Narwal Freo Z Ultra Review

The Narwal Freo Z Ultra is the first a vacuum and mopler combo with dual RGB cameras, which means that it has a couple of eyes that they see in color, just like us. It also presents AI chips to improve decision making and the recognition of objects, so you should better identify the locations that need cleaning and improve the avoidance of objects. It aspires, mocked and lives in a spring that cars -be in the robot and clean the mops. All that sounds promising, and does some things quite well … I would like it to be better in the real cleaning part.

Narwal Freo Z Ultra Review: Design and characteristics

Let’s start with the basics. At a glance, Freo Z ultra looks a lot like any other high -end robot vacuum cleaner. It is a round bot of approximately 14 inches in diameter and approximately 4.5 inches high. Up Top is a Lidar turret (not very different from seeing in an autonomous car), which helps with the scan of rooms and the recognition of objects. In front are the dual RGB cameras mentioned above. Below, to the front, you have two thin -rack arms that help the debris directed under the robot; In the middle is the vacuum entrance with a roller brush, and towards the back there are two pads for mirrors. It can also join a “motherboard cleaner” included, which is effectively a spongy duster that adheres to the side of the robot so that it can erase low vertical surfaces.

The base station has approximately 17 inches wide, 15 inches deep and 18 inches high. 2.5L property bags are needed that Narwal states that it will last up to 120 days before exchanging it, depending on how dirty its place is. It has two large and removable water tanks (one for clean water and one for dirty water) that are quite easy to empty or fill. It also has a separate cube where you can install a detergent cartridge. In the upper cover there is a small touch panel with some basic commands that you will probably never use because application and voice commands (through Google/Siri/Alexa) are much more convenient. The robot and the base look elegant and modern. The base can also clean the robot mops with temperatures that reach 167 degrees Fahrenheit, which should be enough to kill most bacteria, and then also dries the air.

The configuration is quite easy. You take everything out of the box, place the taxi drivers, plug the base, fill the fresh water tank, push the bot to its base to load and then combine everything with the application. After ordering some connectivity problems and firmware updates, I press the button to scan my apartment, I achieve quickly and efficiently, mapping all my plant plane in approximately 7 minutes. However, the map he created needed some work. He correctly identified a bed and a sofa, but divided my entire apartment (of a room) into two large rooms. Fortunately, it was simple enough to edit that in the application. I created divisors for the bedroom, the bathroom, the hall, the living room, the dining room, the kitchen and the entrance. That way, if it were only necessary to clean a room, I could tell you to clean that specific room.

Narwal Freo Z Ultra Review: Performance

Cleaning, however, could use some work. The predetermined profile is to clean the entire apartment, aspire and mop as it considers it appropriate, so I thought it would start there. I pressed the button of my application, and the base station announced that it was doing electrolyzed water, which … I suppose it cleans better than normal water? In theory? Maybe? He shone and looked great, anyway. Once the MOP were saturated, the robot left its dock and went directly to a corner corner of my room. Then he wandered a little without drawing or aspiring. I just kept circling in a corner next to my bed. Finally, he began to aspire and made a strange patron of Zigzag that did not make much sense to me. He returned and aspired that place again later, apparently for no reason.

He also swallowed a section of the floor near the sink of my bathroom, then returned and aspired, which is the opposite order in which that should do that. Then he depressed him again. Then he aspired again, then I trapped it again. Of course, there was no discernible dirt or debris in this place. He simply became obsessed with that, and yes, this is still before he had gone to my kitchen or clean the living room or anywhere else. The pattern he chose to clean my apartment seemed almost comicly inefficient.

I will say that he did a fairly decent work of cleaning areas once they arrived. He picked up a lot of hair and dirt from my naked floor, and did a good job when he took out the sand from my medium pilot carpet. It was pleasant and quiet too, what I appreciated. The Mops did a pleasant and fast job when cleaning some spilled milk on the floor of my kitchen. But when I put my infamous sandwiches glove (made of golden fish cookies, pistachio shells, some pub mixtures, some tic-tacs and some dry and ground oregano leaf), it was fine. He tended to drown in the pistachio shells and disrupt in another place. Sometimes, he caught the golden fish cookie, but other times, he crushed and extended the debris around the floor. I found some golden fish almost everything on my apartment from where I had left them. He did well with the tic-tacs, but he had difficulties with the oregano, especially in my wooden floor. There was a lot on the floor after I thought I was done.

For a comparison, I tried it against Roborock Qrevo Curv. Roborock formed a much more efficient cleaning pattern and seemed to be much more powerful. He did a quick job of the snack glove, losing only a golden fish, but the oregano and everything else was gone. I also discovered that the Roborock Mops are much closer to the edges than the Narwal. One of the Roborock Mops extends out to clean under small blasting. On the contrary, the Narwal has to get right next to the wall and make a small handling of 90 degrees to take its mop to the edge. That not only makes it much slower (it would also be slower, if it had to stop and move every few seconds), but there were places where Narwal left the three -inch holes between the wall and where it was cleaned. It’s not great.

The only place that Narwal hits the roborock is in avoidance of objects. He seemed to use his binocular vision and did much better job by avoiding the dangers he had presented, such as the short or strange sock, that roborock was prone to suck and drag. The Narwal could use its AI to identify correctly and avoid loading cables when you find them on the bare floor, which was more than the roborock could handle. However, he still absorbed a couple of load cables when he found them in my stamped carpets. I suspect that the camera needs more contrast (which provides the bare floor). He also did a good job when navigating through the maze of the table and the legs of the chair in my dining room. It wasn’t fast, but it always entered and left.

A strange thing is that this bot dates back to your spring to clean your mop. It seemed to go and mop a section of my floor (maybe 3 feet for 5 feet) and then clean the mop before returning to the same area. This not only makes cleaning much longer, but it goes through water quite quickly. In the middle of the cleaning of my apartment for the second time, it warned me that the base was out of fresh water. Indeed, it was dry and the dirty water tank was full. But my apartment was quite clean, and only 161 square feet of hard wood were not covered by carpets. I could see that the water was not very dirty either. I thought that this was supposed to spend four months without maintenance, but when I looked at the small print, he only mentioned that there was no need to change the vacuum bag. Once again, Roborock was much more efficient, which allowed me to go through several cleaning before dealing with water.

I liked that the Robot’s AI could recognize when a place was still dirty and needed more cleaning, and would generally come back and handle it, but ultimately, when it was done, it was almost never as clean as Roborock left it. Its application does not give so much granular control, and the plate cleaner, although intelligent, made it more difficult to return to its dock. Sometimes, I took five attempts before I could do and, as I mentioned, try to constantly rob. All this adds to a slower robot and that appears.

Narwal Freo Z Ultra review: verdict

Ultimately, there is much to like here. He does a fairly decent cleaning job, and because his avoidance of objects is so good, it could be a better option if he has a pet prone to accidents. Unfortunately, I had just proved the roborock qrevo Curv, and Freo Z ultra of Narwal does not clean so well, costing almost the same (the Narwal costs $ 1,500, while the roborock is $ 1,600). During the tests, I often wanted the best of both worlds. It would be unbeatable if I could put the vision and recognition of Freo Z obstacles in the efficiency and power of the Qrevo curve. For now, however, I keep the roborock.