If you live in a home with kids or pets and you have carpet, chances are you’re going to need a carpet cleaner at some point in your life. Sure you can rent them from the grocery store, or hire a pro but that’s a both a hassle, time consuming and expensive. Having a carpet cleaner at home is a great way to tackle small messes before they turn into bigger and more plentiful set-in stains. That’s the idea behind the Tineco Carpet One Smart Carpet Cleaner.
Review: Tineco Carpet One carpet & upholstery cleaner
[fl_builder_insert_layout id=21770]
In this review I’ll take a look at what this device can do, how it works, how well it actually cleans and if you stick with me, I’l talk price and if I can recommend it to you.
What is Tineco Carpet One Smart Carpet Cleaner?
What’s in the box?
This device comes in a large box and it looks big and intimidating with lots of parts… but it’s really not.
Let’s see what you get as you unpack the box:
- Handle
- Cleaning brush
- Requisite instructions
- A bottle of carpet cleaning solution
- The vacuum unit, which just needs the handle clicked into place
- The dirty water tank arrives detached from the machine and it too clips into place on the base
- Accessory head and hose with two nozzle heads
With everything assembled you’ll note there’s power buttons on the handle, and a port to add the accessory hose in the top of the cleaner head. There’s a small filter here to to trap hair and debris and an extra one is included in the box, so make sure not to throw it away.
The cleaner has two wheels and a large single roller brush underneath. That middle roller-looking device is actually a humidity sensor, and we’ll get to what that’s all about in a bit.
You can wind the cord up on the rear using the loops, and there’s a step-lever to recline the cleaning head, as well as a step-lever to unhitch the dirty water tank too.
Finally there’s heated air drying to speed up dry time.
Digital display information
Finally there’s a digital display with Tineco’s dirt monitoring loop light; the idea here is that it will turn red when it’s picking up more dirt, and blue during regular cleaning.
Also presented on the display are indicators for:
- Accessory hose connection
- A number showing water spray volume
- Wifi connection light
- Dirty water tank full/blocked
- Clean Water tank empty
- Brush roller tangled
- Dryness indicator
- Auto mode indicator
Set up
The set up process is straight forward; fill the clean water tank with water and two capfuls of the included cleaning solution, then lock it into place. Tineco say hot water shouldn’t be used.
Plug in the machine and you’re ready to start cleaning. In Auto mode the cleaner will start working when you recline it; in other modes you may need to hit the power button.
Wi-Fi connection & Tineco App
Oddly, in my opinion, this device has Wi-Fi and you can connect it to the Tineco app. The app alllows you to perform all the same tasks only wit the app you’d need one hand to operate the vacuum and the other to hold the phone…
I was not able to connect the vacuum to my phone, since it doesn’t appear to support dural band or 5g wifi . Since I wasn’t that excited about it, I don’t feel like I was missing out on connectivity.
Cleaning prep
Cleaning prepNaturally you should vacuum first before cleaning, just to keep excess hair and fibres down. You can pre-treat areas with a high intensity carpet cleaning solution first if you like.
When I started my testing I used simply water and Tineco’s cleaner.
The machine is going to spray water and cleaner when you push the vacuum forward, and then suck up the solution and the dirt on the backwards pull. For that reason you’ll wanrt tyo use this machine slowly and deliberatley.
Tackling filtration soiling in my basement
I used the Tineco Carpet One Smart Carpet Cleaner on my 15 year old basement carpets, which I thought were in need of replacing due to several mysterious stains which had grown over the years despite vacuuming. This is likely what’s called filtration soiling, where your carpets act as a filter for the air which passes from the room into the walls or through gaps in baseboards. In the past only professional cleanings have made these go away.
I tackled these areas first and didn’t know what to expect. I took a couple of passes and not much changed, but I was also finding my way with this cleaner.
Once I got the hang of it I did a few more passes and started to see improvement. These areas are quite soiled and past spot cleaning has done nothing for them. As you can see in the before/afters the difference it pretty remarkable.
Next up We cleaned some unknown dark spots that had appeared after our renovation. The Tineco Carpet One Smart Carpet Cleaner didn’t seem to be having much effect, so I added a pre-treater to the spots, waited the appropriate amount of time for that to penetrate, then ran the Tineco again. To my surprise they came completely clean.
