Estimated reading time: 15 minutes
Hi friends, I was recently on the quest for efficient household appliances to help reduce my workload and time spent since we no longer hire help for household cleaning. So I am sharing here one of the best investments we have made.
Read here for what else we bought.
Tineco Floor One S3 is one of the first products we invested in. Our household consists of four active children who mess up the floors all day long and a busy mother who cannot tolerate soiled floors.
Hence, a powerful appliance that can suck up all the spills and food bits and leave the floor squeaky clean quickly is paramount to us.
I was sold on having a vacuum mop when I realised that I could use it to vacuum the daily oily food bits without the need for me to squat and bend to manually pick everything up. Using the Tineco vacuum mop, all messy food and spills were cleared up in seconds. Note that Tineco S3 only works on hard floors. Further, after reading reviews of many other similar vacuum mops, I decided that Tineco is the best choice to go for.
We have used the Tineco Floor One S3 for nearly two months, and it is time to share our product review.
So if you are also looking for some help to save your precious time and energy from doing housework, you will want to read on.
Who Needs Tineco Floor One S3
Busy Families with young kids who spill food and beverages regularly
Frequent food and drink spillage by the kids is why I chose Tineco Floor One S3.
Every child loves to snack. I get cereals, cake crumbs, and sweet yoghurt all over the floor every hour of the day. Meal times are worse. I always stepped on oily soup spills, rice and noodle bits. Anyone with young kids at home can easily imagine the constant chaos.
Cleaning up oily and sweet spills manually can be a back-breaking and time-consuming chore with endless cloth rinsing to eliminate the mess.
With Tineco, I vacuum up the food bits and mop the floor simultaneously. There is no need for me to squat and bend to wipe the surfaces. As I have a slipped disc, this vacuum mop saves my back tremendously.
The machine is so simple to use. Not just my older kids, even the five-year-olds begin cleaning up their food mess these days.
It is super easy to install too. My 11-year-old took merely 5 minutes to get everything set up.
Families who love cooking
Another reason to love the Tineco is its ability to clean up the oily kitchen after wiping up a meal for the family.
Sauce and oil splatters on the floor are easy to handle now. As a result, I can easily achieve squeaky clean kitchen floors after dinner, saving time to wind down with the kids.
Families with pets and any member with hair fall issues
While it wasn’t our main reason to purchase a Tineco, it is a good-to-have function. For families with furry friends and long hair gals like ours, we get countless strands of long hair all over the house. So a vacuum that doesn’t get jammed with hair clumps and mop the floor at the same time, why not?
My previous vacuum cleaner from a well-known brand always jammed after a few days and showed the error sign. We had to take a small sharp scissor to cut and painstakingly remove hairs trapped at the side of the rollers. With Tineco S3, I don’t have such a bothersome problem now.
Busy Individuals who cannot tolerate dusty floors
My floor is always spick and span after a round of Tineco. I can’t feel any trace of dust on the floor. According to other users in Lazada reviews, this machine cleans better than a Dyson.
For a person like me who has been used to sparkling floors every day ever since my childhood days, thanks to my mother’s endless dedication, investing in Tineco is one of the best purchases I have made.
However, vacuuming and mopping the floor as two different chores that take up at least 45 minutes of my time every morning. How about cleaning up after our messy dinner? Now, it takes me only at most 20 minutes to finish vacuuming and mop the entire house in the morning! I can use that extra 25 minutes to go for a morning run!
Check out Tineco One Floor S3 from Tineco’s flagship stores in Lazada and Shopee. I bought mine from Lazada and registered its 2-year warranty online immediately upon delivery.
You can also check out Tineco’s products on their website, but the company only transacts via their Lazada and Shopee flagship stores.
Good Housekeeping has compared the best vacuum mop in the market, only some are available in Singapore. But at least you will know what to look out for. Click here to read.
Tineco One Floor S3 – Features I Love
Cleaning Done in Half The Time
With vacuuming and mopping carried out simultaneously, I get to speed up my work and finish the floor in half the time!
