LunaGlow Nano cordless vacuum/mop review – one-pass cleaning

REVIEW – We have carpeted bedrooms in our home.  Beyond that, all of the other flooring in the home is LVP (luxury vinyl plank) which is all the rage these days.  What does that mean in terms of cleaning?  It means that vacuuming simply isn’t enough. The floor needs to be wet-cleaned as well, and that means mopping.  But, that’s a pain because you have to vacuum first to get up the dust and debris and then mop to deep clean the dirt and grime off the floor.  If only there was a way to get this done in one pass.  Well, it seems that cordless vac/mops are a thing lately, as evidenced by this review, recently written by Lynn Lopez, or this review, even more recently written by Matt Gregersen. Enter the LunaGLow Nano to bring more competition to this market space.

What is it?

LunaGlow Nano is a cordless vacuum and mop combination. It can simultaneously vacuum while it wet mops, saving you time on your cleaning tasks.  It is battery-powered so there are no pesky cords to get tangled. It even comes with an app.

What’s in the box?

• LunaGlow Nano vac/mop with dirty water tank, sponge filter, and roller brush installed
• Handle – it snaps into the hole you see in the top of the Nano
• Charging base
• Power adapter
• Clean water tank
• Box of cleaning pods (to add to the clean water)
• Long and short brushes for cleaning the Nano
• HEPA-like filter (a sponge filter is installed already in the dirty water tank)
• Extra roller brush
• Note – there is no documentation – this was an early unit and the manual was not available.  Production units will ship with user manuals.

Hardware specs

• Dimensions: 45.67″ h x 11.02″ w x 9.45″ d
• Weight: 8.16 lbs
• Motor speed: 25,000 RPM
• Suction: 5Kpa (eco) / 5.5Kpa (max)
• Battery: 2.600 mAh
• Battery life (claimed): 25 minutes (max), 30 minutes (eco)
• Clean water capacity: 600ml
• Dirty water capacity: 550ml
• Noise level: approximately 75dB
• Filter: removable and washable HEPA-like for vacuuming and sponge type for mopping
• Display: LCD color
• Mode confirmation: display and voice
• Ambient lighting: water tank – purple, app controllable
• Connectivity: Bluetooth and WiFi for app control

Design and features

The Nano is styled much like other stick-style cleaners with the cleaning head at the bottom and the handle at the top.  In the photo above, it is sitting on the charging base.  The color display shows charging status as well as any error conditions or messages.

I forgot to peel the protective film off the display before I took that photo. 🙁  Here’s a look at a sampling of the displays.

The purple switch/level below the screen is the dirty water tank release switch.

You push down on the switch and the tank pivots out of the body of the unit.  The top contains the filter – I left the sponge filter installed and didn’t use the HEPA-like filter as I was going to mop.  Their documentation and website reference the “HEPA-like” filter, so it isn’t an actual HEPA filter, but it is like one – whatever that means.

The roller sits at the bottom, which makes sense since that’s where the floor will be!

A similar pinch-style switch releases the cover for access to the roller.

The roller itself is fuzzy with soft, rubbery red bristles around the body in addition to the blue/white fabric fingers.

Let’s move back up the unit for more features.

The clean water tank snaps in/out of place above the display. A flip-top seals the tank.

Just below the bend in the handle, there is a touch-sensitive button that activates the self-cleaning mode. At the bend in the handle, we find the power button as well as the eco/max button.

Along the side of the handle, there is a slide switch that turns voice reporting on/off. Under the handle, a trigger that controls the water flow. The water rate can be set to off (dry vacuuming), level 1 (low), and level 2 (high).

Setup

Start by snapping the handle into place.  Then, fill the clean water tank with water and optionally a cleaning pod.  There isn’t any information about what’s in the pods – they are small round balls of some sort of cleaning fluid encased in a water-soluble cover – think Tide Pods.

If you’re going to mop, like I was, you leave the sponge filter in place.  If you are planning to dry vacuum, then you swap the sponge filter out for the HEPA-like filter.

The last step is to plug in the charging station and place the Nano on it and wait for it to charge.

Performance

First, let’s talk about that display.  If you look at it, and then mentally place yourself behind the Nano like when you’re using it, the display is upside down.  That’s not very user-friendly, or so I thought.  Once you turn the unit on and start using it, the display flips so you can read it from the back.  Nice!  Still, you’re looking at it from about a 45-degree angle, so it can be a little difficult to read what’s going on without leaning over for a better look. If the display was up on top of the Nano, it would be a lot easier to read.  Overall, that’s a minor quibble.

Let’s also address the voice prompts.  They’re loud.  Like seriously loud.  Still, I like them on because it was a little too easy for me to bump the water rate trigger under the handle.  Without the voice prompt, if I didn’t notice the display, I wouldn’t know that I changed water flow levels.

There -I got the complaints out of the way.  Now, let’s get into the good stuff.

