My floor is impossibly dirty. It’s the rainy season in Oregon, and I have a doberman, a doggie door and white tile: You can do the math. While I let robot mops patrol my home regularly, I often want to tackle the problem immediately—and for that, I’ve been particularly pleased lately with the Narwal S20 Pro Cordless Vacuum Mop, currently $399.99 for Black Friday, which is 20% off the normal price of $499.99.
While stick vacuums have been quite popular for the last few years, stick mops and combo units are relatively new, and to be blunt, I’ve been unimpressed. The Dyson Submarine was a real letdown, leaking everywhere. (Dyson has a new mop, the WashG1 that I haven’t tried yet, though) Still, almost everyone has a version of this vacuum/mop, but I’ve been curious about Narwal, so I set it up. It's only been a few weeks, and I’ll be reluctant to let it go.
First, turning on the mop is like putting your foot to the floor on the gas pedal. This mop goes. Not only will it take zero effort to push it forward, you’ll be running to catch up to it—it feels like zero effort in your arms, which I love. It is also quite light, and it tilts back to move forward on it’s own; you tilt it upright to stop it from moving. The readout on the screen gives you plenty of information about what the mop is doing and it talks to you (a lot).
While this is a mop and a vacuum, it’s worth pointing out that it’s a better mop. It does just fine as a vacuum, but it's only going to pick up smaller debris due to the design of the vacuum head. For most homes, that’s fine, you won’t need more. If you have heavier duty needs, this might not be your vacuum. In the vacuum's favor, though, the design gets it right into corners and edges—more so than most stick vacuums.
The mop is nothing more than a spinning mop roller, but it does a fantastic job. It’s fast, effective and gets impossible mud and stains up. To load it with water, you pull a cartridge out of the back of the head of the mop: This was easy to get out and put back in without error. Narwal ships the stick with cleaner fluid in a squeeze bottle, making it easier to get it into the water canister. To empty the dirty water, you remove a canister along the length of the machine. If I had any complaint, this would be it. I’m so spoiled by self-emptying robot mops that having to empty a canister manually is now kinda a drag. This one has wet debris, dry debris, and a filter to clean. It’s certainly not hard to do—it only takes a moment, but I’d still rather not have to do it at all.
The whole shebang sits on a dock that protects the floor from the mop head and cleans the mop head for you while charging. If the floor is particularly dirty, it will tell you to return the mop to the charger for a cleaning before you resume.
This stick vacuum/mop is my friend, as we commune three or four times a day to clean up the muddy tracks left behind on my tile. If you're someone whose kitchen floor is always a disaster after dinner, or has pets running through, I think this is a worthy piece of cleaning machinery.
