The Narwal Freo is designed to be a fresh take on robot cleaning

TL;DR: Through March 26, you can get the Narwal Freo self-cleaning robot vacuum and mop combo for $1,049 instead of $1,299 when you use the code MASHABLE1 at checkout. That's about 19% in savings for a limited time.

While household cleaning robots continue their relentless march into homes around the globe, it’s hard not to be at least a touch dubious about those little techno-critters. And we don’t even mean in the robot takeover, singularity apocalypse, Skynet-kinda way. 

But until then, wouldn’t it be great if these little floor cleaners actually did a better job of, you know, cleaning floors? Narwal is aiming to up the ante with the Narwal Freo. Boasting significant cleaning power and the added dimension of a mopping function, this unit can help you greet the age of robot domination with clean floors.

Following up on the advances of their inaugural unit, the Narwal T10, the Freo includes a handful of smart new features. The headliner here is Narwal’s new DirtSense technology, which is designed to assess a floor’s true dirtiness, then adjust how many runs are needed to clean an area. 

From a single pass for those who run your robot vac daily to multiple runs if you don’t, the Freo tries to eliminate the need for guessing how much cleaning power you need. The DirtSense works hand-in-hand with the Smart-Swing feature, which is made to help the robot navigate as close to the wall as possible to get all those long-neglected corners and other odd angles that gather dust and grime. 

Meanwhile, the Freo’s side brushes spin at a finely calibrated 14-degree angle, which is supposed to be the perfect angle to help collect dust without spinning it back into the air.

All those cleaning powers working together in unison is the Freo’s major calling card, especially when you factor in its mopping abilities. Unlike models that require manually installing mop heads when you want to switch from vacuuming to mopping, the Freo is designed to adjust through its five different cleaning modes on the fly, automatically deploying and retracting its mophead whenever it detects hard flooring in need of a good cleaning.

With mop pads spinning at up to 180 rpm, the Freo is supposed to be capable of exerting just the right amount of humidity and pressure for the flooring type — lighter and less abrasive for wood flooring, more intensive and focused for tile, linoleum, and other less-porous surfaces.  

When it’s finished running its route, the Freo returns to its cleaning station, where the base is set to detect how dirty the mop heads are. It then rinses the mop heads using water and Narwal's exclusively formulated floor cleaner, then dries the pads off courtesy of dual 40-degree-Celcius wind tunnels that are supposed to eliminate bacterial growth and keep the mop pad fabric preserved for longer use before replacing. 

The Narwal Freo Self-Cleaning Vacuum and Mop Robot is now available for just $1,049 with coupon code MASHABLE1 — that’s $250 off through March 26 (PST).

Prices subject to change.