Upright floor washers that can both vacuum and mop are all the rage. Today I’ll be looking at the Narwal S20 Pro, a vacuum and mop with strong suction, scrubbing pressure, smarts, and self cleaning. I’ll show you how it works by running several cleaning tests and then wrap up with the pros and cons of this device so you can see if it’s going to be right for you.
I’d like to thank Narwal for sponsoring this post. While it has paid me for my time, it hasn’t told me what I have to say or can’t say about this device and I got to test it out in my own home and devise my own cleaning tests, so you can consider these thoughts my own.
Narwal S20 Pro
Summary
Overall the Narwal S20 Pro is a capable and convenient upright wet-dry mop-vac that makes cleaning floors easier.
Pros
- Cleans well
- Self-cleaning
- Lay Flat design
- Easy set-up
- Different cleaning modes
- Long battery life
- Extra accessories
Cons
- Long recharge time
- Base station needs to be near a plug
What you get
Inside the box, you will find the main vacuum-mop unit, plus a handle that clicks into place. There’s also a handful of extra accessories including a roller and filter, plus a bottle of cleaning solution and a cleaning brush. You also get a docking and recharging base with plug.
The dirty water tank is easily visible since it lives on the front of the main vacuum unit.
The clean water tank is actually very cleverly hidden as part of the cleaner head. Just pull out the back part of the head to remove it, and fill it with water. If you’d like to use cleaning solution, remove the small plastic plate that covers the roller on the front of the cleaner head, and then lift up the silver door. Add cleaning solution into here and then replace the covers.
Right away I can feel how light-weight the S20 Pro is: it feels a lot lighter than competing models, and I can confirm it’s very easy to lift and would be no trouble at all to carry up or down stairs.
Narwal S20 Pro also has a small color LED info screen which will show the remaining battery power, detergent level, as well as the current cleaning mode.
Lay-flat design
The Narwal S20 Pro is not only light and manoeuvrable but it also has a convenient lay flat design with a low profile. You can extend the handle all the way to the floor to get the S20 Pro underneath almost any piece of furniture, from sofas to sideboards, to tables and beds.
Narwal added an extra trick to bump up its agility just a bit. Narwal calls this the Smart Posture Detection technology which can help detect whether the vacuum is upright, turning, or flat and it will prevent any water from leaching out.
Anti-Tangle Technology
The S20 Pro also boasts anti-tangle technology so you don’t have to worry about unwinding strands of hair from the roller brush.
AI DirtSense
Narwal just couldn’t resist joining the AI era with its own dirt detection technology called AI DirtSense. The feature works with the vacuum’s built-in display; yellow for mild dirt and red for very dirty areas. How does it work? The vacuum’s cleaner head uses a blue light and some sensors which help the vacuum adjust the suction power for even better cleaning efficiency.
Cleaning Tests
Let’s get right to the cleaning…
In my daily use it was very easy to grab the Narwal S20 Pro to mop up spills in the kitchen. With 20,000 PA of suction power, it’s made to inhale anything in its path.
Higher suction power translates to better ability of cleaning up tough spills in a single pass. This is a big improvement over the 14,000 Pa suction power of its predecessor.
Whenever I test out a device like this I give it a handful of spills to contend with; I’ll spill liquids like coffee, ketchup soy sauce and jam and let some of them dry, so I can see how well it cleans a variety of spills. I also do things like spill chunkier messes like milk and cereal or rice soup just to see how it’s able to manage.
In my cleaning tests you can see that with the wet spills it’s able to mop everything up in just a single pass. Even sticky syrup didn’t seem to gum up the machine, nor did spilled BBQ sauce.
With its edge to edge roller brush it gets right up against baseboards and edges.
With dried-on spills it does take a couple of additional passes over the area to get them clean, but this is not uncommon. You can see it was even able to power away dried coffee.
When it comes to thicker and gummier dried on ketchup or BBQ sauce, it does take a few runs to get everything from a dried-on sticky stain off the floor, but this is expected with a device like this… and the Narwal easily matches the performance of other upright mops I’ve reviewed.
Self-propelled
One of the other features I really liked is that there is self propulsion built into this machine. Essentially it gives it push – pull assistance so that there is less effort required by you to push it across the floor and drag it back. That translates to making it even easier to maneuver with a lot less effort.
Cleaning Modes
The Narwal S20 Pro has five special cleaning modes. Smart Mode can adapt on its own to deliver the best clean based on your floors dirt level and will automatically adjust things like suction power, and water volume.
If you just want to suction up a spill or excess water from the floor you can put it into Suction Mode. Quiet Mode tackles the noise level above all, while Turbo Mode offers increased water flow and more suction. At the top of the cleaning modes is what’s called Max Enhancement Mode. This is the most powerful cleaning used for extremely stubborn or dried on stains, and this mode is accessed using a small trigger under the handle.
Self Cleaning
The worst part about a wet-dry upright is usually the emptying process, and trying to keep it clean. With the Narwal S20 Pro the filter basket design on the inside of the dirty water tank makes it much easier to separate solids and liquids, and then dump out debris, hair and particles right into the garbage, while you’ll just pour the dirty water away.
This S20 Pro also runs its own self cleaning cycles whenever it sees that’s necessary.
Using warm, fresh water and cleaning solution, it flushes its insides then deposits the dirty water in the tank. The wash runs about 2 minutes, and it spins the roller in both directions to get it thoroughly clean. Then it will dry the mop with warm air to keep the roller from developing musty smells. With a full tank, the detergent can last up to 40 days, and a small indicator light will let you know if it’s low.
Battery Life
Narwal S20 Pro is rated for a 60-minute battery life, which is almost double what some other similar devices offer. This means you can do a lot more cleaning on a single charge; and even keep the S20 Pro stored close by without having to necessarily leave it on its charging base, if a plug isn’t nearby.
Overall review
Overall the Narwal S20 Pro is a capable and convenient upright wet-dry mop-vac that makes cleaning floors easier. Let’s lay out the pros and cons.
On the pro side, it cleans well and tackled all the challenges I laid out for it. Plus it cleans and dries itself. With the option of adding cleaning fluid, you’re getting a better-than-just water clean, and the S20 Pro will let you know if it needs topping up. With its lay-flat design it easily gets under all kinds of furniture.
It’s easy to set up and with different cleaning modes, you can always find a balance between powering away dirt, and protecting floors. The battery lasts a long time and the package came with extras like a roller filter and brush.
So what are the downsides? The full recharge time may take a while. Even so, this shouldn’t be an issue for most people because the cleaner will usually be stored on its base station. The only other consideration might be the base station does need to be placed somewhere it can be plugged in at all times, so that might limit where you are able to store it, but again with its longer than average battery life you can keep it handy without needing to keep it constantly charging.
Those really just feel like considerations to be aware of as opposed to true downsides or defects, so for that reason I can definitely recommend the Narwal S20 Pro to you.
It sells for about $499 USD/$699 CAD which is less than some of it competitors. You can get it from Amazon.
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