Top pick
This meticulous, hardworking robot mop-vacuum combo is a great value. It offers excellent mess detection and two spinning mop pads.
The Narwal Freo X10 Pro is a comprehensive, relatively quiet robot mop-vacuum combo that vacuums and mops with almost-over-the-top thoroughness (thanks in part to its AI-assisted smart-cleaning feature). (The Freo X10 Pro is a near-identical updated version ofto our previous pick, the discontinued Narwal Freo Pro.)
It’s an excellent cleaner, especially on edges and corners. With precise routing and effective obstacle detection, the Freo X10 Pro was nearly the best at vacuuming up debris from hard-to-reach places, like under tables, near couches, and alongside showers and toilets. (Only our much-pricier upgrade pick, the Roborock Saros 10, vacuumed better.) When mopping, its mop pad extends out from the machine to clean along edges, and to get into grooves and grout lines. The mopping edge coverage isn’t perfect, but it’s about as good as you’ll find among mid-priced robots.
In its AI smart-cleaning mode, the Freo X10 Pro works long and hard on tough messes. Narwal’s AI-assisted “Freo” mode automatically identifies especially dirty areas of your home, and it makes sure the machine spends extra time on them. Our much-battered test carpet got one of its most thorough and exacting vacuum cleanings from the Freo Pro. And this model mopped a bathroom with muddy footprints and a spilled seltzer multiple times, until it was clean.
The dock is relatively compact and smartly designed. This model’s dock is one of the most compact among those of our picks, and it has a clean, soft shape. Clean- and dirty-water tanks are color-coded, and they have easy-to-carry handles. Better yet, the on-dock dustbag can hold dry debris for two to three months. (The company claims 120 days between changes, but this depends on how often you clean and whether you have pets or kids.) The robot charges and self-cleans by parking itself fully underneath the dock, which reduces its footprint. The on-dock mop cleaning and hot-air drying help to keep the pads fresh, even after especially tough cleans.
The app is intuitive. From the app’s home screen, it’s easy to target or skip a specific room or area, or to toggle cleaning modes (vacuum and mop, vacuum then mop, vacuum only, or mop only). And you can program additional runs on high-traffic areas, set the order you’d like rooms cleaned, or tell the bot to avoid carpets entirely.
You can purchase an extended warranty. The Freo X10 Pro has a standard one-year warranty. But you can purchase an additional year for $60, which is the least expensive extended warranty of all our picks.
Flaws but not dealbreakers
Cleaning is slow. The Freo X10 Pro’s fastidiousness translates into some longer-than-average cleaning runs, particularly if it gets going on a dirty carpet. You can toggle to non-AI-assisted modes to speed up the process, but the robot won’t be quite as thorough.
Its spinning mops can spread messes. Across all robot mop-vacuum combos, spinning mops tend to spread and dilute larger messes like puddles, and they can sometimes track debris, like wet mud. Setting the Narwal to avoid carpets and to clean its mop pads more frequently can help.
It occasionally gets confused or stuck. When we moved items around the space it was cleaning, the Freo X10 Pro sometimes had a hard time locating itself, so we had to either re-map its route or manually intervene. (We encountered this with many combos we tested.) Keep in mind that if you move the dock after it’s initially set up, it will likely require a map reset. And like any robot vacuum, the Freo X10 Pro can snag on carpet edges or cords, so you’ll have to tidy up before sending it out (hough its navigation and obstacle avoidance is markedly better than its discontinued predecessor, the Freo Pro).
