I’ve always liked the idea of owning a robot vacuum, but I’ve never really taken the plunge. Mostly because they’re often super expensive, and I could never really justify the cost. But now that I’m a time-poor girlie who has both a 5-9 and 9-5 and lives in a sharehouse with four roommates, my boyfriend and our cute cocker spaniel, I’ve been convinced I need one — enter Narwal’s new Freo Z Ultra.
The Freo Z Ultra is said to be one of the best robot vacuums yet, and it’s launching in Australia on September 26. Now, luckily for me, I got my hands on one early to review it first-hand to see if it’s worth the hefty price tag.
So let’s get into it, shall we?
Table of contents
Is the Narwal Freo Z Ultra easy to set up?
The Narwal Freo Z Ultra comes pretty much entirely assembled. You’ve only got to pop together a few bits for the machine and the station. Then, once you’ve found a home for the base and a charging port and it’s all connected, you’ll need to download the app. Once the app is paired with the Freo Z Ultra, it’ll run you through all the standard setup stuff, including making an account and naming your new child. We’ve fondly named ours Emily after an old housemate who was obsessed with vacuuming. Once Emily was all set, we let her roam free (AKA map the house).
While she was mapping, she scanned our house and surroundings in full 360 degrees to instantly create a detailed four-layer 3D map and plan out the most efficient route. She did this by using a dual RGB camera and dual AI chips (both of which aren’t shared or uploaded to a cloud). These features also come in handy when the vacuum is cleaning; it uses two cameras to constantly scan while cleaning and identify objects and decide how to clean around them.
Considering the size of our house (four bedrooms, two bathrooms, kitchen and lounge), this really didn’t take all that long, and that’s likely thanks to the brilliant tech.
Speaking of tech, the Freo Z Ultra also has a baseboard cleaning extension to help remove dust from your skirting boards. Hallelujah! I won’t have to get down on my hands and knees to dust those bad boys. So be sure to set that up, too.
What’s the App like?
As with all robot vacuum cleaners, there’s an app you’ll need to download to set everything up and check in with your robot vacuum. App features include and are not limited to:
- Manually control the robot
- Manage maps
- Create a custom cleaning schedule
- Create maps for multi-story homes
- Add furniture and obstacles to maps
- Adjust cleaning settings
- Adjust mopping settings
- Adjust cleaning sequence
- Change smart settings
- View cleaning history
- View through the camera and speak through the device
- Turn on do-not-disturb settings
Is the Narwal Freo Z Ultra good?
We’ve been putting little Emily to work for the last two weeks or so, and we love her. As I mentioned, we live in a shared house with six people and a cocker spaniel. You can only imagine what gets tracked through the house regularly.
Let’s start with the vacuum. According to Narwal, the vacuum has a suction power of 12,000Pa, which should remove up to 99 per cent of dirt from floors, carpets, and crevices. We have tile and hardwood floors, so this was certainly true for us. I also loved the fact that we could program the suction power level — ambient, quiet, normal, strong, super powerful. Of course, it’s worth noting that the more suction power you choose, the louder the robot vacuum will be. It starts at around 41.6 dB and increases to 65.6 dB while vacuuming and 68.2 dB while in self-emptying mode. It’s around two to three decibels lower than the average robot. We’ve had her burring around the house for two weeks, and it’s pretty much become white noise anyway. I just probably wouldn’t schedule her at night if sound travels through your home.
When she goes in for a cleaning pitstop, she goes full turbo mode with auto cleaning, electro-water sterilization, and hot air drying. It also has 120-day dust storage before it requires changing.
I’ve always put off buying a robot vacuum cleaner because I assumed the setup would be a hassle. But the Narwal Freo Z Ultra was easy and took under 30 minutes. Along with the robot vacuum itself, the Freo Z Ultra comes with a base station (think of this as his little house), debris bags, side brushes, mop detergent and micro fibre baseboard cloths. Once we unboxed everything, we had to assemble a few pieces, find a suitable space for the base, and download the app.
Now for mopping. The Narwal Freo Z Ultra has two large water tanks (clean and dirty) and a cleaning detergent in the base to help it mop the floors efficiently. The two circle mops mimic hand-cleaning (180RPM) and a downward pressure of 1.2kgs to remove even the most stubborn stains. It was actually really impressive. Another mopping feature we also loved was the auto-flooring detection, which recognises the floor type and adjusts the cleaning pressure. e.g 7N for wood floors and 12N for tiles. It also has an impressive weather adaptive feature that detects the mop’s dampness based on the weather to clean the floors without soaking them.
We also loved that it vacuums the floor and then mops it, meaning she only has to do one lap around the house to complete the job.
Another feature I adored and that also made me giggle is that the Freo Z Ultra comes with headlights, so it can navigate in darker spaces and at night. The battery life is also pretty impressive; according to the brand, it can be up to 150 square meters in three hours. It doesn’t take that long for it to do our whole house, so she hasn’t gone flat so far.
The base station is also one of the best I’ve seen. It includes auto dust emptying, auto dust bag drying, electrolytic water sterilization, auto detergent dispenser, auto station cleaning, AI DirtSense hot water mop washing, heat air drying, auto water exchange system, powerful stain remover, and wood floor maintainer.
Anything you should be aware of?
A few things you should be aware of if you plan on purchasing the Freo Z Ultra. I haven’t tested it on carpet, so I can’t speak to how good or shit it might be. However, the brand says it offers a professional level of cleaning, so it boosts suction to tackle deep dirt in the carpet and lifts mop to keep carpets dry. Smart!
Another thing to be aware of is that your privacy is kept intact. According to Narwal, images taken by the Freo Z Ultra are analysed on the AI chip to protect your privacy and are not shared with any cloud by default.
It also comes with a child/pet lock to prevent accidental touches from your kids and pets.
Is the Narwal Freo Z Ultra worth the price tag?
The Narwal Freo Z Ultra launches in Australia today, and will set you back around $2,499. But is it worth your hard-earned cash? I’m going to say it depends on your needs. We finally decided to cave in and get a robot vacuum to help maintain a good level of tidiness in our sharehouse throughout the week since we’re all so busy coming and going, and it’s already paid off. I hate walking around the house and feeling shit under my feet, so the level of satisfaction it gives me is worth it. Aside from that, it actually cleans really bloody well. Our white tile and hardwood floors have never looked better.
I understand this isn’t an essential purchase for most people, but an investment. And if you’ve made it this far, you’re obviously seriously considering it.
Right now, Narwal is offering PEDESTRIAN.TV readers a cheeky $400 discount, bringing the price down to $2,099. You just need to shop via this link.
Where can you buy the Narwal Freo Z Ultra?
Right now, you can only shop it directly on Narwal. However, we’ve been told it’ll be available on Amazon in October.
The TL;DR
Overall, we love the Freo Z Ultra. It’s super handy to clean the house during the week and helps us get through until we can do our deeper cleans on the weekends. While it might be on the price side, it’s already more than paid for itself in the time it’s given me back during the week and for how clean our floors look and feel.
Image Credit: Bree Grant — PEDESTRIAN.TV / Narwal
The post I Tried Narwal’s New Robot Vacuum Before It Landed In Australia, Here Are My Honest Thoughts appeared first on PEDESTRIAN.TV .
