The Tineco Floor One S9 Artist Steam Is The Robot Maid You Didn't Know You Needed

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When my husband told me that a big box was sitting on the front porch with my name on it, my first thought was, "Ooh! I'm so excited that House Digest and Tineco are letting me try out this new steam cleaner." My second thought was, "I hope it doesn't weigh a ton." And my third was, "Where am I going to put it?" Because if there's anything I hate more than cleaning floors, it's doing it with heavy equipment that's exhausting to set up, use, and store. That's why some of the floors in our house only get a quick mop instead of the deep clean they desperately need. A microfiber dust mop does the trick on the floating floors installed in our living and dining rooms. But the hallway by the garage? That little strip is essentially a runway of horrors. Piedmont clay. Unidentifiable gunk. Persistent leftovers from a carton of eggs that didn't quite make it into the kitchen last week. We've got it all.

Our kitchen tile is even worse. It's that builder-grade stuff — lifeless porcelain squares that are low cost and even lower in charm. We're serious cooks, so our kitchen tile has taken a beating over the years. There's one strip of who-knows-what right at the base of our freezer drawer that I haven't been able to remove despite trying every product and trick in the book. It laughed at my Swiffer. Scrubbing at it with a hard bristle brush took more out of my knees than it took off the floor. Even the Alka-Seltzer hack didn't work.

Would the 284-degree steam coming out of Tineco's Floor One S9 finally help me get my floors clean? I couldn't wait to find out.

Unboxing the Tineco Floor One S9 Artist Steam couldn't have been easier, and I felt a wave of relief when I saw a quick-start guide printed on one of the box flaps. Each piece was cradled inside sturdy cardboard packaging and carefully wrapped in plastic, thin foam, and static cling scratch protection, which kept the base, handle, and charging station immaculate during shipping. In addition to the instruction manual, it also came with three accessories: a dry filter, a bristle cleaning brush, and a self-cleaning heatproof roller brush for vacuuming and washing floors at the same time. Although the box wasn't exactly light, I quickly realized most of the weight came from the docking station.

Since the steam floor washer is cordless, I knew it would need charging before I started tackling my grimy floors. What I wasn't expecting was the pleasant-but-startling female voice coming out of the tool after I clipped the handle into the base. As it turns out, Tineco sends out its products partially charged. When the voice confirmed I was "charging" my new steam floor washer after I plugged in the docking station and gently set it on top, I felt confident — not just that I'd assembled it correctly, but that this smart tool might just help me finally get our tile floors looking like new. 

Tineco's instruction manual says to fully charge it for 3.5 hours before using it, so I kept a close eye on the digital display built into the handle until it was ready. I read through the rest of the manual while I waited, a step I highly recommend if you get a Tineco Floor One S9 Artist Steam of your own. 

I've read more than my fair share of articles on areas to avoid when steam cleaning your home, so I was admittedly a little nervous about trying the Tineco Floor One S9 on my floors. Still, this steam cleaner was so easy to use; I couldn't help but go for it. The floor washer wasn't exactly lightweight after all, but after I turned it on with the touch of a button, it practically started rolling itself. I found it very effortless to maneuver along baseboards, under cabinet edges and my butcher block table (thanks to its 180-degree lay-flat design), across raised thresholds separating my floating wood floors from tile, and around the corners of my aforementioned gnarly refrigerator. The handle was extremely comfortable – all it took was a single tap to switch between the various modes, and the LED headlight illuminated the dirt and debris in darker areas.

I started on Auto Mode and noticed the 3D light display changing from blue to red when I reached a particularly dirty area. Once I reached the dreaded refrigerator, I moved into Steam Mode. It took about 30 seconds or so for it to generate steam, a process that was, once again, announced to me by the device. I decided to only clean half of the floor so I could compare the smart washer's performance against everything else I tried. Although it still had plenty of charge left, it didn't take long before the device started flashing red and telling me it needed cleaning. The transparent clean water reservoir was easy to find, pop out, and fill. That said, I had a little more trouble figuring out the whereabouts and mechanics of the dirty water tank.

There's only one word for what I found in that tank: disgusting. I could tell immediately that the Tineco Floor One S9 Artist Steam was the answer to my kitchen's stubborn stain situation and that it would help me keep my floors cleaner for longer. I was a little discouraged when it told me I needed to empty the dirty water and clean the brush within the first few minutes. But that's because I didn't realize just how dirty my floors really were! Using nothing but tap water, and no elbow grease whatsoever, the steam floor washer pulled up hair, crumbs, grass, dirt, gunk ... and yes, when I dumped the dirty water out, there was even a bug in there.

The brush roller wasn't any better. It took only minutes for it to go from fluffy and white to soaked through with brown, sludgy water. The smart voice told me to clean the brush, which led to a brief period of dread before I realized that I could simply stick the entire device back into its docking station and push the self-cleaning button on the handle. Once it was done, I simply emptied the dirty water tank again before continuing to clean. In other words, this is not Cinderella's mop and bucket.

Although the self-cleaning mode was extremely loud, and would probably terrify antsy pets, I felt like this feature pushed the Tineco Floor One S9 Artist Steam awfully close to robot maid territory. We've named ours "Tina." She lives in the sunroom, and our floors have never looked better. Even the grout looks cleaner. Nothing I've used has come close to the results I got with this device. I highly recommend it.

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