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Robot vacuum releases for 2026 kicked off in February and have been relentless since. Compared to multiple pre-spring release dates, Narwal’s April 13 launch of the Narwal Flow 2 feels a little behind. A new roller mop robot entering the fold at this point would need to have a little extra sparkle to stand out — to the average buyer, and to me, a vacuum reviewer who has had at least three robot vacuum and mop combos under her roof at any given point since January.

The roller mop is more flat and rectangular than most cylindrical ones.
Credit: Leah Stodart / Mashable

The Flow 2 comes with detergent that auto-dispenses into the water tank.
Credit: Leah Stodart / Mashable

What’s special about the Narwal Flow 2?

Seemingly nothing, if you were merely comparing the bullet points in the Flow 2’s Amazon description to the Amazon listings for other robovacs in its price range. 31,000 Pa suction power? A self-cleaning roller mop? Dual camera AI object recognition? On paper, it’s nothing we haven’t heard before. In practice, though, the Narwal Flow 2’s AI skills around obstacles and messes have proven more reliable than other 2026 flagships that claim the same thing.

I’ve realized that the Flow 2’s specs are actually loaded for how much Narwal is charging — especially with the Flow 2 at its launch sale price of $1,099.99. 31,000 Pa suction is quite strong for barely costing over $1,000, and heated water mopping is hard to come across at all. The Dreamxe X60 Max Ultra Complete mops with hot water, too, but it’s not a roller mop vacuum (and it costs more).

The Narwal Flow 2 might have the best AI mess detection I’ve seen

Every big robot vacuum is flaunting AI-powered cleaning and obstacle recognition this year. The thing is, AI robot vacuum features mean nothing to me if they’re dodgy. Most fancy AI robot vacuums I’ve tested recently seem to struggle with consistent mess detection, especially around liquid. The Narwal Flow 2 and its Freo Mind AI mode have been different, though.

When Narwal says that the Flow 2 “sees everything,” it’s honestly not that much of a stretch. When upcoming piles of debris or liquid spills are substantial enough, the Flow 2’s front-facing camera snaps a picture before adjusting its cleaning approach accordingly. For instance, the Flow 2 knew that tracked kitty litter around the Litter-Robot was “scattered debris.” Suction power audibly boosts when the Flow 2 crosses any area it thinks is heavily soiled.

Every robot vacuum I review has to take the Litter-Robot area test.
Credit: Leah Stodart / Mashable

The Flow 2 identified the field of dry scattered debris (and got Sansa in the picture).
Credit: Screenshot / Narwal

Most AI robot vacs use live imaging like this for behind-the-scenes processing while cleaning, but photographic evidence of what the vacuum is seeing isn’t always readily available. I appreciate that the Flow 2 is so transparent about its thought process — it’s been fun to make a mess on the floor, then immediately check the app to see if the Flow 2 accurately recognized it.

Narwal’s small obstacle avoidance has also been spot-on so far. The Flow 2 successfully avoids charging cords, shoes, and slippers on a daily basis, and even made it a point to steer around large clumps of potting soil (thinking they were pet waste). The app drops a little pin in the map, noting what type of obstacle it found, and you can see a photo of those, too. This is how I found out that the Flow 2 noticed more niche obstacles in its peripherals, like the very out-of-the-way power cord to my Mill food recycling bin and my cat’s crinkle ball toys.

Is the Narwal Flow 2 good at mopping?

The Narwal Flow 2 is a beast at soaking up liquid spills. Instead of the traditional cylindrical roller mop design, this roller has flat slides like a conveyor belt. Narwal says this covers 0.157 square feet of floor surface per pass, which is allegedly more direct surface coverage than the sliver of a rounded roller mop hitting the floor at any given point. I believe that. The Flow 2 was super effective at fully soaking up runny spills like wine and thicker droplet consistencies like ranch and pancake batter.

The Flow 2 zeroed in on the wine and navigated around it more carefully.
Credit: Leah Stodart / Mashable

It took forever, but the Flow 2 did end up leaving the area spotless.
Credit: Leah Stodart / Mashable

Most notably, the Flow 2 left no sticky residue behind after mopping several drops of syrup — and every robot vacuum struggles to fully wipe syrup up. This has to be due to the roller mop’s use of heated water, which we rarely see in roller mop robot vacuums. The combination of heat with a pressurized flat roller seems to be an elite pairing for melting away caked-on grime.

I realize that 140 degrees Fahrenheit isn’t enough to kill bacteria by science’s standards. But for me, the heated scrubbing provides an extra layer of sanitation (and subsequently, comfort) for walking around in bare feet.

Is the Narwal Flow 2 good at vacuuming?

