Narwal Freo Z Ultra review: Automatic sucking and mopping, with AI!

Narwall reached out to me back in October asking if I was interested in testing their recently released Freo Z Ultra robovac. There is not a lot of information online about the company that produces the Freo Z Ultra, from what I was able to find out, the company exists since 2017, and has patented its own DirtSense technology in China, claims to serve 1.8M+ users globally in 30+ countries and regions and boasts over 800 other patented technologies.

With that out of the way, first a disclaimer: Narwal provided a free sample without any editorial input or review pre-approval. Now some specifications:

I should mention that the price is the given MSRP. As of writing the Amazon link is offering $200 off with a coupon code, so that softens the blow a bit with regard to the cost.

First impressions

The company sent me the Freo Z Ultra, which by the way is currently their flagship product; it came in a big box, because it is bundled with the Base Station which is rather large in itself. The charging dock is almost 40 cm (15.2") deep, 43cm (16.9") wide, with a height of 46.2cm (18.1"). It houses the trash bag, of which two are included in the box, and two water tanks, one for clean, and the other for dirty water.

The top lid, which although is plastic, has a premium quality feel and weight to it, sadly, even though the build quality of it is excellent, the hinge does not utilize a soft close function, so beware of a loud "clap" when dropping it shut; seven strategically placed rubber feet are supposed to protect the lid from banging shut, but only the front two rubber feet actually protrude from the lid, with all others being lost inside their inserts.

In the box

• Freo Z Ultra Robovac x 1

• Roller Brush x 1 (pre-installed)

• Mop Pad x 2 (pre-installed)

• Base Station × 1
• Cleaning Tray × 1
• Clean Water Tank × 1
• Dirty Water Tank × 1
• Base Station Dust Bag × 1

Included Accessories:

• Extension Ramp × 1
• Side Brush × 2
• Base Station Power Cord × 1
• Floor Detergent x1
• Baseboard Cleaning Module × 1
• Baseboard Rag × 3
• Dust Bag × 1
• Replaceable Insert Bin × 1
• Dust Bin Filter × 1

Manufacturer claims

It's only fair to include the claims made by the manufacturer here too, as they are part and parcel of the selling points and highlights for this model, they are in no particular order and taken from the review brief sent to me by my contact.

• TwinAI Dodge Obstacle Avoidance
  Precise navigation and avoidance around complex obstacles and edges.
• Real-Time Adjusted Cleaning Strategy
  Targets heavy dust and liquid spills with precision, ensuring complete dirt removal.
• AI-Adaptive Hot Water Mop Washing and Drying
  Adjustable 45°C-75°C mop washing and drying for long-lasting mop performance and thorough cleaning.
• Ultra Quiet and Maintenance-free Station
  Functions for 120 days, generating half the noise of industry standards, with 45°C drying and supporting dynamic electrolyzed water sterilization to eradicate bacteria.

With that out of the way, lets continue on with my findings.

Design

The Freo Z Ultra itself follows a traditional design that you will find on many robovacs, it's essentially a circle with a raised central 'tower' that houses the LIDAR 4.0 system. The station looks quite nice and does not look out of place in my (mostly) white kitchen. All in all it looks great, doesn't look out of place, and it even matches my brabintia trash bin. The finish is a glossy white plastic, with a single white LED on the top.

On the bottom is where you will start to see the difference, and what makes it a bit more unique. Rather than a cloth attachment, which is what you will find on most robovacs that mop, the Freo Z Ultra has two full spinning mop attachments, and two sweepers. On the side there's also a detachable brush for skirting boards.

Size comparison

Here you can see that although the Base Station is large, it doesn't really take up any more room than a traditional self emptying dustbin. Okay, it is a little wider and taller, but for me, the fact it doesn't stick out so much from the wall is a win.

In comparison with my Neabot Q11 for example, you can see above that although the Narwal comes with quite a large station, most of the room is taken up in height, and it actually has a smaller footprint thanks to its depth being smaller; that's because the Freo Z Ultra enters the station completely, rather than part of the way as is the norm for robovacs with just the self emptying dustbin. It's quite innovative considering the station not only accounts for emptying the dustbin portion, but also empties dirty water, and refills with clean water mixed with detergent through a module if you have that installed, and cleans the mops on the robovac after use.

Getting started

First of all, you will have to download the Narwal app, which you can look for on the Apple App store or Google Play, or scan the QR code on the Quick Start card that is included in the box. The Narwal turns on if you dock it to the charge port, or by holding down the standby button for five seconds. Once you have the app installed on your phone, you need to choose which model you have and the app will guide you through connecting it to your WiFi.

