Narwal - Freo X Ultra

How do find its navigation ability? I just got the narwal freo x ultra and while the mopping is good, when it’s on vacuum only it frequently gets “stuck” on a door mat. It’s not that the Matt is too high, but it’s like it’s gotten confused bit just sits there are rotates a few degrees back and forth. I eventually have to push it a few inches to get it going again

Thanks. I hadn’t thought of that. It does seem like it doesn’t recognize that it’s on a mat. It did recognize my area rug in the living room and promptly marked it on the map

I have a Freo X Ultra and a wife with long hair, but no pet. Can confirm it works well with the hair it encounters. I have not needed to do anything with the brush manually. Can't confirm yet if it works with a lot of fur.

Hi everyone, I wanted to type out this review for future people shopping for robot mop/vacuums just like I was, and since I was lucky enough to be able to test out/own both of these products I figured I would drop all of my opinions and thoughts here for future people to read through and hopefully help inform people! **TL;DR** --> Dreame X30 Ultra is superior, but that's probably what you would expect for $800 more. For the overall price point, the Freo X Ultra is more than worth it for $1,000 vs. $1,800 for the X30 Ultra. **Freo X Ultra** *The Good:* * The Freo Mind cleaning mode is really neat and adaptively alters the cleaning settings based on your home and how dirty things are. You can also customize your cleaning settings AND use Freo Mind, which I really liked. This allowed me to tell the robot I just want it to do one pass of a room but alter the vacuum suction or mopping based on how dirty something is. * The No-Tangle vacuum brush is as good as advertised. * Very quiet when running nightly tasks, including vacuuming * The price seems good for what the robot delivers. * Mapping is very accurate and fast *The "Bad":* * I noticed a couple of times while watching it mop that it would miss spots. * Not able to mop/vacuum underneath cabinets (this seems standard for most robots though) * Lidar on top of the robot means it won't fit under furniture or lower-hanging tables * Doesn't auto-empty the vacuum bag * App is very clunky when trying to add floor types (specifically carpet) or split rooms * Mopping can leave circular streaks behind * Not being able to detach the mop heads while vacuuming carpeted areas felt weird. **Dreame X30 Ultra** *The Good:* * The extended mop arm functionality comes very much in handy with kitchen cabinets allowing the robot to clean underneath all the way up to the edge. * Very quiet when mopping and vacuuming * Tons of settings to adjust and play around with in the app * Mopping was very smooth, never missed any spots, didn't leave any streaks * Detaching the mop heads when doing vacuuming is a very nice feature. * Auto-Emptying of the vacuum bags after a vacuum job is quite nice, just like a Roomba would. The tower also doesn't sound like a jet engine while emptying the bag. *The "Bad":* * Default cleaning modes "Routine Cleaning" and "Deep Cleaning" are pretty inconfigurable and I found that "Deep Cleaning" couldn't finish a job without the robot running out of battery just doing my dining room, kitchen, hallway and living room. After about 4 hours the robot died, needed to re-charge, then had to finish the job which took another 2 ish hours. The Freo X Ultra did this same type of task in about 3 hours without the battery dying. * I feel like there are way too many settings in the app compared to the Freo X Ultra and I didn't like how many settings needed to be adjusted by default or turned on manually. **The Apps** Both apps that you download are actually very similar to each other in how they function. I find both of them to be a little clunky, especially when mapping or trying to place furniture or carpet in areas of your home. The Narwal app was really not good about how to split rooms since the line must connect to two walls or objects. You can split based on where another room starts, which was annoying for me. Overall though the apps work just fine, I use mine primarily just to set the mapping and set a schedule of what I want the robot to do each day/week, and both apps work perfectly well for that. The one difference I will note is that the Narwal app has a cleaning function called "Freo Mind" that will automatically adjust several of the cleaning functions of the robot depending on situations, and also uses AI to detect and learn some of your cleaning habits. Dreame does not have this. With the Dreame app, I find myself using the custom cleaning settings more than their default "Routine Cleaning" or "Deep Cleaning" settings. Deep Cleaning actually ran the robot out of battery on the first night I had it do my Dining Room, Kitchen, Living Room, and Hallway. The whole job took it well over 4 hours, compared to the Freo X Ultra taking like 2 hours and never running out of battery. **The Towers** The towers are overall very similar between these products. They both contain a dock, dirty water container, fresh water container and mopping solution. The main difference is that the X30 Ultra has a compartment to store the vacuum garbage after it auto-empties, whereas the Freo X Ultra stores the bag in the robot itself and you have to manually clean that out. The auto-mop washing on both towers is pretty similar, however the X30 Ultra has the capability to use hot water to clean which I don't believe the Freo X Ultra does. **Mopping** Both robots mop pretty well. The Freo X Ultra will not get hard-to-reach places like underneath cabinets in your kitchen and it will leave little mop marks on your floor that look like circles just from how the mops spin and clean. It's not a huge deal, it's just something my girlfriend noticed. Both robots are really quiet when mopping, but the X30 Ultra is more quiet than the Freo X Ultra. The X30 Ultra comes with a feature where the mops can extend out to reach walls/corners, and that functionality was on display in my testing when doing my kitchen, as the extended mops were able to reach all the way to the edge of my cabinets where the Freo X Ultra couldn't reach. Both robots will use about a full tank of fresh water for a large mopping job so you do end up having to empty/refill the tanks if you have them mop your floors. **Vacuuming** Both robots vacuum about as well as you'd expect from a robot vacuum. The Freo X Ultra has a feature where it says that no hair will get tangled in the brushes, and so far I haven't had any issues with this, but I also don't have any long-haired pets in my home and most of my floors are laminate so I couldn't really stress test this. The only thing neither robot was able to do was properly vacuum up a piece of clumped dog hair, even on the strongest suction power. Both robots are very quiet in the quiet mode, but once you go to Standard or above for suction power they're noticeably noisy. The X30 Ultra has a feature that auto-empties the vacuum bag into the tower similar to a Roomba, and the one thing I'll point out is that the sound is noticeably quieter than a Roomba tower when it empties (which sounds like a jet engine almost). **Final Thoughts** While I don't think the X30 Ultra is worth $1,700, it has two very nice features that I am really enjoying between the extended mop-arm feature and the auto-emptying of the vacuum bag after a job. The overall quality and quietness of each vacuum is superb, the cleaning you get from each vacuum is about what you would expect from a robot vacuum. My laminate floors look amazing right now and I have the robot vacuum each night and then mop every Friday and Monday night. The Freo Mind feature for the Narwal Freo X Ultra is by far my favorite feature, as it allows an automated/adjustable clean setting that adjusts while the robot works, whereas with the Dreame robot you're stuck either with their 2 pre-set cleaning settings (routine cleaning or deep cleaning), or you must use the custom settings (which is what I've been doing). The apps, the towers, the robots themselves look and operate very similarly and almost feel like they were designed by the same company. The X30 ultra was able to clean into more tight spaces with the mop-extending feature wheras the Freo was a bit limited in how it could reach those same places. I'm happy to answer any questions! Hopefully someone finds this review useful :)

