I’m lazy.
I quite like doing as little as possible that resembles a “chore”, and yet, I enjoy living in a nice, clean, tidy space. You might think these two attributes are at odds with each other, and in a way, they are … however not entirely. Even a lazy person can have a moderately clean space with a little bit of help, and that’s precisely what Narwal’s Freo Z10 robot vacuum offers me.
A little bit of help… and it goes a long way.
What is it?
In a nutshell, the Narwal Freo Z10 is a robot vacuum and mop system. Superficially, it presents the same aesthetic that robot vacuums have since their inception – little round discs that float around your house, vacuuming up dust, hair, crumbs and whatever else.
However, there are some marked differences between the Freo Z10 and most other robot vacuums I’ve seen, and they really set it apart.
For starters:
- Initial setup is really quick – gone are waiting three or four hours for a robot vacuum to explore every angle of every nook and cranny. I reckon Freo Z10 mapped my apartment in about 10 minutes, accurately, and then ready to get to work.
- It features a base station which, although not exactly small, is inobtrusive and functional – it contains fresh water for the mop, a detergent bottle to keep your floors actually clean (not just watered down), and a grey water tank.
- It’s not an obligate sweeper – while most robot vacs tie their sweeper arms to their wheels (so they sweep if they’re moving, vacuuming or not), the Freo Z10 can stop its sweeping function and fold its ‘arms’ out of the way. This makes it easier to travel around your place.
- It combines visual and laser sensing as well as bump sensors, making it extremely adept at navigating around furniture, feet, and other obstacles. It performs better than any other robot vac I’ve tried.
- The mop function is actually quite good – robot vac mopping has always been a bit of an afterthought, in my view, and not one that’s well done. I’d wager the Freo Z10 mops about as well as I could by hand, doesn’t wet the carpet when travelling between wet areas, and cleans up entirely by itself.
- The design of the roller brush means that it doesn’t get wrapped in hair within a few days – a common problem with most modern vacuums, the Freo Z10 avoids this completely. In the two or three weeks I’ve been reviewing it, I’ve not had to remove a single hair from its roller.
This last point is one I’d like to dwell on. Anyone – and I do mean anyone – who’s had a robot vac or a Dyson stick vac or anything similar, anything with a roller, knows what an absolutely disgusting job it is to remove hair from the roller brush. Even if there are no people with long hair in your house, somehow, your vacuum will get gummed up with long hair within a few days and removing it is gross. Sometimes it comes away easily, other times you need a knife or scissors to pry it off.
With Freo Z10’s DualFlow Tangle Free System, you can literally forget about this. Its three-step system will remove the long hair from your place every time, and you’ll never have to cut it out of your vacuum. Its clever sweeper arms can fold into different shapes when it detects a hair tangle, and it spins them down to the roller which effortlessly sucks the hair off and into the dustbin.
What else does it excel at?
I think the thing that I like the most is that, for the most part, I don’t have to think about or see the Freo Z10, whether it’s working or resting. When its resting, it’s quiet and out of the way.. yes it takes up a bit of space in my laundry, but I can close the door, and that’s done. I just have to make sure the door’s open before I leave for work in the morning, and Freo Z10 can get to work.
When its working, it’s quiet, deftly avoids most obstacles (though it can get caught up on mobile phone charger cables) and works quickly. It can mop and vacuum my entire apartment in an hour or two, and it’s so quiet that I don’t usually hear it should I happen to be working from home… unless of course it decides to vacuum under my feet.
Yes, I don’t let it go into the kids bedroom, because they’re pathologically incapable of picking up socks, cables, toys, and whatnot, and I don’t really want my house clean to be interrupted by the Freo Z10 getting trapped in there before it’s finished everything else.
It’s great in the kitchen, too – it vacuums first, then comes back to mop after on its usual program (which you can customise as you see fit), but it’s good for cleaning up ad-hoc messes too. The other day I spilled a coffee in the kitchen, and while I picked up the big bits of the broken cup, there were little shards of ceramic everywhere, as well as most of the contents.
Freo Z10 went to work, and while it vacuumed first – and cleaned up all the shards – it did mean it drove through the coffee and I was a little concerned it might wheel coffee tracks over the carpet to get back to its base station. I’m not exactly sure how, but it this didn’t eventuate – the mop pads definitely were a bit brown, but it lifted them out of the way to drive over the carpet, cleaned itself, came back and finished the job. With no intervention whatsoever – besides picking up the larger ceramic pieces that you’d never vacuum anyway – my kitchen was returned to a sparkling clean state within ten minutes.
So, too, were Freo Z10’s mop pads – the base station has a deep wash cycle after each mopping exercise, which rinses, washes, and then dries the mop pads. The downside is that it gets through a bit of water to do this, and the grey water tank needs emptying after three or four cycles, but the plus side is a functional mop every time, no stinky wet-mop smell, and a clean house.
Can’t complain.
What can we complain about?
Not a great deal.
The elephant in the room is the price – Narwal’s Freo Z10 retails for $1,599 at the time of writing, down from its launch price of $1,999. It remains quite expensive, though, and there are definitely more affordable options on the market. However, it is a case of getting what you pay for, and with the Freo Z10, you get all the bells and whistles. It’s a top class vacuum.
When I say you get all the bells and whistles, though, there are a couple missing. Yes, Freo Z10 integrates with your choice of voice assistant from Google, Amazon or Apple .. but the integration isn’t amazing. I had a few goes with Alexa and found that it generally didn’t work all that well – after pairing, it seemed reluctant to actually work, though this might’ve been more Alexa’s shortcoming than anything else. It pairs to Google Home, too, but it seems that when its paired with Alexa, you can’t pair it with anything else, which is a bit limiting if you happen to use both.
It doesn’t integrate with Home Assistant, and Narwal’s developers have (according to discussion on Reddit) declined to make that possible in future, which smart home aficionados might be a little upset about. As much as I’d love this feature, it’s easy enough to run Freo Z10 on a schedule, and the phone app makes it easy to schedule ad-hoc tasks.
The obstacle detection is really good – probably among the best in class – but even still, Freo Z10 manages to get caught up. Twice I’ve found it with a mouthful of my USB-C phone charger, once it ate my daughter’s swimming bag, and it chowed down on a hairbrush (??) one day.
However, these were minor things and easily adjusted to avoid future problems, and in the last week, there’s been no jams or anything. Yes.. you do have to clean up a bit for your cleaner, the cliche holds true.
Should you buy one?
Yes.
Probably the only reasons you’d think otherwise is the cost, if you don’t have room for what isn’t the smallest base station around, or if you’ve already got a decent robot vacuum.
Otherwise, for the lazy homekeeper, the Narwal Freo Z10 is a welcome addition and will reduce your household chores significantly. Yes, it can’t clean your toilets or scrub your shower down, but it can vacuum, mop and sweep, freeing you up for those less pleasant jobs.
Narwal’s Freo Z10 retails for $1,599 and you can buy it online from Narwal Australia, Amazon (with delivery in a couple of days), or you can find it in-store at Costco nationwide, Good Guys, and JB HiFi (though not all retailers have actual stock, it might be more a delivery thing).
However you get one, we recommend that you do, and you won’t be sorry.