To wrap things up, I decided to spill coffee on the carpet to see what would happen with a fresh stain…
With really just one pass, it had all the liquid up and out of the carpet fibres.
The bottom line for me was that this cleaner definitely transformed my carpets from “needs replacement now” to, I can keep them in place a while longer.
Cleaning modes
Auto
Auto mode could also be known as basic cleaning. In Auto the vacuum and its sensor detects dirt levels and will automatically adjust the water volume and suction.
Max
Max mode increases water volume to 100%, great for tougher stains.
Dry
Dry mode increases the wet vacuum suction to power out not just the dirt but more residual water too. You do have the option of adjusting this too to dry carpets more or less.
HeatedWash Technology: A unique heating panel ensures the water temperature remains consistently high throughout the cleaning cycle.
PowerDry Technology: By the press of a button, water residue is powerfully extracted from surfaces and hot air is continuously blown to the carpet, drastically cutting down the dry time to 30 minutes or less.
DrynessMeter: A humidity sensor detects dampness in real-time and displays the dryness level through a “Dryness Meter” on the LED screen.
Power & suction
Power & suctionTinceo doesn’t provide suction power in pascals, as you see with vacuums and instead says, ‘The CARPET ONE Smart Carpet and Upholstery Cleaner provides 130AW of ultimate suction and a motor power of 1300W.”
I’m not entirely sure how to translate this, but I can say its powerful and doesn’t seem to struggle with all that it has going on.
iLoop sensor
Tineco likes to talk about the iLoop sensor which is supposed to change the light color based on the dirt it’s detecting. I’m not sold on it. It seems to detect things only intermittently in my testing of it on various machines. It often doesn’t change when tackling a particularly dirty area… like my coffee stain, but it did when rolling overthe carpet cleaner foam. The bottom line for me is that this sensor seems more like a needless gimmick, since the machine is quite effective and I have eyes that can see extra dirty areas on my own.
Using the accessory hose for upholstery
The accessory hose can help you get into smaller areas, or todo things like upholstery or maybe curtains. I decided to use it on my vintage sofa.
The hose has kind of a trigger that shoots water and cleaner in a spray from under the cleaner head. It shoots a lot of water, so be warned. I think I oversaturated my cushion a bit… my recommendation is to hold the sprayer back to try to lighten the mist a bit. Then stop pulling on the trigger and pull the vacuum head over the area. For me it didn’t seem like it was sucking up a lot of the moisture, and indeed when I felt the suction from the hose it was actually quite low. I stuck some paper to it just to see how strong it was and it really didn’t seem like it was pulling in very much air.
My cushion was left quite damp, but it did dry eventually. After my testing, I’m not sure the accessory hose is as effective as the rest of the vacuum.
The machine needs cleaning too!
It may go without saying, but you should clean up your carpet cleaner after each session in order to keep it from smelling bad and to ensure a long life.
Empty the dirty water tank and give it a wash and a scrub with the included scrub brush.
Flip over the cleaner and clear out any tangles or fibres that have ensnared the roller brush. Finally, unclip the brush cover brush roller cover, and give that a clean as well.
You can also run some clean water through the attachment hose to in order to clear out any clogs.
Overall review: Tineco Carpet One Smart Carpet Cleaner
Overall review: Tineco Carpet One Smart Carpet CleanerOverall The Tineco Carpet One Smart Carpet Cleaner has earned a place in my partially carpeted home. It cleaned carpets I thought were uncleanable without professional help. It powered away tough stains, and filtration soiling
Downsides? The unit is large and heavy, but it kind of needs to be. If you do need to make it more compact, the handle can be removed for storage or transport. It’s also loud but again, it needs to be.
The biggest downside for me is that the accessory hose didn’t seem to work as well as the rest of the machine. But in all honesty, I’d buy it for its carpet abilities alone.
The Tineco Carpet One Smart Carpet Cleaner sells for about $499USD and I haven’t yet seen the Canadian availability or pricing.
**A note about Affiliate Links: TechGadgetsCanada is supported by our readers. Occasionally I will include affiliate links in my reviews. I do this partly for convenience of the reader (since I’ll almost always include a link to the company website or similar anyway) in case you want to read more or purchase, but I also may get a small commission from the click, which helps me keep the blog running. If you choose to use this link I thank you greatly for supporting the blog. There’s no obligation or cost to you for using these links.