Preparing the Base Station took the most work, as you have to remove some protective transport tape, fill and reinsert the clean and dirty water tanks, detergent, install the base ramp, and plug it in. I only had to remove some protective transport tape, rubber inserts for the bumper and install the side brush on the robot; the sweepers and mops were already installed, and there's no dustbin or water tank that can be managed inside the robot.

Once you are paired up and you have enough charge, you are guided through the app to add the model, and I was immediately prompted to install a firmware update.

After running the update, which rebooted the robovac, you can then link it with your chosen voice assistant, which is pretty effortless (1) (2) (3) and then appears in devices on the Alexa app.

As you can see with the above images, you are first asked to 'Start Mapping' the environment that the Freo Z Ultra operates in, it took the Freo Z Ultra around 31 minutes to map the ground floor of my house, which is six minutes quicker than it took the Neabot Q11. Moving back to the app, after mapping is completed, you are also offered the opportunity to edit the resulting map, which I ended up splitting into three zones.

As you may see in the second picture, a couch was detected, but it was far larger and in the wrong spot on the map, I was also able to edit down the size and place it correctly. After an actual clean, two seats were also detected. In the third image you can also see how two carpet rugs are detected, the one in the study is not completely rectangle because it only scans what it can navigate over.

Before getting started there are a few settings worth checking out. The AI DirtSense 2.0 and Obstacle Avoidance are intertwined with Freo Mind, which is something you can enable or disable, this lets the robot determine how intensively everything is cleaned, and even how often. For the past three years I have had my robovac scheduled to clean every night at 4am, and as the Neabot Q11 could only hold 250ML of water (detergent is not allowed) I removed the mop and did the floors myself, so my ground floor never gets real dirty, which the Freo Z Ultra seems to agree because it only ever gives the entire ground floor one pass with Freo Mind enabled and each setting set to "Smart".

Aside from the Smart setting for Suction, Mopping, and Coverage Precision, there are four manual settings for vacuuming, Quiet, Normal, Strong, and Super Powerful. For mopping, Low, Normal, Wet Mopping, and finally Normal and Meticulous for coverage intensity. There's also a setting for Heavy Detergent, but I do not have this installed, I have the "standard" detergent module.

In addition as you can see from the third image up above, you can even decide how often the robot returns to rinse and clean the mops, I left it on the default setting of 10 square meters. This means that the robovac has to return at least twice during a cleaning session to rinse and clean the mops, as the given area for mopping is 31m2. This also means the robovac is not spreading around dirty water; for a more intensive clean you could set it to return after every eight square meters.

Usage

The Freo Z Ultra is said to have "obstacle avoidance", the tech exists in almost all mid to high range robovacs and is not new in itself, I observed it working as intended. Rather than just bashing into table legs and chairs, it stops short of these obstacles and carefully moves forward or around them. Narwal has a few examples of cable avoidance on its website that you can view and so forth, and although that's a cool feature, I generally don't leave such items on the ground when I know a scheduled cleaning is going to take place.

I'm pleased to report that the Freo Z Ultra does not get stuck like my Neabot Q11 did at my screen door. Neabot actually pushed an update that resulted in it completely avoiding the doormat in front of my screen door, so I had to sweep/vacuum that myself, bit annoying!

As you would expect, the Freo Z Ultra detects what type of floor it is on and lifts the mop (up to 12mm) for carpets. It also has no issue navigating around the black patterns of my rug, which sometimes resulted in a "cliff detection" on the Neabot.

Quirks

I had set the Freo Z Ultra to the same schedule as the Neabot, 4am every day, but thanks to a bug in the app I was no longer able to manage the schedule or change any of the cleaning options until the app updated in late November. This bug was confirmed by my contact, so I had to be patient until I got the update, and this is important as you will see below.

The water tank lasts for five cleans, but gave an ambiguous error before the app update, it still shows that message in the schedule (images above). The first image shows that it triggered the task and then immediately stopped, zero minutes of cleaning, because the water tank was empty and the dirty water tank was full. This was with the default Vacuum and Mop setting.

In addition, the control pad on the lid of the Base Station blinks with a red ring of death. This needs to be manually reset after the dirty water tank is emptied, and the clean water tank filled and replaced. It does not reset by itself, to do this you have to press the top icon that looks like a hat with two eyes, heh.

