The Tineco Carpet One Pro Shampooer is designed to keep your carpets clean and fresh all year round. It’s described online as a “SMART” shampooer, and uses a combination of a heated wash and scrubs along with suction power to remove dirt and stains from your carpet. It even has a special sensor system called ‘iLoop’, that can detect the dust level and adjust the suction and water flow accordingly. I had a chance to give the Tineco Carpet One Pro Shampooer a roll around my flat, which is a combination of low pile carpet and area rugs to see how it works, and most importantly, if it lives up to its claims.
Tineco Carpet One Pro Shampooer specs
| Price | $999 |
| Retailer | Godfreys |
| Power | 1300W |
| Noise | 84dB |
| Water capacity (clean / dirty) | 2 litres |
| Suction | 130 AW |
How it works
Essentially, the Carpet One Pro Shampooer works by deploying a jet of 40-degree water and a special detergent into your carpet, scrubbing it with a rotating brush, and then extracting it back out using warm air and suction. This process is managed by how you move the unit. When you push it forward, it sprays water and scrubs, when you pull backwards, it sucks and drys. Tineco says that the “Smart PowerDry system” is capable of drying carpets and area rugs in just five passes.
The unit has a clean water reservoir, which is also where you place a capful of the detergent. Once extracted from the carpet, there’s another tank to hold the dirty water. The total capacity is 2 litres per tank.
There’s also a large colour screen that teaches you how to use the Carpet One Pro, and there’s a visual indicator of how dirty the section of carpet you are cleaning is in real-time. It shows blue for clean and red for dirty and will change as you move the head back and forth over an area until it’s clean.
Tineco Carpet One Pro Shampooer in use
I ran the Carpet One Pro throughout my entire flat, which is about 80 square meters in total, however probably 50 of it was carpeted.
You will need to do a fair bit of pushing and pulling as you run the head over the same area of carpet a few times since, pushing shampoos and scrubs while pulling sucks up the water and dries.
Fortunately, the Carpet One Pro is fairly compact and lightweight so it’s not that hard to move around. It’s about the size of a stand-up vacuum so I didn’t have too much trouble moving it around. Keep in mind that it’s not battery-operated, so you’ll need to run a cable to a nearby wall plug. Its head is fairly compact so you can get into corners and against walls without a major fuss.
Speaking of vacuuming, the Carpet One Pro is designed to suck up dirt so you don’t really need to vacuum your rugs beforehand. However, it’s probably still a good idea to remove large objects to avoid clogging up the brushes and drainage system. The 1300W motor is fairly beefy and can create decent suction too.
It’s not all that noisy either and is rated at just 84dB, which is about the same as what you’d expect from a medium-to-large vacuum cleaner.
Smart cleaning modes
You can choose between a Max cleaning mode and Auto mode, along with drying and accessory modes, but more on these later. The Auto mode is intended to be the most efficient since it senses the dust level and only uses as much liquid as it thinks is needed. The Max mode is for very dirty areas and spot cleaning but will empty the tank significantly sooner. All up, I cleaned my carpets and rugs in five tank refills, so it used about 10 litres of water. Otherwise, I’d say that it’s about one tank refill/empty per medium-sized room. Thankfully, you only need a cap of detergent for each clean, so you can get quite a few rooms from the 500ml bottle of solution that comes in the package. Additional cleaning fluid bottles cost $24.99.
I did notice that every once in a while there was a fur ball left on the carpet after pulling the unit backwards. I have a cat and this seemed to be an accumulation of fur on the rotating brush. It wasn’t a major problem as this could be picked up by hand easily, and appeared to be what happens when the brush gets too dirty. You can clean the rotating brush by popping it out of its case, which is fairly straightforward.
Keep in mind that for long pile carpets, especially shag, the rotating brush unit will probably tangle up, so I would avoid it if your home is filled with these.
Air drying
While the carpet does get a good dose of water and detergent during cleaning, it is still damp after most of the liquid is sucked up. You can keep pulling the unit over an area to dry it out further, however, it does take five or so passes. There is also a dedicated drying mode that you can switch to after shampooing if you want to access the carpet right away.
The Quick Drying mode uses 75-degree air, and you can stay informed of your carpet’s dryness via a special humidity meter on the display. For my carpet, which was a fairly dense pile, it still took a number of runs to get an area completely dry, and doing this for the entire carpet would have taken a while. I was happy just to leave the carpet in a semi-damp state after shampooing and let it dry itself, which it was by the next morning.
Accessory attachment
There’s a handy accessory hose attachment included that you can use to remove stains from harder-to-reach places. This plugs into the lower front of the unit and you can use it on carpeted stairs, upholstery, car interiors and other hard-to-reach places. There isn’t a motorised brush head on the attachment, however, it’s still quite useful.
You can connect the Carpet One Pro to a companion app, which supplies you with more information about how to set it up and use it, along with a product manual and cleaning count tracker. There are also verbal instructions that tell you how to use it during setup.
GadgetGuy’s take: Tineco Carpet One Pro Shampooer
I have a light beige carpet and was pleasantly surprised at how fresh it looked after using the Carpet One Pro Shampooer. My entire flat smelled fresher too, and it appeared to do a thorough job of removing pet fur from my carpets. The area rugs were similar, as was my doormat. Overall, shampooing all of my carpets wasn’t really that hard at all – and the unit is lightweight, compact and easy to store thanks to its stand-up configuration.
I’d have to say that I was quite impressed overall, and liked the feeling that if there’s ever a wine spill, pet accident, spilled plate of food or otherwise nasty stain, all I have to do is pull out my Carpet One Pro and take care of it there and then.
It’s also a great solution for renters who need to clean the carpets after a tenancy, not to mention giving the carpets a once-over when they move in.
While not cheap at $999 (from Godfreys), compared to paying for professional cleaning, it will pay for itself fairly quickly over time too.
All up, if you have a lot of rugs and carpets, I would certainly consider picking one up so you can keep your carpets looking and smelling clean and fresh.
