Narwal Flow 2 Auto Refill - Small Review
I am coming from an Eufy S1 Pro ...
I also do NOT have rugs, I'm all LVP and tile.
I have the latest firmware: 1.08.00.07
If you have a little bit of plumbing skills, and your home supports it, spend the extra bucks and get the auto refill version. My wife made the comment that "it goes to the base station a lot more than the old one". It works out to about once per room with the Flow 2, my Eufy was about 2 times the whole mopping run - both were default settings. If you were to manually mop a room, how often would you be rinsing the mop out? Additionally, I now have unlimited HOT water, so to a degree (pun intended) why not go and rinse things out more often. This is REAL slick if you can make it work.
In short, my floors have never looked or felt cleaner. Period.
Cleaning out the base rinse area is a little harder as you have to reach into the base and pull it out versus just having open access. The dirt bag and soap section are all easy access. A small price to pay versus having to dump/refill water tanks and take apart the robot to clean out the dirty water area (Eufy S1 Pro).
The Flow 2 needed a couple of days to figure some things out. I was initially disappointed for the first few days as it did not seem to want to go underneath my dinning room table. My S1 Pro did that area just fine going in between the chair legs just without issue. After a couple of days the Flow 2 finally started going underneath the table and zooming in and around the chair legs. Same with my fireplace. I do have a small transition of the flooring (LVP to granite) immediately in front of the fireplace. It finally went to that small area after a couple of days. I did not do anything special, it just started going to those areas.
Yes, the app needs some work. To split a room there must be a clear divide. You cannot have another way to get to a location. With a little imagination however, I was able to split and join "rooms" enough times to get the final room divides I was after. Scheduling seemed intuitive enough. I simply created shortcuts for the rooms and cleaning conditions I wanted. I then created schedules based off of those shortcuts.
In my kitchen my cabinets have an overhang/toe kick. My S1 Pro fit underneath with battle scars to show for it, but it never got stuck. The Flow 2 could not. In fact, it actually got stuck underneath a few spots when it tried. I had to puts some no go zones in those sections. With this being said, because the Flow 2 has the extending mop, and the higher suction, it cleans those areas about on par with the S1 Pro as the S1 Pro does not get close to the edges even though can can go underneath.
Time to completion I will say is about a tie for my home. When I have the Flow 2 in the "Freo Mind" mode, it wants to take 2 passes (I have it set to Vacuum and Mop at the same time) for my kitchen and dinning room where all of the other rooms it just wants to do a single pass. It takes about 10 minutes longer for the Flow 2 total. If the Flow 2 did a single pass for all rooms, the time to completion would probably be about as close as you can get it between the two.
I thought the S1 Pro was quiet. The Flow 2 beats that easy at least for my settings.
After it is done its cleaning and drying, the mop looks pristine and is as dry as a bone. It is warm as a result of the heated drying.
Vacuuming emptying is better. I do have a small dog. With my Eufy I would have to clean out its brush and the robots dust bin quite often. The Flow 2 brush still looks brand new without a hair to be found. There were some hairs in the Flow 2 robot's dust bin by the filter. The rest of the dust bin however was empty. The Flow 2 is considerably better in this regard. Same with the Eufy's spinning arms where I would have to take the arms off and remove wound up hairs. The single arm on the Flow 2 thus far is free from hairs. The jury is still out on this one. We'll see if it holds up over time. Initial impressions though are good. The whole applying heat and disinfecting the bag is kind of slick.
In review however, my biggest complaint is the overhang on my cabinets. No change here as once a week I would get a "normal" vacuum to get those areas if needed even with the S1 Pro. Not having to deal with ANY water of any kind is HUGE. Even if you go with another brand, but can spring and make work an auto refill/dump version - get it. The clean quality on the floors is the best I've experienced with the Flow 2.