It's Sunday, the day when my partner and I are both home at the same time and the chosen day to clean our apartment only for us to work for the rest of the week, hardly be in it, and still have it turn into a mess. I'm stood there with an almost 10-year-old Dyson V8, with a replaced head and battery, kicking around a bucket and mop combo from room to room thinking to myself, I can send a picture of my ballbag to an AI and have it examine them for any abnormalities or write a sonnet about it, so why am I having to deal with this mop that sloshes dirty water all over the place? I immediately scribbled down an idea that I deemed genius and wondered why nobody had produced such a design.

The idea was to bolt on an area to the Dyson's main tube where a mop would attach, ready to swab the deck right after the Dyson vacuumed. Brilliant. Then I realised you would still have to remove the mop to clean it and attach it back to the Dyson. And what would happen on the downstroke where inevitably the mop would get sucked into the Dyson's head? All I had done was envision a solution for someone who wanted their life to have more problems. These issues plagued my mind for all of 3 minutes until I was back on the web doing research; research that led me to the Tineco FLOOR ONE S5 Extreme—an all-in-one vacuum and mop super product. A day later, it had arrived.

I was incredibly wary of this brand from the reviews on Reddit and Amazon. But let's face it, rather like this site, people only complain on the internet. If something is the best thing ever, you'll never hear about it because they're enjoying the sun on their yachts with their new product. But if it's super shit, you're going to hear them vent about it with all their might squirrelled away by their 2-bar heaters to try and make themselves feel better for wasting their money on something awful.

Inside the box was the main vacuum, a very cheap and flimsy charging station, various filters, cleaning brushes, and three mop rollers. I thought that there were supposed to be two mop rollers and that I had become the luckiest person ever to have lived by having a third accidentally shipped in the box, and for many months I clung on to that victory like a man unable to move past that the best days were behind him, but I only just now read that there was supposed to be three in there anyway.

I waited for a few days for my dog to shed its fur and my Christmas tree to shed its fir (this review was supposed to come out in January but there we go). Suitably happy that enough test subjects were carpeting the floor, I filled up the clean water tank sticking to the Tineco Floor Solution after reading the manual’s stern warning to use only their product lest the machine destroys itsef. Then, I pressed the power button.

The vacuum mop spoke to me. Literally. It said something like "starting to clean" or something, I can't remember. There's a little robot voice that chirpily lets you know when the main water tank is empty, or the dirty water tank is full. And of course it's chirpy, because it doesn't have to refill/empty the damn thing. In my apartment-sized apartment, I only have to refill the clean water and empty the pooey water once per session if I'm doing a good job but I can get away with zero pit stops if I'm flying through it. After a few seconds, I could see the shiny and clean trail that the Tineco FLOOR ONE S5 Extreme buffed out behind itself like a robotic snail, leaving a much thinner layer of clean water compared to the swampy ocean of brown shit left behind with my manual mop and bucket. I could also immediately smell the fragrant Tineco Floor Solution flowering up through my nostrils potentially tricking my brain into thinking that must be clean because it smells nice.

There's an onboard display that shows an array of information, none of which Is particularly useful in any way, except for the battery indicator. The futuristic-coloured neon blue ring that follows the circumference of the rounded display gradients to red once the default auto suction mode detects that it needs some extra power to suck up whatever debris it's struggling with. It's most probably only useful if you're deaf or within an active wind tunnel because you'll know when it needs more power by the loud-assery of the motors when they supercharge up. The handle contains three buttons: the universal on/off symbol, a mysterious one that looks like a dot-matrix mist, and a water droplet. One of the two that isn't the power button changes the cleaning mode from auto to full-blast, and the other starts the self-cleaning cycle when docked. I'm still not sure which button does what because by this point it's muscle memory more than cognative thought and I only ever use the device in auto mode.

Once I was done vacu-mopping, I was ready to see the fruits, hair, and tree droppings of my labour within the dirty water tank. But before that, I had to place the unit in its docking station to activate the self-cleaning mode. On the dock were places to slot one of the three spare rollers, the spare air filter, and a thin bottle brush for cleaning the crap from within the dirty water tank, but the main worry I had other than how fantastically cheap it felt. When placing the Tineco on the dock for self-cleaning or charging, it felt as if the Tineco was leaning too far forward and would snap itself away. Even after several months of convincing myself that it's designed that way, I still have this weighty fear whenever I place the unit back on the dock. But before the docking, curiosity fully enveloped me and I just had to unclip the sunroof of the mop roller to have a quick peek at the sodden garbage it had collected. It was beginning to look like something I could really do without—filled with matted dog hair, bits of food I purposely scattered around the kitchen, and all sorts of other shit. It reminded me of the time my brother and I, whilst down to our last coins, purchased a juicer to attempt to drink our food. After its first use, we opened the machine to see the mulched remains of apples and carrots, understood that neither of us was going to make an attempt at cleaning it, and left it in the corner of our apartment's unused kitchen where it remained for the duration of our tenancy. This was in Asia and we did have a cleaner who thankfully realised quickly that we were utterly useless, so after it was cleaned we gifted it to them. What I'm trying to say is, that I wasn't going to clean the Tineco nor use it ever again if that was what I faced after each use. Luckily for me and the Tineco Floor Solution sales department, the self-cleaning did a really good job.

Once in place, the happy robot voice told me to start the self-cleaning mode. I thought, Why don’t you do it yourself? I couldn’t help but wonder how it’s smart enough to auto-detect suction and water levels at any given time, and even alert me when the tanks are full or empty, yet it can’t figure out when it needs a self-clean. Even I'm able to figure out when I need a self-clean and I don't even have WiFi. Yes, this thing has WiFi. I have no idea what for and I've yet to bother to find out.

Once the cleaning cycle began, I watched for about two seconds before the robot cheerfully stopped itself to inform me that the clean water tank needed refilling. Rather miffed that it didn’t do any pre-flight checks before firing up, only to stall mid-way and complain about no fuel, I dutifully obeyed without showing a single shred of internal displeasure so that in the case of robots taking over Earth, they might pull up this record in their database and see me as one that won't ever cause them trouble. I restocked the clean water and floor solution supply and watched as the roller span up to various speeds spitting out and sucking back up globs of wet gunk as its internal motors whirred into a vortex, blowing air all up inside itself. After it had finished spinning out chunks of wet hair from under the rollers and onto the floor like a money-dispenser gun aimed at the poor, it notified me it was done with a happy 'self-cleaning complete, please empty dirty water tank.'

By this point, the battery was at 52%, and the cleaning had filled a quarter of the dirty water tank. After swapping the wet-but-clean roller for a dry one and wiping away the last bits of dirt, the Tineco was clean, charging, and content.

In the end, I still have to keep my dying Dyson around for the one rug I own since the Tineco is strictly for hard floors. You can indeed run it over carpets but I assume it'll cause all manner of chaos and I'm not about to throw £399 into the nether by trying to find out if it could cope. If you'd like to try with your vacuum mop, let me know, I'd love to hear how badly it went.

I’ve been impressed with this chunky unit’s performance and build quality. It’s lasted over six months and is still going strong, though that says something about the shit state of modern products when I’m genuinely amazed that a £399 item is still working after only a few months. But whether it’s mopping up puddles around the water dog’s bowl or tackling dried food by the oven, it’s infinitely easier and cleaner than using a mop and bucket.