The Narwal Flow 2’s rug cleaning is definitely in the top percentile of the many flagship robot vacuums I’ve tested since January. I’d unsurprisingly rank it just below the Dreame X60 Max Ultra Complete’s 35,000 Pa, but would surprisingly rank it above the Roborock Saros 20‘s 36,000 Pa. If you just want to compare the suction power to other roller mop robot vacuums, the Flow 2 is a smidge better than the Roborock Qrevo Curv 2 Flow‘s 20,000 Pa.

There’s a lot of variety in the Narwal app’s customized vacuuming settings. There are four suction options from “quiet” to “super powerful,” plus the occasional pop-up option for “vortex suction,” depending on the floor type. You can choose between a standard or meticulous route, the latter taking longer as the Flow 2 scrupulously cleans in two zigzag patterns, one running perpendicular to the first to create a crosshatch pattern. My favorite part is being able to choose up to THREE cleaning passes for extra good measure.

I entrusted the Flow 2 with tackling daily rug buildup like shedded cat hair and long head hairs from my own personal shedding, small crumbs, and litter lodged in the fibers of my plush bath mats. All of those saw a 95 to 97 percent pickup rate. After recently watching the Dyson Spot+Scrub Ai miss a ton of tiny quinoa pieces that I dumped into the fluffy hallway rug, I experimented with the Flow 2’s handling of the same exact mess. It went much better this time.

From sticky water bowl stains to flung food, the Flow 2 always excels in the cat bowl area.
Credit: Leah Stodart / Mashable

If the Flow 2 missed any cat food on the first pass, it always grabs it on the second or third.
Credit: Leah Stodart / Mashable

The Flow 2’s performance on hardwood and tile has been solid, too. I was constantly sending it to clean up kibble and crusted wet food flung from my cats’ bowls, fallen dryer lint, and two types of cat litter. None of the missed debris or dust here and there has been egregious, confirmed by the laser on one of my Dyson stick vacuums. Not even a minuscule stem was left behind after the Flow took several passes over dried bouquet remnants that my cat knocked out of a vase.

Factors to keep in mind

As helpful as the meticulous cleaning and navigational settings have been, they’re sometimes granular to the point of being more complicated than they need to be.

The Narwal refused to go near the wine just because of the setting it was on.
Credit: Screenshot / Narwal

Narwal’s cleaning settings were… hyper-vigilant when I wanted the Flow 2 to clean up a puddle of wine. No matter how many times I sent it to vacuum and mop this cleaning zone, the Flow 2 would clean the entire rectangle but the few inches with a wine splatter — even though I could see in the app that a liquid spill was detected. It took me forever to figure out that I had the Flow 2 in a custom “vacuum and mop at the same time” mode, and that the Flow 2 didn’t want to vacuum over a liquid spill. I’m obviously thankful that the Flow 2 won’t just drive through a puddle and suck wine up into the dust bin, but I’m surprised that the Flow 2 can’t tweak its cleaning strategy, regardless of whether it’s in custom mode. A heads-up like, “I’m not ignoring this spill just to annoy you. Switch me to Freo mode!” would have been nice.

After its initial mapping run, the Flow 2 quietly defaulted rug settings to “cross the carpet without cleaning it.” That’s the Freo smart cleaning system trying to avoid getting rugs wet when mopping, but that feels like an illogical extra step. Other premium robot vacuums automatically clean both floor types on the fly, and simply cut water flow and lift the mop on soft flooring. This setting is buried in the map management maze, and I don’t think most people would assume that it’s a setting they could even toggle. They’d just get pissed off that their new robot vacuum is refusing to vacuum the rug.

By Joshua Tyler
| Published 17 seconds ago

No other genre falls victim to early cancellation more often than science fiction. Networks are notoriously impatient with anything that involves expensive special effects or sets, and SF is labor and cost-intensive.

That short runway for success has deprived us of proper endings to some of the greatest sci-fi stories ever told, so we’re left wondering what happened to the Wild Cards in their war with the Chigs, whether the crew of the Destiny ever found a gate back to Earth, and did Captain Gideon find a cure for the Drak plague before it was too late?

It’s the not knowing that’s the worst, and in the case of one sci-fi franchise, we were left in the dark not once, but twice. This is why V failed, and then failed again!

The Biggest Television Event Of The 1980s

V was created by television writer-producer Kenneth Johnson as a large-scale science-fiction event for NBC. The story begins when massive alien ships arrive over Earth’s major cities, with the Visitors aboard them claiming they come in peace and offering advanced technology in exchange for Earth’s resources. They look like humans, they act like humans, and they seem friendly, so we go all in on cooperation. 

As the world falls further under the influence of the Visitors, a small group discovers that their human appearance is only a disguise. In reality, the Visitors are secretly reptilian beings manipulating humanity and harvesting people. As the truth is uncovered, a resistance movement forms to fight back. 

When it aired in 1983, the two-night miniseries became a huge ratings success and a pop-culture phenomenon, praised for its spectacle, suspense, and memorable twists.

