Narwal Freo vacuum robot tested: lifts the mop and wipes with cleaner

Narwal is largely unknown as a manufacturer in this country, but not in Asia and the USA. With the Narwal Freo, the manufacturer now also wants to gain a foothold in the German market and is launching a vacuum robot (best list) with an advanced wiping function, which also wants to score points with a cleaning station including touch operation and an integrated cleaning agent tank. Combined with laser navigation and a great app, that sounds like a sure-fire success – if it weren’t for the high price of 899 euros. We checked in the test how this fits together.

When it comes to design, Narwal doesn’t dare to experiment with the Freo. Instead, the manufacturer relies on the typically round design that almost all vacuum robots (theme world) now follow. The laser tower, which unfortunately has no contact sensors, is positioned in the middle. As usual, around two thirds of the surface can be folded up, the dust container is hidden underneath. In contrast to other models, some of which are hardly more expensive, if at all, users will also come into regular contact with it, because the Freo cleaning station does not have a suction device. The white plastic appears to be of sufficient quality overall, and there aren’t many differences to the competition.

The underside is more interesting. It shows a floating main brush, which alternately offers rubber lamellae and rows of bristles. Animal hair and dust bunnies quickly collect on the latter, so that they have to be cleaned regularly, but experience has shown that they ensure a good cleaning result even with low suction power. That’s a good thing, because with the specified 3000 Pa suction power, it’s more at the lower end for vacuum robots that cost over 750 euros. On the one hand, the two side brushes on the side in front and also the mops on the back are striking. The side brushes only have two bristle arms each, compared to three on the competition. The mops, on the other hand, are not round, but subtly triangular, like the Yeedi mop station (test report). While there were problems there because the base plates touched slightly on a test device, the Narwal Freo worked flawlessly in the test. The advantage of the slight triangular shape should be a complete, minimally overlapping coverage of the entire wiping area, and there should also be a minimally elliptical rotary movement, which ensures potentially higher cleaning performance. Too bad: the Narwal Freo robot does not have a built-in water tank, so the mops are only soaked in the station.

The station itself is quite pretty to look at with its round shapes. An eye-catcher is the round LCD with touch function on the top right of the housing, which allows complete control even without an app. However, a connection to the app must still be established beforehand. Since there is no suction function, the station is a bit narrower than the competition. It is hardly wider than the robot itself, but deeper. As a result, the entire robot moves into the station to clean the mops and charge the battery. There is no cable management, and our test device had another special feature. Since it was sent to us directly from China by the manufacturer, it does not offer a Euro power plug, but one for Chinese sockets. This is of course different with the version bought in this country. However, what we found exciting about this fact is that the app communicates in German, but not the robot and station. Both only wanted to communicate with us in English or some Asian languages.

The recording of the work also seems to want to work without an app and only via the LCD on the station. However, we could not enter a space here for the WLAN password, for example, and we were repeatedly prompted to use the app via the LCD. Establishing the connection is easy, the same applies here: create an account, download the app and follow the instructions – done. We didn’t have any problems, the connection process was completed after a few moments.

The app itself offers everything that the competition has to offer. In addition to automatic and adaptable room planning, including restricted zones and schedules, this also includes drawing in carpets and a 3D display. We have already found the latter to be a superfluous gimmick from other manufacturers such as Roborock, but we find the retention of carpeting in the map display very commendable. Thanks to a later update, the user of the Freo can then also determine how the robot should behave on carpet. From the factory, it then increases the suction power and lifts the mops so that everything can be cleaned in one go.

There is one special feature of the Freo: the edge cleaning mode. The robot turns inwards every few centimeters from the edge of the cleaning surface in order to be able to wipe closer to obstacles with the outer mop, which thus reaches further outwards. By default, the robot uses this more intensive, but also time-consuming wiping behavior once a week, but users can also use it daily or deactivate it completely. The fact is: No cleaning robot wipes on baseboards or cupboards closer. After mopping, the Freo dries its mops with 40 degree warm air. He determines the length of the drying time himself, unless the user himself sets it to quiet and 5 hours or louder and 3 hours.