Separate Water Tanks For Clean and Dirty Water
The main reason for my spruce floor after running a round of Tineco is the separation of clean and dirty water.
Dirt and spill are all directed into the 0.5-litre dirty water tank. Hence, I never recycle dirty water to clean the floors, which is what the traditional mop-and-bucket system does. As a result, my floors are always spotless after a round of vacuum-mopping.
See how dirty the water is.
The traditional mop-and-bucket way of mopping needs a lot of elbow grease, and the effort that one puts into scrubbing the floor surface gives the disillusion that the floor is clean. However, since recycled dirty water is used in the process, I doubt the effectiveness of this method.
Low Water Usage
In traditional mopping, you fill up a huge pail of water to rinse the manual mop. In the case of certain brands, you are requested to run the micro-fibre mop pad under running water while you scrub the pad clean. Both methods require a lot of water. Well, washing items under a running tap for 5 minutes uses 40 litres of water.
Tineco has a clean water tank that holds 0.6 litres of water. This amount of water covers 500 sq ft of floor according to my usage. So when I wash my apartment floor, I only require 1.5 litres of water, which is the size of 2 water bottles for school.
Ease Of Cleaning Tineco S3
You will be happy to know that there is a removable plastic filter in the dirty water tank. This helps to separate the solids when pouring the dirty water down the drain.
Removing the water tanks and putting them back on is super simple, as shown in the short video below.
The machine comes with a cleaning brush, two rollers and 2 HEPA filters – 2 sets of rollers and filters so that we have a spare to use when the other is drying.
The brush that comes along has a hook on the tip of the handle, which I use to remove the long hairs trapped on the roller brush and at the side.
Unlike some other vacuum cleaners, Tineco S3 continues to run smoothly even with the trapped hairs accumulating on the rollers.
Audio Alerts and Self-Cleaning cycle
The vacuum is equipped with a voice assistant that will remind me to refill the clean water tank, unload the dirty water tank, and prompt me to start self-cleaning.
Sometimes the floor is filthy, and the voice assistant would prompt self-cleaning to commence halfway through getting the floor mopped. The voice assistant gives crispy clear instructions, but the volume is a tad too loud for my comfort.
Self-cleaning is easy too. Ensure that the clean water tank is more than half filled while the dirty water tank is at least half emptied. With a press of the self-cleaning button, the process starts.
At the end of self-cleaning, pour away the dirty water which will otherwise leave a stench the next day. Next, use a paper towel to remove any debris left at the mouth of the drainage. I often see clumps of hair left there, but it is straightforward to remove them.
Tineco Floor One S3 – A Smart Vacuum Mop
Tineco S3 is installed with iLoop smart sensor technology, which detects mess and automatically decides whether to increase suction power as we move around the house.
The LED display on the machine shows cleaning progress and battery level. The red indicator reflects a very dirty floor, or the device requires self-cleaning. The battery level, as indicated in the photo below, is 77%.
Experience Walking Your Tineco S3 Vacuum Mop At Home
On your first use, you will be surprised when you find the vacuum pulling you along as if you are walking your dog. Although the machine weighs 4.5kg and looks bulky, its self-propelling feature makes vacuuming a breeze.
Long Battery Life
Although the official running time for Tineco S3 is 35 minutes, it seems longer than that. I have another dry vacuum with a run time of 25min, and I often face battery running out before I finish dusting the entire floor. I don’t get this annoying problem with Tineco. My battery is often only 65% utilised after mopping the entire house.
Standing On Its Own
Another feature that brings me a lot of convenience is the Tineco S3’s ability to stand independently. The machine will automatically stop at an upright position. Hence I don’t have to worry about finding a wall for the machine to lean against, which will risk the machine falling onto the floor, thus damaging the motor.