I would say that's a fantastic deal, yes.

I would definitely go with the Freo X Ultra then, it's just a really, really solid robot. The mopping is more than capable and the vacuuming is as well, especially without any tangling.

As a pet owner I Got the Narwal Freo X Ultra Robot Vacuum and Mop Combo, 8200Pa Robot Mop for 799 on Amazon. $600 off. Very excited to try it out

The Narwal Freo X Ultra that I use myself varies the pressure used by the spinning mop pads for different flooring types. It uses less downward pressure on wood floors than it does on tiles.

I like my narwal freo x ultra but customer service is trash just fyi

One more point: Narwal Freo X Ultra doesn't have a camera so its obstacle avoidance is weak. It ran over some dog poop in my house :(

The Narwal Freo x ultra has a tangle free brush. I’ve had it for a week and not a single hair left on the roller. Both of my Roborocks are constantly tangled with hair.

The roller is tapered and only supported on one side. So, as hair enters it slides down the taper, off the end of the roller, and straight into the bin. It’s a combo bristle and rubber fin brush. That part works excellently, I’m still deciding if I love how the rest works as it’s only been a week.

I have a black lab and a cat, it picks up their hair well. My wife has long hair and it has no troubles. Hair is simply never tangled on the brush. It does NOT have a self empty, but it has a feature that compressed the hair in a bag on the robot itself. I actually prefer this, as my Roborock with self empty gets a clogged chute almost every time it empties.