The Event Becomes A Series

After the huge ratings success of V, NBC quickly ordered a follow-up. In 1984, the network aired the sequel miniseries V: The Final Battle, which continued the human resistance fighting the alien Visitors and again drew strong viewership. Hoping to turn the concept into a long-running franchise, NBC then launched a weekly television series simply titled V: The Series later that same year. 

At the heart of V: The Series was more of the struggle between the human Resistance and the Visitors’ full-scale invasion of Earth. It starred popular actors of the time like Marc Singer and Faye Grant, who portrayed resistance leaders Mike Donovan and Juliet Parrish. The aliens were the real selling point of the show, with Jane Badler standing out as the evil leader of the visitors, Diana, and the great Robert Englund, famously known for his role as Freddy Krueger, as Willie, a sympathetic Visitor

Why The First V Series Failed

There were immediate problems. The weekly format required producing far more episodes with a more limited budget. That meant the show drastically reduced the spectacle and large-scale action that made the original events exciting. 

It also had a leadership problem. Kenneth Johnson, who’d created the concept, refused to be part of the series. He disliked the sequel miniseries V: The Final Battle and wanted out. Lacking his presence, V lost much of its more complex narrative drive and fell into the boring, predictable monster-of-the-week format most shows of the era used. 

At the same time, the show’s narrative was all over the map, as constant changes disrupted the story. Resistance leader Mike Donovan was written out midway through the season when the character was captured by the Visitors. Key resistance member Robin Maxwell, played by Blair Tefkin, also disappeared early in the run.

With major characters gone and the storytelling becoming more episodic, the show lost the tight resistance-movement narrative that made the original miniseries compelling. Throw all that in a blender, and you have a disaster in the making, and the audience bailed. 

V: The Series debuted on NBC on October 26, 1984, and on March 22, 1985, it was canceled and off the air. What started out as one of the biggest television events in the medium’s history crashed and burned within a year. 

Rebooting V For Battlestar Galactica Audiences

The concept was good. The miniseries was great. There was something here that should have worked. So decades later, ABC tried again, hoping to ride the early 2000s wave of sci-fi interest generated by the success of shows like the rebooted Battlestar Galactica. 

V: The Series was brought back by ABC on November 3, 2009, and ran for 22 episodes across two seasons until March 15, 2011. This time, they skipped right over the miniseries and went straight to a new V series, wasting no time at all.

Within minutes, the aliens have landed, and from there it skips forward at a rapid pace, setting up the same intrigue that fans of the first series are familiar with. The aliens, who call themselves Visitors and “Vs” for short, present themselves as human in appearance, and the plot starts rolling.

The Visitor’s representative is Anna, played by the stunning Morena Baccarin (Firefly). She quickly becomes a global celebrity, convincing governments and much of the public that the aliens are humanity’s greatest allies. Behind the scenes, however, the Visitors are secretly infiltrating governments, media, and military organizations while preparing for a long-term takeover of Earth.

The story focuses on several characters who gradually discover the truth and join a growing resistance. FBI counterterrorism agent Erica Evans, played by Lost’s Elizabeth Mitchell, becomes one of the central leaders of the underground fight against the Visitors. 

Her son, Tyler, played by Logan Huffman, is drawn to the aliens and joins their human youth program, creating tension between loyalty and suspicion. Journalist Chad Decker, played by Scott Wolf, becomes Anna’s media ally while questioning the Visitors’ true motives.

Why V Failed Again

V premiered with strong curiosity and solid ratings, drawing viewers eager to see a modern take on the classic V. Critics were mixed on the reboot. Many praised the sleek production values and Morena Baccarin’s performance as the alien leader Anna, but reviews often said the show moved too slowly and lacked the urgency of the original. 

Audience response followed a similar pattern. The pilot attracted over 14 million viewers, but interest steadily declined as the season progressed. By the second season, ratings had dropped sharply, signaling fading audience enthusiasm despite a loyal core fanbase.

The new V had a promising start, but the show made some of the mistakes the previous V series had. It tried to save money by avoiding the spectacle that had made the original miniseries such a hit, and instead leaned heavily into slow-burn conspiracy plotting.

Once again, behind the scenes, V was in turmoil. There were showrunner changes between seasons that shifted the tone and direction. Long breaks between episodes disrupted its ability to retain its audience, draining momentum and confusing casual viewers. 

So in 2011, ABC canceled yet another V series before its larger alien-occupation storyline could reach a real conclusion.

Why V Deserves A Third Chance

There’s something to V as a premise. It does things no other alien invasion story has ever done quite as well. It’s exactly the right idea, but somehow it has never found the right time.

Maybe that time is now. Rather than rebooting something that already worked once, Hollywood should consider giving V a third attempt and maybe, just maybe, instead of repeating the same mistakes, they could learn from them and make V the stunning, generational hit it was always meant to be.