When driving, the robot repeatedly makes quiet whistling noises from the drive motors. You can hear this especially when the robot switches off the suction motor on the way back to the station. Then following a few quick course changes, the Narwhal Freo almost sounds like R2D2 from Star Wars. With the naturally aspirated engine running, the noise is almost, if not quite, drowned out, so it’s not really bothersome. Overall, however, the robot is rather quiet; we measured around 60 decibels when vacuuming and wiping. The drying of the mops after wiping is even quieter and audible at 40 to 45 decibels, but tolerable.

Other than that, the Freo does its job pretty well. While the laser competition has no problem creating the map the first time it is cleaned, the Freo initially requires a tour of all accessible rooms. He drives independently from room to room, corner to corner and obstacle to obstacle to get a detailed picture of the environment. The robot proceeds very conscientiously, it took us over a quarter of an hour to create the first card. However, it must be mentioned that he works himself through the mirror cabinets unnecessarily, since he tries extensively to reach the rooms supposed to be behind them – of course without success. Competing models can also be confused by mirrors at floor level, but then accept the physical barrier that still stands in the way more quickly than given.

In addition, the narwhal Freo navigates in an exemplary manner. Obstacles are usually recognized optimally, so that the robot slows down in the immediate vicinity and then moves to a few millimeters. It rarely happened that the front bumper was needed at all – if then only in narrow passages and with very low obstacles. We were particularly impressed by the cleaning performance on hard floors, where the robot is at the top level of the competition in terms of both suction and wiping performance. The cleaning agent spreads a subtle fresh scent. The manufacturer relies on non-refillable but repurchasable cleaner bottles, but at the time of testing we could not find the agent anywhere, only a complete package with 2x cleaner and numerous other accessories for a mere 140 euros was already listed.

We find it somewhat disturbing that the robot itself does not have an internal water tank. Instead, the mops are cleaned and moistened in the cleaning station so that the mops are visibly less wet during operation. If you don’t want that, you should set the app to return to the station after 8 instead of the specified 10 or even 12 square meters. In addition, due to the lack of an internal tank, there is no way to adjust the moisture level of the mops. Since the Freo uses quite a lot of water overall, we would advise against using it on sensitive hard floors such as parquet to be on the safe side.

The result is not quite perfect on carpet, the longer the carpet, the less the suction power of rather weak 3000 Pa is apparently sufficient. The result is not bad even then, but there are better models here.

The Narwal Freo is impressive in terms of battery performance. In our test, it lasted a good 2 hours at a time, vacuuming and wiping. At 20 percent battery power, the device returns to the charging station and at 80 percent it starts working where it was last. The Freo easily manages 140 m² in one pass, unless the edge intensive mode is activated. Otherwise – or for more space – he has to recharge.

Note: Our test device did not initially show us any newer firmware and the robot deactivated the laser in standby mode, but not its rotation. With a later firmware upgrade, however, this behavior no longer occurred.

The Narwal Freo costs 899 euros at market launch in Germany. An accessory set consisting of 1x main brush, 4x side brushes, 6x wipes, 2x HEPA filters, 2x tank filters and 2x cleaners is listed for 140 euros. Maybe there will be more later on Amazon.

The Narwhal Freo is a good vacuum and floor mopping robot. It lacks a vacuum in the fancy cleaning station, and since suction on carpet is good but not as good as the top-of-the-line competing models, we’d recommend the Freo to homes without pets and with more hardwood floors than carpeting. At the same time, the hard floor should better be hard-wearing, since the water supply cannot be regulated and it uses quite a lot of water for mopping. Combined with the high price of 899 euros, it makes it difficult for us to recommend the Freo. The great display for operation at the station even without an app doesn’t help and the detergent dispenser as a constant consumable is not only expensive in the long run, but also superfluous – just a little detergent in the fresh water tank will do too.