20 robot vacuum review: Design

The Freo 20 is an attractive unit, all white with rounded edges. It’s not too large at just 18 inches tall (dock), but it still has a large enough capacity for its water tanks, cleaning features, and dust bag.

There are two water tanks inside: one for clean water and one for dirty. You’ll pour the bundled cleaning liquid right into the fresh water reservoir. Just a tiny splash is all you need, so it’s worth double-checking the manual for the right mix.

The dust bag also lives inside the dock. It has a pretty big capacity, so you won’t need to empty it too frequently. But when you do, it’s a simple process — just pop out the used bag, empty or replace it, and pop the new one in.

This sleek unit is packed with some neat features, but none is cooler than the FlowWash Mopping system. The mop itself is super wide, about twice as wide as most single-roller robot vacuums. This nifty, flat-bottomed design puts more surface area in contact with the floor during mopping, which helps clean thoroughly and eliminate streaks. The roller is constantly washed during mopping with 140-degree Fahrenheit clean water from 16 nozzles.

During cleaning, the robot applies 16 N · m of downward force to ensure excellent contact with the floor. It also rotates against the direction of travel for the most effective scrubbing leverage. A built-in scraper and high-pressure air pump scrape dirt in real time into a separate tank to prevent contamination.

Back at the dock, the robot undergoes a 40-stage cleaning cycle, with a high-temperature wash that goes up to 212 degrees F. After it’s clean, the roller is then dried with 140-degree hot air to prevent any odors.

On the vacuuming side, the Freo 20 features 31,000Pa of suction power and EdgeReach technology — essentially a side brush — to ensure the unit can suck up dust and debris in corners and along baseboards.

The SGS-certified DualFlow Tangle-Free System prevents hair tangles along the roller. Once the robot returns to the dock, that debris gets sucked into a 2.4-liter bag that should yield 120 days of capacity.

All of that cleaning power is possible thanks to onboard AI and a camera system. The NarMind Pro Autonomous system recognizes around 300 common household objects and should automatically avoid them during cleaning. The TwinAi Dodge technology, according to Narwal, is 99% efficient in obstacle avoidance accuracy.

There’s also a Pet Care mode, which allows the robot to recognize your pets, as well as their ‘areas’, to avoid interfering with your pets’ daily activities. Similarly, there’s a Baby Care Mode that recognizes toys and automatically triggers low-noise cleaning. These are all very handy in family households.

Narwal Freo 20 robot vacuum review: Set up

Setting up the Freo 20 is easy — simply download the app, and make sure the unit is charged. Then, use the auto-mapping feature to set the robot on its way to mapping the floors of your home. It takes about 20 to 30 minutes, possibly more, depending on the size of your space.

Once that’s done, you’ll be ready to use the Freo 20 for cleaning. Before you do, however, make sure you familiarize yourself with the app and double-check the maps. I didn’t do either of those things before using the Freo 20 the first time, and it proved to cause problems later on.

Narwal Freo 20 robot vacuum review: Performance

For starters, the robot was not cleaning the rugs in the various rooms on the top floor of my house. We mostly have vinyl plank flooring, but we have area rugs in several rooms — all of which the Freo 20 did not clean.

I was perplexed until I realized there’s a setting in the app that you need to turn on to tell the unit to clean carpets instead of avoiding them. (That’s just so the mopping function doesn’t soak your carpet). It feels a bit counterintuitive, as a smart vacuum should automatically recognize—or eventually learn—to steer clear of rugs exclusively when it’s in mop mode.

That said, once the Freo 20 was set to clean carpets, it didn’t do a spectacular job of it. Each rug still had grit and dog fur left behind after cleaning, pretty much every time I used the Freo.

Despite my disappointment, it did much better on hardwood floors. In fact, on hardwoods, the Freo 20 cleans up dirt, debris, and dog fur very well. And the mopping function is much better than other units I’ve tested. More on that in a moment.

With every robot vacuum I’ve used, I’ve found that the little robot guy struggles the first time or two cleaning the house — getting hung up on features it didn’t sense the first time around. For instance, the Freo 20 managed to get wedged between the kitchen floor and the bottom of my dishwasher the first time I used it to clean the house.

But unlike other vacuums I’ve tested, which learn from those mistakes and adjust their cleaning path accordingly, the Freo 20 repeatedly got stuck each time. I can go in and manually adjust the route to make the robot avoid this area, but it seems like a smart vacuum should do this on its own.

It also seemed to spin in place a lot, clean the same places over and over again in the same session, and bounce into walls it had passed numerous times. It’s somewhat comical to watch, but it also wastes a lot of time.

The first time I used the Vacuum Then Mop feature — which does exactly what the name implies: it vacuums the house, then goes back and mops — it took almost all day. The vacuum session took about an hour, then the mop session took about two hours.

Once the robot returned to its dock, the drying and cleaning functions seemed to go on forever, finally wrapping up at the end of the day when I was also wrapping up my workday.

Despite the long session, the mopping feature does a good job of spiffing up the vinyl plank flooring. Robot vacuums I’ve tested in the past tend to leave very noticeable streaks after mopping. Not so with the Freo 20. There were few to no streaks throughout the house, and I actually got down on my hands and knees to check that the mop had actually been used.

Sure enough, the floors were clean as a whistle — in most places. Some stubborn stains did remain in the kitchen. That’s where the Freo 20 is likely to encounter sticky honey, dried milk, or bits of egg. It got most of that type of stuff, but I did notice a few sticky spots were stubborn enough to resist the Freo 20’s best efforts.

Overall, the Freo 20 is easy to use, and it’s convenient. But I found it a bit frustrating, since it didn’t automatically adjust its path based on repeated encounters with obstacles, and its excessive dithering during the cleaning process (spinning in place, cleaning and re-cleaning the same spots over and over again, and running into walls).

Narwal Freo 20 robot vacuum review: Accessories

There are no extra accessories for the Freo 20, but you can order replacement parts on the Narwal website. That said, because the Freo 20 is the newest addition to the lineup, replacement parts are not yet available on the Narwal website for this unit.

Narwal Freo 20 robot vacuum review: Competition

The robot vacuum market is packed with options these days, with many newer models handling both sweeping and mopping duties simultaneously.

The Freo 20 beats every other unit I’ve tested in the mopping department — however, the RoboRock Qrevo Curve Flow is better at vacuuming. I’d still opt for the RoboRock because I tend to vacuum more than mop, but if you’re after the best mopping results out there, the Freo 20 is the better contender.

Narwal Freo 20 robot vacuum review: Verdict

Overall, the Freo 20 is an exceptional mopping unit. If you have plenty of hard surfaces and prioritize mopping over standard vacuuming, this is precisely why you would pick one up. It delivers a remarkably thorough, streak-free clean, even if the whole process can take a bit of time.

Its vacuuming features are decent, albeit not the greatest. In my tests, I found it struggles on carpets, but does a good job on hardwood floors. So again, if your house is mostly hardwoods, the downsides in the cleaning department are few.

The Freo 20’s biggest disadvantage, however, seems to be its AI learning capabilities. I routinely had to free it from getting stuck, and if you want to change its route, you’re better off doing it manually. It also tends to spend a lot of time faffing about, spinning in circles, and running into walls.

An ideal choice for hardwood floors, the Freo 20 is an exceptional mopping unit. It’s just a real shame it struggles a little with vacuuming carpets.