No hair seems to ever tangle in this thing.

The Freo X ultra would be the best mopping robot in Italy, much better at mopping compared to the Q Revo S. Unfortunately it is at €599 :( There’s also the more affordable Xiaomi X20 Pro which should provide similar mopping and vacuuming performance to the QRevo S at €499.99.

An industrial robot would be better suited 😂

Yep this is sadly true. Dreame, roborock, and Narwal don’t have good customer service compared to Eufy and Xiaomi (if this brand is available). It seems iRobot is also struggling with customer service so I’d recommend buying robots from an authorized retailer like Costco for easier customer service if you need to return it if it’s defective.

I highly recommend Narwal Freo X Ultra. I also have pets at home, and they often bring dirt into the house. And they will dirty my floor after I go to work. Thanks to Narwal's robot, I only need to turn it on after get off work to rest, which saves me a lot of time. And I noticed that Narwal's Prime Day price is very good, I hope it can help you

The narwal freo z ultra and freo x ultra both have anti tangle brushes. In my 1+ months of using both of them, no hairs has ever got stuck in the brush or the axle. My wife has super long hair which always annoys me - gets stuck on the regular vacuums brush and the roborock s7 (axles, not on the rollers). But with the narwal, I never had to clean them once. Narwal does a pretty good job of vacuuming and mopping but the app isn't mature and the same goes for the robots themselves. They have some quirks - the mapping/ map updating kinda sucks sometimes and both the robots I had to re-map the house at least 2-3 times. Also, splitting rooms or modifications to the map also has some quirks that annoy me so much. I also had some concerns on privacy so I returned the freo z, still have the freo x, will use it for a bit and decide. The only thing holding me from returning the narwals was/is the anti tangle brush.

We got a Narval Freo X Ultra, but there is a newer model released a couple of months ago. I'm well impressed by how well it vacuums and mops the floors! It's not too loud, it immediately detected that we had a dog so it's extra careful when it detects an object in front of it in case it's the dog, it cleans corners really well and compresses hair once it's done cleaning so that you don't have to empty the dust bin so frequently. Very happy with it!

Dense fur (or multiple large pet) or light and fluffy? Example: husky/ corgi vs pomeranian/Bichon Frisé Dense fur: vacuum only : Narwal X Plus (it is a combo unit but the vacuum is the best part) Mop needed: Narwal X Ultra Light and fluffy: Narwal Z Ultra Both have a roller brush that does not clog. Over a year later and no hair tangles. Both have compression in the dust bin/ bag. The X has a large bin that can be emptied multiple times per day (can fill up quick during shed season). Also optional bag for easy replacement. The Z has auto empty and the light and fluffy fur takes a few weeks to fill, dense fur doesn't compress as well so frequent replacement needed. My experience with 4 pomeranians.

No. They use a circular pattern of airflow. That pulls the hair to the side of the roller brush that is not mounted. The X Ultra has been in use for over a year now and has yet to have a clog.

Look into Narwal Freo X Plus or Narwal Freo X Ultra. Their brush is tangle-free because it only attaches on one side. I recently got the plus after 4 years of owning a Roborock S4. It definitely works. Hairs do not get tangled.

Eufy l60 ses , narwal anti tangle and roborock tri cut are the 3 main robots dedicated to that problem.

Agreed. I went from a crappy iRobot BraavaJet m6+ to an OG Narwal Freo and it was night and day. Now I have the Freo Z Ultra and the automatic water exchanger unit hooked up to my plumbing... It's insane how good it is. Simply insane.

We have 6 fur animals and 3 long-hair people here. My Narwal Z Ultra has been running daily for 11 days now. This morning it ran over some paper business cards and threw a "roller tangled error" because two cards got stuck in the roller. It managed to take itself to the base to dry and decontaminate the mop pads. Why am I recommending this unit? Because when I opened the roller to remove the business cards, it was completely devoid of any tangles. No fur, no hair, no cords. The roller was clean, and just the business cards were stuck in there. I have: Two Roomba i7+ units (also great with hair, but not as good as the Z, since long hair makes its way to the axel on the Roombas, where as the Z sucks it into the chamber) The OG Freo with anti-tangle roller (not as good as the Roombas at vacuuming or tangle-free operation) I also have a shark regular vacuum, and was considering their robovac before I got the Z but the Z is fantastic at both carpet and mopping. If you don't need a mop, the Roomba J7+ or S9 would be good. Not sure about newer ones. The roborocks are also very good. Check out the VacuumWars YouTube channel if you want to make comparisons

i ordered one of the freo x pluses, so ill report back after it gets here. Good to know about the shark, ill have to check it out if I dont like the freo.

