Tineco Floor One S7 Stretch review: Finally, a mop that can limbo

Wet-dry vacuum cleaners are all the rage at the moment, with every brand promising that theirs is better than traditional mopping. Sometimes they’re right about that.

Tineco is one of the leaders in this space, making my favourite wet-dry with the S9 Artist series. The Tineco Floor One S7 Stretch is one of the brand’s premium devices with some (but not all) of the bells and whistles of the top-of-the-line model at a lower price.

I’ve spent a week testing it with a wide variety of things my toddler has dropped on the ground. For the most part, I’m impressed with what it can do.

Table of contents

• First impressions
• Specifications and price
• Cleaning
• Drying
• Maintenance
• Who is the Tineco Floor One S7 Stretch for?

First impressions

The Tineco Floor One S7 Stretch is relatively compact. I’ve reviewed plenty of wet-dry vacuums with large bases that take up a lot of space, or wide bodies that are visually imposing. Although the Floor One S7 Stretch is hardly a shrinking violet — it’s a chunky black monolith — it doesn’t take up any unjustified space.

The large LED screen on the top gives a useful amount of information about how clean that patch of floor is, remaining battery life and which mode it’s in. It has the added bonus of looking nice and fancy.

Tineco Floor One S7 Stretch specifications and price

The two big features of the Tineco Floor One S7 Stretch are that it can lie flat to go under furniture (albeit still with a pretty high clearance), and it has a three-section dirty water tank to stop water from getting in the motor.

The most important thing for a vacuum cleaner to do is clean well. That’s kinda its whole thing. But in addition to that, wet-dry vacuum cleaners also need to be cleaned after each use, and their rollers dried so they don’t get too mouldy and gross.

Cleaning

The Tineco Floor One S7 Stretch doesn’t have steam, which means it’s well-suited to sealed wooden floors, but isn’t as competent on tiles and sealed concrete as a steam model.

It’s a model that reminds me that this product category is still in its infancy, because it’s better than previous S7 units I’ve tried before. It’s certainly better than cheaper models. But it’s also still not as good as really putting your back into it with a traditional steam mop. Of course, the point here is that you don’t have to put your back into it.

I did a series of escalating tests and found that it’s good at everyday spills if caught fresh. However, it doesn’t have the lifting power of steam, and anything dried or weird is going to be a bridge too far.

Test one: milk

Milk is probably the easiest demonstration for a wet-dry vacuum cleaner, and so I wasn’t surprised when the Tineco Floor One S7 Stretch passed with flying colours. It sucked up the milk in one go. Easy.

Test two: quinoa

While setting up the milk test, I accidentally tipped over a container of raw quinoa. The Tineco Floor One S7 Stretch picked up a lot of the dry ingredients, but wasn’t great at getting into the edges and left a lot behind. I needed to do quite a few passes.

Test three: yogurt

Yogurt is a little more viscous than milk, but still shouldn’t pose too much trouble for a wet-dry vacuum cleaner.

I went over it slowly to give it more chance of a good lift, and still needed to do several passes. Even after all the visible yogurt was gone, there was still a sticky residue left on the tiles that was a bit gross. It was better after a few goes over.

I can’t help but think I would have gotten a better result by using a cloth and some spray and wipe. I did end up having to use a cloth and wipe to get rid of the stickiness, and so I’m not sure what I gained by using the S7 Stretch in this situation.

Test four: some pasta sauce from last night

I would really only expect a steam wet dry to be able to tackle this mess. And I was right; without the extra lifting power of steam, the Tineco Floor One S7 Stretch couldn’t lift any of the pasta sauce. I ended up just scraping at it with my toenail for a second and then wiping it off with my sock, which was more effective.

Test five: tubeless tyre goo

The problem with living in an apartment with nice wooden floors and a fancy bike is that I don’t have a shed in which to do bike maintenance, and that’s why one section of my floor is covered in assorted rubber and goo. I can get it off with my elbow grease and my traditional steam mop, so I was curious to see how the Tineco Floor One S7 Stretch went. It made no difference. Just made the floor wet.

Verdict

The Tineco Floor One S7 Stretch seems like a really good option to use on tiles and sealed wood or concrete floors for everyday cleaning. It’s more efficient than mopping and vacuuming separately. However, for anything more difficult than regular maintenance cleaning, nothing beats a traditional steam mop or a paper towel and some spray and wipe.

Drying

After the cleaning comes the drying.

While the floor does look a bit wet after it’s been cleaned by the Tineco Floor One S7 Stretch, it seems to be a small enough amount of water that you know it’s been cleaned, yet not so much that it sticks around long. I found my floors were dry within a few minutes.

Afterwards, the roller has been self-cleaned, and the 85-degree air dries it in under 10 minutes. Completely warm and dry to the touch. I’m impressed.

Maintenance

Unfortunately, after the wet-dry vacuum has finished cleaning your floor, it must be cleaned. At the moment, there’s really no way around this.

The good news is that it cleans its own roller and does a genuinely excellent job of this. It was clean enough that I felt comfortable touching it.

Then comes the bad part — cleaning the dirty water tank.

This is a part of the process that really shouldn’t be too bad, yet somehow is The Worst.

What made it particularly bad is how difficult it is to open the tank. Sure, that’s partly because it’s new. However, I had to wrestle with it so hard that I ended up spilling disgusting dirty water on my jeans and all over my hands. I may never recover from this.

Emptying the tank itself, once open, wasn’t as bad as other machines I’ve used. I’ve definitely had worse. But there are so many ways it could have been better. For example, adding a spout to make it easier to pour out the water without spilling would be more intuitive. This is definitely an area Tineco has a lot more R&D to do.

Because, while I appreciate how easy the Tineco Floor One S7 Stretch makes it to clean my floor, I then have to spend around 5-10 minutes cleaning the dirty water tank. If I had a lot of floor to clean, that would be fine. However, in a 100sqm apartment, I feel that any time or effort saving in the mopping is immediately negated by the cleaning of the machine. This is really the biggest pain point for the category.

Who is the Tineco Floor One S7 Stretch for?

This is a device for people who feel they would really benefit from a wet-dry vacuum cleaner with most of the bells and whistles, but don’t want to shell out for the S9 Artist series. Steam models would be better for tiled floors like bathrooms and kitchens. However, this model without steam will be a better match for wooden floors.

It’s a good choice for people who are unable to manually mop for whatever reason. You just have to be willing to get a little personal with the dirty water and debris.