NARWAL T10 Mop Robot, 4-in-1 Robot Vacuum and Mop with Self Cleaning Station, Self Washing and Drying Robot Mop with LiDAR Navigation, Smart Mapping, 2 Suction Mode for Hard Floor and Pet Hair, White

Product Information

The Narwal T10 is a great mop and a very good vacuum; unfortunately, it’s nearly undone by an app that’s a bit of a mess. You can’t use the robot without the app, so don’t buy this robot vac/mop hybrid unless you’re willing to tolerate a steep learning curve—and a few bugs. I’ve concluded that the labor-saving benefits here are worth the pain, but my job has me learning and mastering new things almost every day. If you’re more of the “I just want it to work” mindset, steer clear of this product. Michael Brown / IDG

The Narwal did a much better job than the cloth-dragging hybrid vacuum/mops I’ve used, and about as good as I would do with a Swiffer. There was a blob of unidentifiable gunk the consistency of children’s putty that I thought sure I’d have to scrape up manually, but the Narwal scrubbed it off with no problem. Best of all, I didn’t have to clean that or any other dirt off the mop once the job was done—I just emptied the dirty water tank. Before you start a mopping run, you drop a detergent/antibacterial sheet into the Narwal T10 base station’s 5-liter (1.3-gallon) clean water tank (there’s an equal-sized waste-water tank). The detergent sheet instantly dissolves and disperses throughout the clean water. Wands inside the base station spray this water on the Narwal’s pads, and then the robot travels to the farthest point on its map and commences scrubbing the floor. “Scrubbing” is not an overstatement. The Narwal applies 10N (Newtons) of pressure to these pads as they spin. Michael Brown / IDG Mopping starts at the farthest distance from the base station to avoid dirty mops covering already-cleaned floors. Here’s a related irritation: You’ll want to give each room a familiar name. When you do this in the app, you’ll discover that there are just 12 names to choose from—you can’t create custom names or change any of the presets.The Narwal Freo mobile app falls somewhere in the middle between the five brands of robot vacuums I tried in 2021 and 2022. Most functions are accessible with a few taps, but the app isn't overly cramped or crowded. If you're curious, iRobot's Roomba app still takes the cake as the best-designed robot vacuum app. You can of course program the robot to clean on a schedule—with separate programs for vacuuming and mopping. But you’ll need to gain an understanding of Narwal’s idiosyncratic menu language before you can do that. Most of his writing has revolved around service journalism and helping people understand the latest pieces of technology. But he has done features on Pandora radio, NBA Top Shot, and what goes into building the perfect playlist. He has also written for the Library of Congress and submitted his own emoji proposal to Unicode.

Despite this unique self-cleaning mechanism, you’re going to want to pull off the pads from time to time and wash them properly by hand. Even after a cleaning in the base station, the pads were still quite dirty, so you’ll want to make sure that the pads are properly cleaned every few cycles. What we really like about the base station from a design perspective is that it almost entirely hides the T10 inside when not in use, so there's no risk of anything tripping over it.A new robot vacuum is on the scene by way of Eufy. The RoboVac X8 is now available, and it produces 2,000 pascals of suction in each of its twin turbines. A hybrid model is also available that includes a mopping function and a 250-milliliter water tank. Though cleaning power is important, the X8's ability to navigate the home is the real convenience here. All of this may sound somewhat familiar because the RoboVac X8 series models are merely rebadged versions of the RoboVac L80 that were first introduced earlier this year at CES 2021.

The base unit for the T10 is one of the biggest we’ve seen for a robot vacuum, and you’ll want to make sure that there’s enough space for it wherever it’s being set up. Inside the base station, you’ll find two large 1.1-gallon tanks – one for clean water and one for dirty water that is siphoned in while the mopping pads are being cleaned. The tanks are durable and easy to take out, and can be cleaned or refilled without any complications. Say goodbye to filling tiny trays with water – this massive tank capacity means that you can go through several cleaning cycles before the robot reminds you to add in more water or clean the dirty water tank.

Narwal vs Roomba

I didn’t find the dustbin container that large, so if you have a ton of surface area to cover in your home you may find yourself emptying out the dustbin multiple times The Narwal T10’s most attractive feature is its mopping capability. Most competing robot vac/mop hybrids carry a small tank of water around and dampen a rag that gets dragged across the floor as they navigate the room. On the Narwal T10, you detach the brush module that sweeps dirt into the path of its vacuum nozzle and mount a pair of six-inch triangular mop pads to its motorized spindles. Each of these pads has several hundred twisted fibers, each of which are about 3/8 of an inch long. Michael Brown / IDG What makes the T10 so unique is that after about five minutes or so of mopping, it will return to the base station to clean itself. Yes, you heard that right – it cleans the pads before resuming its mopping duties. Again, water is sprayed onto the pads which rotate inside the base station and rub against small grooves to dislodge dirt.