Powerful mopping, but not quite as flexible as the competition.
A neat robot vacuum cleaner and mop, the Narwal Freo Z Ultra has a clever stick-on duster for cleaning around the edges of rooms as it goes. It’s also a good navigator, and can use its cameras to spot stains and adapt its cleaning routine automatically.
Performance was good on hard floors, both with vacuuming and mopping tests, but carpet vacuuming wasn’t so good. At this price, there are rival vacuum cleaners that offer more, including threshold climbing, deep pile carpet cleaning and the ability to lower navigation sensors for under-furniture cleaning.
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Automated cleaning -
Robot fully enters dock -
No-tangle brush
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Not so good at vacuuming carpet -
Lacks advanced features that other flagship models have
Key Features
Introduction
The Narwal Freo Z Ultra is the company’s brand-new high-end robot vacuum cleaner and mop, designed to compete with the best. To that end, it has some unique features, including dual RGB cameras and a clip-on duster to help clean kitchen plinths.
These little add-ons make the Narwal Freo Z Ultra stand out, but the unit is a better mopper than a vacuum cleaner, particularly on carpet.
Design and Features
- Side-cleaning duster
- Self-cleaning and self-emptying docking station
- The app is confusing in places
As with most of the high-end competition, such as the Roborock Saros 10 or the Dreame X50 Ultra Complete, the Narwal Freo Z Ultra comes with a large dock that can empty the robot’s bin, clean its mopping pads and refill with fresh water.
With Narwal’s dock, the robot enters at a slight angle, so it tucks itself fully out of the way, rather than sticking out slightly. It’s a small thing, but it does mean that the dock looks neater with the robot docked.
At the top are two water tanks: a 4.5-litre model for clean water and a 4.1-litre tank for dirty water. That’s about the right level of mismatch, given that some water is left on the floor, so the dirty tank needs emptying roughly when the clean tank needs refilling.
There’s also a clip-on detergent tank for deeper cleaning. As it uses a proprietary connector, you need to buy replacements from Narwal, and the company only recommends using its own cleaning solution.
Dust is sucked into a 2.5-litre bin on the left-hand-side of the docking station, which should mean you can go for seven weeks between having to replace them.
Pop the robot out, and it looks like many other models, with a round body. This one has a fixed LiDAR dome on top for navigation. That makes for quick mapping, but the dome can’t be retracted into the robot’s body to let it go under low furniture; a trick that both the Dreame X50 Ultra Complete and Roborock Saros 10 can manage.
At the front are dual RGB cameras, which are used for object detection and avoidance, as well as providing an optional live feed, should you want to keep an eye on your home while you’re away.
There’s a small bin, accessible through the top of the robot, for local dust collection. This needs to be removed and cleaned, along with the filter, once per week.
Turn the robot over and there’s a fairly standard layout, with a brush roll for hard floors and carpets, and two side brushes for edge cleaning. Notably, neither brush can extend for better edge and corner cleaning; something the high-end competition offers.
Dual microfibre mopping pads are present. These aren’t round, but have a triangular shape, so that they fit together as they rotate, to clean without leaving a gap. That’s similar to the design of the Eufy X10 Omni’s mopping pads.
These pads can lift 12mm off the ground when carpet is detected, which is enough for most short pile carpet; however, the mop pads can’t be left behind to let the Narwal Freo Z Ultra deal with deep pile carpet.
The Narwal Freo Z Ultra does have one unique feature: the clip on fluffy duster that goes on the side. As the robot moves along your kitchen plinths, this duster can remove dust as it goes.
Control of the Narwal Freo Z Ultra is via the Narwal app. Once connected to Wi-Fi, the app got me to perform a mapping run to get the layout of my home, suggesting room layouts automatically.
I found that the map wasn’t quite as detailed or as easy to read as with Roborock or Dreame’s app. However, the layout was roughly correct; for those times when rooms are put in the wrong place, the map can be split or merged.
No-go, no-vacuum and no-mop zones can be placed on the map to prevent the Narwal Freo Z Ultra from going places you don’t want it to, such as over a delicate rug. There’s also an option to add furniture to rooms, which act as quick-select zones, such as for cleaning up after eating.
Carpet should be recognised automatically, but I could also set the floor type by room to help the Narwal Freo Z Ultra make better cleaning decisions.
Cleaning options are set by room or by zone (either furniture or a zone that you draw on the map). Cleaning options then include vacuum and mop, vacuum only, mop only or vacuum and then mop.
There’s then a choice to use Freo Mind, which automatically adjusts the cleaning based on the level of dirt detected, or you can override and set the number of passes, vacuum power, mop wetness, and coverage route.