At just over 8-pounds, the Nano isn’t light, but it’s not heavy either.  There’s enough heft to it that it feels well-made.  Nothing feels weak or easily breakable on it and that’s a good thing.

According to the specs, if I leave the Nano in eco mode, I should be able to clean for up to 25 minutes.  Let’s see how much I can get to in that time.

Here I am, starting on the lanai.  There isn’t much to the video – just a look at what it does when cleaning.  I kept it in eco mode and water level 1 (low) to see how it would go.

Here’s a look at the floor by the front door immediately after mopping.

As you can see, it isn’t shy about applying the water.  As I mopped, it did slow a bit.  In fact, at one point, it seemed to be dry.  I looked and the clean water tank was nearly empty.  I didn’t get any notification from the Nano about this.  I stopped and filled the tank and continued.  The dirty water tank still had room in it as only a portion of the water was routed there – the rest was drying on the floor.

As I went along, I noticed the display change colors as the battery wore down.

I missed the point at which it changed – I’m guessing either 25% or 20%.  I haven’t been smart enough to capture that point in other cleaning attempts.  Once you get even lower, it gets even more insistent.

I got just about 20 minutes out of the battery but was able to do at least a cursory pass over all our hard flooring.  Not quite the promised 25 minutes, but pretty close. As time goes on, the battery may give a little more life. I won’t call it a real cleaning – just a quick pass. If I wanted to deep clean all the hard flooring, I’d need to swap out the battery.  Unfortunately, the battery in the Nano isn’t swappable, so I’m limited to 20-25 minutes of cleaning at a time.  The battery recharged in less than two hours, so that’s not too bad.

We vacuum regularly and mop occasionally, so I wasn’t expecting the Nano to do much, especially with less than a liter of water used.  I popped out the dirty water tank and saw this hanging out of the Nano.

Yeah, that’s a clump of hair (if you’ve seen my photo, obviously it’s not mine!) that didn’t make it through the unit.  Not a big deal as that happens all the time with a regular vacuum as well.

I pulled out the sponge filter and looked at the bottom.

Ick!  More crud stuck to the bottom.  Then, I flipped over the filter holder.

There is even more crud stuck there.  Then…I looked in the dirty water tank.

Yikes!  It looks like raw sewage!  Honestly, we do clean!

Eww!  Well, color me impressed.  With even a quick once-over, the Nano, on low water flow and eco mode certainly cleaned a lot of dirt up from our floor.

Hey!  This thing is supposed to do some sort of self-cleaning. Let’s see what that does. After I was done cleaning the floor, the Nano prompted me to put it on the charging dock.  Once there, it prompted me to empty the dirty water tank and fill the clean water tank with fresh water and do a self-cleaning.  OK – I emptied and filled as prompted.  Let’s self-clean.

In one minute, the Nano rinses the roller and then spins it incredibly fast to spin out all the dirt and water.  While still slightly damp, the roller was purged of most of the water.  I removed the roller to inspect the base of the unit.

More icky stuff!  I used one of the two included brushes to clean that up.

I mentioned earlier that there is an app for this.  Finding it was a little tricky.  First, some background.  When this unit was originally announced, it was branded as “SpeedFox”, but has since been rebranded as “LunaGlow”.  The app, however, remains branded as “SpeedFox”, so there’s that.

You can get basic unit status, but then you can right from the display as well.

After joining the Nano to your WiFi, you can control some of the features from the app.  Why?  I have no idea.  I can’t imagine changing settings with the app when I can just hit a button or switch on the Nano.

There are more settings in the app, like wood floors, tile floors, and so on, but no real explanation as to how the app will reconfigure the Nano.

You do get info on consumables.

You also get usage history.  Here’s what it said after my first cleaning.

For the record, I did stop the Nano twice, so the three usages were accurate.

The app can also change the color of the ambient lighting.  The lighting is dim and illuminates the clean water tank.  It is so dim that unless you plan to mop in the dark, it’s doesn’t provide much aesthetic value. I see little value in the app other than possibly being able to do firmware updates to the Nano.

What I like

• Does an admirable job cleaning
• Self-cleaning very does a good job cleaning the roller
• It’s easy to clean the unit after use

What I’d change

• Improve battery life or as an alternative, make the battery swappable and sell extra batteries
• Move the display up top
• Lower the voice prompt volume

Final thoughts

I was shocked at how much crud came up after my first cleaning with the Nano.  Subsequent cleanings haven’t picked up as much (thankfully), but it is still getting up more crud.  For hard-floor folks, the Nano is a nice unit to provide a good scrubbing to your floors.  I wish the battery lasted long enough to clean the whole place in one shot, or that there was a way to swap in a fresh battery.  For now, we’ll have to deep-clean in stages.

Price: $299.00
Where to buy: LunaGlow and Amazon
Source: The sample of this product was provided by LunaGlow.