A top-mounted LCD touchscreen lets you cue up cleanings without using the app, while most robovacs only give you a single button to press. I still preferred opening my phone, but it’s a convenient touch if you have kids or a significant other that can’t be bothered installing the app. 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. Deeper and Safer Clean: The patented high-speed spinning mop pads deliver 12N downward force. The original triangular design boasts seamless rotation, leaving no streaks behind. The downward force can be flexibly chosen on various flooring types. Vinyl, tile, laminate, hardwood floors, marble...Narwal robot mop and vacuum does no harm to your floor with deep cleaning.

Tyler first started freelance writing for Fast Company after spending a decade as a computer technician repairing computers and networks in peoples’ homes. Since 2013, he has contributed to dozens of publications, including The New York Times, WIRED, PCMag, Vice, Newsweek, and many more. You can choose from 12 names to assign to the rooms in your home. You don’t get more than 12, and you can’t change any of the existing names—even if you don’t have a cloak room or a restaurant or you don’t care to map your corridor. If your floor has multiple levels you may need to move the entire base station and device to the floor you wish to clean The brush module detaches from the bottom of the vacuum so you can attach the mop pads to its motorized spindles. Greatness nearly undone by a mess of an appThis cryptic error message popped up repeatedly as I was trying to partition rooms on the app’s map of my home.

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 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 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.

Does Narwal Make Sense For Your Home?

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. 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. 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 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. 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

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.For example, because you can start vacuuming or mopping with a few taps on the screen, it means other people in the household can operate the machine without your involvement. You can also change some settings and do other minor things from the control center as well. The touchscreen felt fluid to swipe around on and was easy to read. Our test apartment consists of tiled floor with one large medium pile rug in the living room under the couch. We started off with the vacuum module attached, so that we could clean up the area of dirt and debris before mopping. When you need to mop, simply swap out the vacuum module for the two triangular pads, press the start button on the base station, and the T10 takes care of the rest. The base station first sprays clean water onto the pads, after which the robot will head to the room that’s furthest from the base station and start mopping. The logic behind this is so that the dirty pads aren’t dragged over already-cleaned surfaces.