so far it cleans great, but I'm really annoyed it doesnt have an auto emptying dust bin like my old roomba

I‘ve got a Freo X, and I really like it, so I’d recommend Narwal to you. Their new Freo Pro looks like it‘s got an upgraded side brush for better anti-tangling. Narwal does good at handling pet fur and preventing tangles. Hope that helps!

We have 2x with long hair, about 1m long and our Narwal X has never had a tangle. Ever. Occasionally I find a hair wrapped around the sweeping bristles, but that's it I'm wondering if something other than hair (something sticky) got stuck to the bristles and caused this to happen. Our NFX has been at work for 4mo now

I have a roborock s7 ultra I paid $1200 I think for it. It’s great. I ended up buying a Narwal Freo X for another floor in my house and incredibly impressed. Paid like $300 for it and it rivals the roborock.

Glad to help! The Narwal I was skeptical about because all the YouTube reviews are paid (they literally tell you they got it free). I figured I got it off Amazon and if I don’t like it I can return it. The only thing I like more about the roborock is it’s better with avoiding wires. Narwal you have to make sure there are none around (not a big deal). For the price point I would buy the Freo in a heartbeat again

We chose ours (Narwal Freo X) because it didn't clog with my long hair.

Thanks. Just placed an order for freo x plus that’s on sell for $280. Was looking at the expensive Dreame x40 and that required an extra brush that cuts the hair and I’m not sure it even prevents the side mounts from getting hair tangled there. 

We talk about big brands only, but tbh Narwal Freo Z Ultra is very good! I have used the Freo X ultra before but the Z ultra is a very good improvement

I have all hardwood and use two devices. The Roborock is an excellent vacuum and I like their ap the best. I have an older S7 but it still powers through my 3 dog house. And a narwhal which does a 80% good job at mopping. Together my house stays pretty clean ;)

I have the Freo. It has a vacuum but it's not that strong. I have very annoying high gloss wood floors that show every foot print. The Narwhal mop really seems to clean the floor instead of just running a went mop bad over it like the IRobot.

Agree. Dreamebot with Tricut brush & Narwal Freo series. Both great.

I have the Narwal Freo and love it. I got mine refurbished from a reputable seller on EBay. $1000 model for just under $400!

For mostly hardwood floors, most robots will do a decent job. I use the Narwall unit because it can vacuum and mop. You can set zones to stay away from, set schedules to clean the whole house, a room, part of the house, whatever you want. vacuum and mop. So like you could have it just doing a single room every day at a certain time or just start the task when ready via the app. Set it to heavy mop and heavy vacuum if need be. I have mine running twice a week, one day it vacuums the whole house, then the next it mops. Runs about 4 weeks before i have to change the water. There are two things i dont like: 1. The vacuum chamber is not very large and thus i have to empty it every two runs. It doesnt have a sensor thats worth a damn, so i dont go by the app for fullness of the container. Its easy to empty though. 2. If it gets stuck long enough on a task, meaning it makes no progress, it will give up. If you rescue it after this happens, it will just reset back to the default vacuuming task. So if it was mopping, you have to restart the mopping task manually. This is dumb to me, but i have the place pretty well robot proof, so it doesnt happen often. Otherwise, does a great job mopping. If you have something dried up on the floor(e.g. drop of syrup), you can spritz it with windex when you start the task to get the robot to clean it really good, otherwise, it gets most stuff. I have heard the Roborock was pretty good, but the newest version was not so good, hence why i went with the Narwall. So do some research to see what people say on youtube reviews. Oh and note that it wont get into certain places, so you might have to spot vacuum behind doors or behind certain types of furniture once a month or so. So its not perfect, but it will save you from having to frequently clean yourself. You WILL save time and have a good looking main floor area.

I only have roombas and a Narwal but the Narwal is also extremely quiet at low suction. Pretty irrelevant, but I would wonder how the two would compare.