Flashing red ring of death, every 5 days!

Once the app was updated and I could edit the schedule I changed it to Vacuum then Mop which now results in the robovac performing the full vacuum sequence and only giving the error once it completes vacuuming and is then supposed to mop.

I feel like this is quite a major bug for a $1500 device. It should be telling me after the 4th clean that it's time to empty out the dirty water and refill the clean water tank so that the cleaning operations never have to be interrupted like this. In addition the Vacuum and Mop setting is default, so I imagine a lot of buyers will be facing the same issue, if they haven't opted for the Vacuum then Mop setting.

By the way you can see from the second image above that the cleaning schedule jumps to 1h19m, up from 41 mins, so it doubles the cleaning time, but at the same time the cleaning area also goes from 31.3 square meters to around 56m2. Currently when the water runs out, I am still getting a vacuumed ground floor, which was not the case with the Vacuum and Mop setting. I passed these details along to my contact.

More quirks

As you can see from the above image (I implore you to click on it for a larger image,) for some odd reason, even with two cameras, two sweepers, "Freo Mind", Lidar 4.0, and all the other Dirt Sense 2.0 tech inside the robot as well as a side brush for edge cleaning, it failed to clean up this mess after two passes.

Normally I have my dustbin standing there in the middle, but you can clearly see the bulk of the mess is to the sides, it sort of looks like the robot may have blown it there rather than sweep it up. When I empty the trash I usually place it up on the counter (because it is then extremely light to do so) this allows the Freo Z Ultra to also mop where the dustbin would normally be. I ended up sweeping it up myself, but it seems like the Freo Z Ultra has a blind spot.

Beware of the gunk

Another thing that should be mentioned, is how dirty the base station gets. I started using it on Oct 22, and I discovered the base in that state on Dec 5; that's six weeks of daily use. Inside were hairs, 2 nuts and damp line of gunk. The third image up above is after cleaning it. I reckon it will be in a much better state after six weeks this time around, because I am now vacuuming and then mopping. It's clear that the default setting of Vacuum and Mop drags up gunk on the mops, which are then transferred to the base as it turns around and moves in to dock. To me this is another vote for Vacuum then Mop.

I passed on these details to my contact as well and will update when I hear back.

But what if I never want to change the water tanks?

A special mention should also be made for the Automatic Water Exchange System. This accessory was not shipped along with the Freo Z Ultra, and I really wanted to test this out too, but it is not available for purchase in The Netherlands. In the U.S. it costs $299.99, which adds quite a bit to the total cost, but with the current $200 off coupon available on Amazon, maybe it's a viable option for prospective buyers.

If I am able to secure this Automatic Water Exchange System, I will be sure to update this review with my findings.

Conclusion

This definitely feels and looks like a premium product, but after weeks of use there are a few quirks that I am not happy with, such as a good level of mess being left behind (not just the one example I shared here) that I never experienced with the Neabot Q11. Such things can probably be fixed with a firmware update, as I expect it has everything to do with the decision making process of Freo Mind. I have not yet experimented with disabling the Smart option and just setting levels of suction and mopping myself, also because the Smart setting is supposed to decide to give another pass if it comes across a particularly dirty bit of floor.

I have not utilized the customer support yet, mainly because my experience with such help centers are just people that read back the FAQ and answers that are also present in the app, which by the way are quite extensive. I might get to the point where I send feedback, which is possible through an email to Narwal Support.

One thing I can say, is that I definitely see the difference with the mop ability coupled with the detergent module, my floors are really shining. It's just the odd bits of crap left behind sometimes that I can't quite figure out yet.

As I have said in previous robovac reviews, they all need a little help too. As you can see in the above image, I make the Kitchen Freo Z Ultra-friendly before I go to bed. It's up to you, of course, but I like having the entire space under my Kitchen island cleaned, not just parts of it.

Would I recommend the Freo Z Ultra? It's quite an investment, and I think the problems I pointed out should be fixable with a firmware update, simply choosing Vacuum then Mop, should also keep my base station in a better state, because the mop will not be dragging around gunk like it was with Vacuum and Mop. If you go for this, I'd recommend getting the Automatic Water Exchange System too, unless you are cool with managing the two water tanks every few days.

All in all I do think it's a great product with a few quirks that can be fixed.

• Narwal Freo Z Ultra at Amazon for $1,299.99 (with in page coupon code)
• Narwal Freo Z Ultra at official website for $1,499.99
• Narwal Automatic Water Exchange System at official website or $299.99

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