Tineco Carpet ONE Review

Analysis

A step by step breakdown of the Carpet ONE's performance.

The Tineco was tested to have slightly above average suction at the hose (this reading applies to its suction as a spot cleaner).

It was tested to have significantly lower than average suction at the nozzle (this reading applies to its suction as an upright cleaner – the nozzle is the part of the cleaner that extracts moisture in upright mode).

The table above lists the number of passes it took to clean each stain.

A number greater than 10 indicates that the cleaner did not completely clean the stain in 10 or less back and forth passes. The higher the number, the darker the stain the cleaner left behind after 10 passes – i.e. a score of “12” indicates a darker stain than “11” and so on and so forth.

As you can see the Tineco did not completely clean the tomato sauce, peanut butter, ice cream, or chocolate syrup stains after 10 passes.

The tomato sauce result isn’t much worse than average. Most other cleaners we tested also couldn’t completely clean this stain (note the average score of 11.3 for this stain).

The other results are significantly worse than average though. For example, the Tineco scored a “12” for the chocolate syrup stain. So not only did it leave behind a stain after 10 passes, but it’s not even a very light stain (a light stain would score an “11” instead of a “12”). The average for this stain is 7.8, which means that that the average cleaner could completely clean this stain in less than 8 passes. The Tineco, again, left a relatively dark stain after 10 passes.

After our upright stain test we measured the moisture level of the section of carpet that was cleaned.

The reading for the Tineco was 26% which is slightly drier than average.

We then ran the Tineco over the same section of carpet for three additional “dry” passes. During normal cleaning the Tineco dispenses soap and water on the forward pass and extracts moisture on the backward pull. On the “dry” setting it only extracts moisture on the backward pull and on the forward push.

After three additional “dry” passes the reading for the Tineco was 25% which is right around an average result.

The Tineco has relatively small water tanks but it uses very little water to clean, and so it can cover a fairly large area before you need to refill or empty its tanks, despite the fact that they’re small in size.

Cleaning and maintaining this cleaner after washing carpet isn’t difficult.

You can remove its nozzle and easily take out its brushroll to rinse it, and clean the compartment surrounding the brushroll very easily.

The manufacturer includes a cleaning brush so that you can also clean the dirty water tank very easily.

There is a port on the front of the cleaner to which you can connect a hose and spot cleaning tool.

Overall, the Tineco was an average performer in our spot cleaning test.

Other Notes and Features

The Tineco is the only carpet cleaner we tested that can detect debris and adjust the amount of water and soap it dispenses depending on the concentration of that debris. This is how it operates on its “automatic” mode.

During our upright stain test, we only used it in “max” mode though. On max mode it always sprays a maximum amount of water and soap. And as I discussed earlier this cleaner still performed very poorly in our upright stain test, even on “max” mode.

Verdict

Our bottom line recommendations.

We generally do not recommend the Tineco because it performed so poorly in our upright stain test.

If you’re looking to buy a premium carpet cleaner with smart features – like voice control and automatic dirt detection – the Tineco is really the only option out there on the market.

But even if these features are important to you, we would still not recommend the Tineco.

There are several alternative “non-smart” options that clean carpet significantly better. The models we recommend over the Tineco are listed here.