I am very interested in the Matic from a tech POV but it seems to early to lock in into one. Both tech wise and company future-wise. They're not available in Canada yet, which makes that reasoning a lot easier. I think the Narwal is doing pretty well. Cat toys are always tricky. Some are so close to dust bunnies that it'll lead to false negatives not picking up dust bunnies.

I like my Narwal but it has gotten stuck on a pretty common Ikea chair. That really surprised me. Other than that I have been very impressed with its obstacle avoidance. Its edge cleaning also could be a lot better, I hardly ever see it do the twist. Also treshold detection. It tends to ride up to them and not clean the inch next to the treshold because of that. Toe kick cleaning is in my experience non-existent. Maybe mine are too low, I'll have to clean those 2 inches by hand.

We have a Narwahl. If you have pets, make sure you look for one that is good with pet hair. We went up a model For that reason.

Oh man, deciding on a robot vacuum is like trying to pick the best pizza topping combo—there’s no right answer! Personally, navigating around dog toys and somehow managing my long-haired cat’s shedding is my top struggle. I’ve been through the madness of getting vacuums jammed with hair more often than a concert mosh pit! I tried the Roomba first before giving the Roborock a shot—it’s like night and day for avoiding hair clumps. For mopping, Narwal’s practically the Baymax of vacuums, so no surprise it’s at the top of your list. Yeedi has some solid feedback on its roller mop tech, though I’m still a bit skeptical until I see fewer water skid marks. Also, services like ConsumerRating often have more insights on models like these if you want the nitty-gritty details. Good luck in the spring sale showdown!

What I am focusing most is looking at the reviews for snippets showing how robots clean edges and corners. When the robot boasts its extending mop pad/roller, and I see that because its navigation its cleaning the edges so bad it might as well have not extending mop, I take it as a signal of "we dont care if the feature is implemented properly, we care that we can boast it in marketing materials", and completely drop the brand from my considerations. So far Ecovacs and Yeedi (which have the same owner?) are especially showing bad signs of this, and I say that as someone who blindly bought their top of the line robot in about 2020, and been kinda happy with it since. When brand releases top-of-the-line robot at top-of-the-line price point with something as basic as vibrating mop pad, I cant shake of the "Lets see how many suckers will buy this if paid youtube shillers astroturf it to the moon", so there goes the Saros line, and a Roborock name gets a huge minus. Then theres Dreame, which looks solid at first glance, and after watching hundreds of videos I had to drop it too. They seem to want to be percieved as pioneers, offering retractable lidar, huge threshold crossings, and those features actually work, but the core navigation again shows that my floor would be cleaned very inconsistently, namely around edges. Then theres Narwal, a huge potential that seem to miss the mark every release. I want their Flow to finally fix their issues, but have little hope. And then theres Eufy, which to me remains the only brand limited by their technology and not programming. Missing extending mop means no edge mopping at all, but man when I look at any video how it hugs walls/chair legs, or how it navigates around corners, I am impressed. Apart from carpet cleaning performance and weak corner reach brush, they seem to done everything right, so I am waiting for what they drop next (aka S2). If they include edge extending mop+brush, I think its a clear winner for me. I dont care about carpets, the mopping is undisputed, the programming (navigation) has no match neither. Oh, and then theres Mova, which I am eagerly awaiting their Z50 Pro Ultra (which should have extending mop too), but theres so little info about that brand that I forget about them most of the time.

Personally I'd get the Narwal or Eufy. Both are very good all around, but are two of the best mopping robots as well. The Q Revo Curv would be my pick if that price wasn't so astronomically inflated. It's only $1300 right now here in the US.

Narwal. Not the top of the line, but the next one down. It’s been really great. It adapts to changes without any issue. We really like it. I don’t know about home assist compatibility.

I went with a Roomba (just the vacuum) as I liked my older model and I'm not a fan of this one so I'm trying Narwal next. Generally the Roomba is fine but the obstacle avoidance is lacking to the point where it climbs over the ground level support bars of my chairs, and therefor doesn't really clean under the kitchen table, where it often needs it most. Supposedly smart obstacle avoidance was a part of its selling features. Otherwise it's maybe a bit noisy, has a very small filter, and doesn't seem to have a lot of suction. The map seemed to work which surprised me with my past experience with them.

Narwal is quiet and excellent with mopping