For mopping, there’s an option to adjust the water temperature based on the type of stain detected, which is very clever.
The one option that confused me was the one for Heavy Duty Detergent, which was greyed out. On further inspection, it turns out that there’s an option to install a secondary heavy-duty cleaning detergent tank behind the dust bin; an option that’s not very well advertised.
Performance
- So-so carpet performance
- Vacuums well on hard floors
- Good mopping performance
I set the Narwal Freo Z Ultra to clean the Trusted Reviews Home Technology Lab, starting with my carpet test, where I added one teaspoon of flour to the test carpet. After two passes on the highest vacuum mode, the 12,000Pa vacuum cleaner did alright, but left quite a bit of mess behind.
The direct rivals, the Roborock Saros 10 and the Dreame X50 Ultra Complete, have more power and clean better.
Moving to the hard floor test, the same spill was collected with ease, leaving no trace of dust behind.
Edge performance was good, too. Despite not having a robot arm for side cleaning, the Narwal Freo Z Ultra managed to clean well to the edge of my room, although it did spray some of the mess out onto the floor, which was collected when the robot went back to mop.
I then moved on to my stain cleaning tests, using the Freo Mind setting to let the robot automatically spot and adapt to stains. After a couple of passes, my coffee stain was completely removed.
The same was true of the red wine stain, which was easily removed by the combination of hot water and detergent.
My tougher mud stain left behind a small outline, and I needed to run the mopping-only mode set to two passes to let the robot clean this.
My toughest test is with a dried-on ketchup stain. This proved hard for the robot to remove, and it left a lot of mess behind.
Switching to manual mode, I set the robot to maximum water usage for two passes. This helped remove a lot more of the ketchup, but even after four passes, there was some mess left behind: the Saros 10 and X50 Ultra Complete did better.
Putting human hair on the ground, the Narwal Freo Z Ultra managed to collect this without tangling, which is good to see: nobody enjoys cutting away hair wrapped around a brush roll.
Navigation was generally good, with the Narwal Freo Z Ultra avoiding my obstacles, including shoes, cables and pet mess. However, there was one part of the lab between a docking station of another robot vacuum cleaner and a power station that the Narwal Freo Z Ultra kept wedging itself between. Once caught, I had to free it each time.
Battery life is rated at a maximum of 2.5 hours on the lowest setting. As I find with so much of the competition, the Narwal Freo Z Ultra has enough battery on high power settings to cover an average floor multiple times, with power left for spot jobs.
Should you buy it?
Buy if you want powerful automated mopping
With the ability to sense and adapt to stains, combined with hot water and detergent, this robot is a decent mopper.
Don’t buy if you want more advanced features
If you want a robot that can climb thresholds, fit under low furniture or swing an arm out for edge cleaning, look elsewhere.
Final Thoughts
A generally clever robot with automatic cleaning routines, the Narwal Freo Z Ultra is a powerful mopper on most stains.
It does lag behind the competition for carpet cleaning, and it doesn’t have some of the more advanced features that the high-end competition have, such as step climbing, robot arms for edge cleaning, and the ability to remove mop pads to deal with deep pile carpet.
At this price, then, there are better options in my guide to the best robot vacuum cleaners.
How we test
We test every robot vacuum cleaner we review thoroughly over an extended period of time. We use industry standard tests to compare features properly. We’ll always tell you what we find. We never, ever, accept money to review a product.
Find out more about how we test in our ethics policy.
- Used as our main robot vacuum cleaner for the review period
- We test for at least a week
- Tested with real-world dirt in real-world situations for fair comparisons with other vacuum cleaners
FAQs
There’s one main detergent tank, but there’s an option for a heavy duty detergent tank, too.
Test Data
Full Specs
| Narwal Freo Z Ultra Review | |
|---|---|
| USA RRP | $1499.99 |
| Manufacturer | – |
| Size (Dimensions) | 431 x 388 x 462 MM |
| Weight | 12.3 KG |
| Release Date | 2024 |
| First Reviewed Date | 22/04/2025 |
| Model Number | Narwal Freo Z Ultra |
| Vacuum cleaner type | Robot vacuum cleaner and mop |
| Bin capacity | 2.5 litres |
| Modes | Vacuum, vacuum and mop, mop only, vacuum and then mop |
| Filters | 1 (washable) |
| Run time | 2.5 hrs min |
| Brushes | 1x brush roll, 2x side brushes |
| Mop Option | 2x microfibre mops |
| Smart assistants | No |
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