This cryptic error message popped up repeatedly as I was trying to partition rooms on the app’s map of my home. And some of the available names are just…strange. You can’t label the room where you eat your meals “dining room,” but you can call it “restaurant.” There is a “kitchen” label, fortunately. You can name your master bedroom as such, but you can have only one other bedroom, and it will be labeled “secondary bedroom” or “children room.” You can have a “study,” but not a home office; and you can have a “living room” but not a home theater, great room, or rumpus room. You can have only one bathroom. Your remaining choices are “cloak room,”“corridor,”“balcony,” and “other.” Michael Brown / IDG The Narwal did a much better job than the cloth-dragging hybrid vacuum/mops I’ve used, and about as good as I would do with a Swiffer. There was a blob of unidentifiable gunk the consistency of children’s putty that I thought sure I’d have to scrape up manually, but the Narwal scrubbed it off with no problem. Best of all, I didn’t have to clean that or any other dirt off the mop once the job was done—I just emptied the dirty water tank.

The brush module detaches from the bottom of the vacuum so you can attach the mop pads to its motorized spindles. Greatness nearly undone by a mess of an app What makes the T10 so unique is that after about five minutes or so of mopping, it will return to the base station to clean itself. Yes, you heard that right – it cleans the pads before resuming its mopping duties. Again, water is sprayed onto the pads which rotate inside the base station and rub against small grooves to dislodge dirt. I didn’t find the dustbin container that large, so if you have a ton of surface area to cover in your home you may find yourself emptying out the dustbin multiple times A new robot vacuum is on the scene by way of Eufy. The RoboVac X8 is now available, and it produces 2,000 pascals of suction in each of its twin turbines. A hybrid model is also available that includes a mopping function and a 250-milliliter water tank. Though cleaning power is important, the X8's ability to navigate the home is the real convenience here. All of this may sound somewhat familiar because the RoboVac X8 series models are merely rebadged versions of the RoboVac L80 that were first introduced earlier this year at CES 2021.Our test apartment consists of tiled floor with one large medium pile rug in the living room under the couch. We started off with the vacuum module attached, so that we could clean up the area of dirt and debris before mopping. Here’s a related irritation: You’ll want to give each room a familiar name. When you do this in the app, you’ll discover that there are just 12 names to choose from—you can’t create custom names or change any of the presets. Most of his writing has revolved around service journalism and helping people understand the latest pieces of technology. But he has done features on Pandora radio, NBA Top Shot, and what goes into building the perfect playlist. He has also written for the Library of Congress and submitted his own emoji proposal to Unicode.

Three Mop Drying Modes: Mop pads can be foul if not drying well after mopping. Freo robot vacuum and mop combo feature dual air tunnels with 40℃ gentle heat, ensuring the mop pads are thoroughly dried after every use. Every mopping is simple and sanitary. Before you start a mopping run, you drop a detergent/antibacterial sheet into the Narwal T10 base station’s 5-liter (1.3-gallon) clean water tank (there’s an equal-sized waste-water tank). The detergent sheet instantly dissolves and disperses throughout the clean water. Wands inside the base station spray this water on the Narwal’s pads, and then the robot travels to the farthest point on its map and commences scrubbing the floor. “Scrubbing” is not an overstatement. The Narwal applies 10N (Newtons) of pressure to these pads as they spin. Michael Brown / IDG The mobile app features scheduled cleaning, map management, and will show the robot's real-time cleaning process, among other things. It wasn't a groundbreaking app in any way, but it didn't need to be. Tyler first started freelance writing for Fast Company after spending a decade as a computer technician repairing computers and networks in peoples’ homes. Since 2013, he has contributed to dozens of publications, including The New York Times, WIRED, PCMag, Vice, Newsweek, and many more.If your floor has multiple levels you may need to move the entire base station and device to the floor you wish to clean The Narwal T10’s most attractive feature is its mopping capability. Most competing robot vac/mop hybrids carry a small tank of water around and dampen a rag that gets dragged across the floor as they navigate the room. On the Narwal T10, you detach the brush module that sweeps dirt into the path of its vacuum nozzle and mount a pair of six-inch triangular mop pads to its motorized spindles. Each of these pads has several hundred twisted fibers, each of which are about 3/8 of an inch long. Michael Brown / IDG