u/Max_Steiner

I bought the Narwal Flow 2 on the day it was released, and at first I was deeply disappointed with it. Terrible navigation, poor corner cleaning. I contacted support to return it, but with the new firmware updates the navigation improved significantly, so I decided to keep it.
Today, with firmware 01.08.01.00, navigation is good, although corner cleaning still needs improvement. But today I wrote to technical support again because, during a vacuuming cycle, the robot failed to recognize my cat’s vomit — luckily there wasn’t much of it — on a rubber pet mat, and simply smeared it across the surrounding floor.
When I got home, I fixed the mat and cleaned the robot. At that point, I had it run a vacuuming + mopping cycle to clean up the mess it had made. Well, the residue had dried, and despite the Flow 2 having a self-cleaning tracked mop pad and all the rest, it still wasn’t able to get the floor clean. I had to clean it manually by hand.
I wrote to support describing the situation because this kind of behavior is extremely disappointing for a robot that promised to recognize obstacles, dirt, objects, pets, and so on.
Most importantly, its mopping performance actually seems worse than the Flow 1, which I’ve seen in many reviews clean dried-on dirt very easily.
I really hope Narwal fixes these issues… It has already been two and a half months since launch. Also, the new firmware is taking quite a while to arrive, and evidently there are still many problems left to solve…

One of the reasons I bought this robot was to be able to use it when I’m not at home. I have two cats that never pee or poop around the house, but sometimes they vomit liquid or liquid with a bit of fur.

I felt reassured because I expected that, if I set the Flow 2 to vacuum only, it would avoid the cats’ vomit, but that didn’t happen. Today it went right over it and spread it all across the floor. I had to clean everything by hand, including the robot itself.

Do you think I configured something incorrectly? What settings should I check in the app?

I really hope I can solve this, because if it can’t detect cat vomit, that would be a huge problem for me…

Hi, I have just finished thoroughly testing the Narwal Flow 2 I recently purchased. I come from an old Ecovacs T30, so I was expecting a major step forward. I have tiled floors with no carpets and, needless to say, the mopping performance is exceptional — clearly much better than the T30. The vacuuming performance for pet hair is also satisfactory, and I have two cats.

However, there are a few negative aspects I really didn’t expect. First of all, I found the navigation to be poor, at least as bad as the T30’s. Aside from the strange routes it often takes, even when there is no dirt on the floor, the biggest issue for me is that it refuses to go under furniture and sofas. More precisely, under sofas that are 11 cm high, it goes in a little bit — about halfway — but then gives up and immediately backs out. The furniture is about 10 cm high, and there it doesn’t even try. Needless to say, I tried pushing it under manually while it was turned off, and it could easily fit everywhere.

Another issue is corner cleaning. The side brush is simply too short and doesn’t pick up anything from the corners.

Other than that, it seems to work properly. In the areas it can actually reach, it mops very well. However, considering the hype and the price, I am disappointed.

I am in contact with customer support, and they have been helpful so far — they replied almost immediately on a Sunday. They asked me for the serial number and some explanatory videos, which I sent right away.

They are obviously willing to accept a return, but they would like to try to solve the problem first. That is definitely a nice gesture on their part.

I would like to keep the robot, and if they really manage to fix these issues very quickly — before the return period expires — I would definitely recommend it.

What do you think? Have you experienced the same problems?