Limitations of Tineco Floor One S3
Limited effectiveness for severe spillage
I experimented with using Tineco S3 to clean up a few spoonfuls of oil deliberately spilt on the floor. It took two rollers and 5 minutes of mopping over the same spot to get the floor squeaky clean again. The self-cleaning function did not work for such a messy spill. The rollers remained oily, and I had to rinse them with a generous amount of dish detergent to get them cleaned again. Then and again, manually cleaning after an oily spill episode using cloths is very challenging too.
Cannot go under furniture and tight corners
Tineco S3 is bulky in design and cannot manoeuvre into tight corners and void spaces between bulky items and the walls.
Moreover, the machine can be lowered to a maximum of 45 degrees from the floor. This means spaces under furniture may not be thoroughly mopped.
I am not too bothered by this as I do not have curious tots exploring different corners inside the house, under the table, or behind the shelves.
For the hard-to-reach spots, I use my pad mop once a week to ensure that the corners and spaces under the furniture are properly scrubbed too.
If this limitation concerns you, you can explore the Hi-Zero Bionic Mop. This similar vacuum mop has a greater rotation angle to help it reach the surfaces below the furniture. It has a longer battery life of 60 mins. However, the clean water tank capacity is lower at 0.5 litres.
Source: https://hizero.com.sg/features/
Thick Margin At The Edge Of The Mop Head
Another improvement that Tineco S3 needs to make is the thick roller’s margin from the edge of the mop head. As a result, the machine cannot reach the edge of the walls. Again, I have to manual overcome this limitation using the mop pad. Tineco has another enhanced vacuum mop which comes with edge cleaning capability. Read on for more.
I recently came across another similarly smart vacuum mop from Roborock, which comes with three roller brushes to double mop at one go and boosts its edge cleaning ability.
Its clean water tank can hold 0.85 litres of water, while its dirty water tank holds 0.62 litres. It is also designed to dry a bathroom floor soaked after a shower. But it cannot stand on its own. And its bulky design also means it can’t go under low furniture.
Stubborn Stains
You may also wish to know that Tineco S3 is meant to pick up dirt on the floor and not scrub. So there are times when the machine may need to go over the stubborn stain spots a couple of times to effectively remove them. At times, I even step lightly on the edge of the vacuum head to increase the pressure of the roller on the stain. But I am unsure if I will spoil the machine in the long run.
For removing stubborn stains and polishing the floor, it is best to use a steam mop as steam effectively softens dirt and grease very quickly for removal. I am currently considering Karcher SC 1 for stubborn stains and grease remover.
Alternative, if you like Tineco a lot, you can check out its Tineco Floor One S5 Steam for an ultimate cleaning experience.
About The Cleaning Solution
Tineco has its cleaning solution too. It is marketed as an environmentally-friendly product which is safe to use with kids and pets around. The clean water tank requires only one bottle cap to keep the floor smelling great and sparkling clean. I use a bottle of cleaning solution a month for my daily cleaning.
According to Tineco’s manual, it is best to use Tineco’s cleaning solution for Tineco Floor One S3 while operating the machine, or you can even clean the floor with water only. Using other cleaning solutions may corrode the internal parts of the vacuum mop.
What is in the box?
- Vacuum/mop charging base
- Charging station
- Brush roller x 2
- HEPA filter x 2
- 3-in-1 cleaning brush
- Accessory holder
- HEPA filter holder
- Cleaning solution
Other Tineco Vacuum Mop Options
Tineco has a range of vacuum mop that suits different budgets and needs.
The iFloor and iFloor Breeze are basic vacuum mops that suit smaller homes below 1,000 sq feet, according to my estimation. However, they do not come with Voice Assistance nor smart functions such as automatic adjustment of speed power upon detection of more dirt.
Whereas the pricier Floor One S5 has not only all the smart functions that Floor One S3 has, it is also equipped with an enhanced edge cleaning function that can mop along the walls’ base. Earlier, I complained that Floor One S3 could not reach the edges of walls and furniture.
Floor One S5 is lighter at 3.8 kg and has a hand-held vacuum option. Best of all, according to Tineco’s website, the machine creates little noise when operating.
Check out Tineco’s products in their flagship stores here.
I hope I have shared something useful today.
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