Tineco Floor One S6 FlashDry review: A good clean without a solid story

This review has taken me a long time to write. Because even after about six months of use, I’m still not sure what really differentiates the Floor One S6 FlashDry from the Floor One S6 Pro Extreme that I reviewed in May last year.

The key difference is the charging station, and the self-cleaning system using hot air to wash and dry the FlashDry’s roller. But that doesn’t really impact how you use the appliance. I never thought to myself while using the S6 Pro Extreme that it was slow to dry with the self-cleaning cycle.

This isn’t a bad thing, ultimately. The S6 Pro Extreme was a solid floor cleaner; easy to use and delivering really clean floors. The S6 FlashDry also gives that performance, and because its design is so similar, it has the same limitations for cleaning under beds and furniture.

Throw in the S6 Stretch model, which offers the FlashDry washing but also lays flat for cleaning under furniture, and you have to ask yourself why Tineco has decided to release these different variations of the same product.

What is the S6 FlashDry offering?

The S6 FlashDry looks mostly identical to all the other various Tineco floor washers. A motorised powerhead with a barrel body that houses both fresh and dirty water tanks, topped with a large LCD screen that shows you key cleaning information.

On the front of the cleaner is the dirty water tank, while the narrower clean tank sits at the back.

Key to the Tineco brand is its iLoop smart sensor technology, which uses sensors in the head unit to detect messes, and adjusts the cleaning intensity to make cleaning easy. When the Floor One goes over a big mess, the circle around the screen goes red, and gradually changes to blue as the mess is cleaned.

Like the S6 Pro Extreme, the S6 FlashDry is designed to get to the edge on both sides of the power head, making it easier to clean floors properly.

It has a “balanced pressure water flow system” (whatever that means), and the Tineco MHCBS cleaning system, which I have no idea what it stands for. But the MHCBS technology is basically Tineco’s approach to spraying clean water onto the roller on one side, and scraping away the dirt and mess on the other side of the roller, ensuring that your floor gets cleaned faster.

When it comes to the “FlashDry” element of this particular model, the floor cleaner uses hot water at 70ºC to clean the roller when you pop it on the base. The temperature and approach means the roller is cleaned in two minutes, before a hot-air dryer (also 70ºC) leaves it dry (and odour-free) in five minutes.

What does the S6 FlashDry do well?

When it comes to the core cleaning ability of the S6 FlashDry, I really couldn’t tell you the difference between it and the S6 Pro Extreme. It does a good job of picking up mess, and leaving your hard floors clean.

The iLoop mess detector isn’t flawless, but it is useful for identifying the dirtier sections of your floor. I find it does tend to fade to blue a bit faster than it should sometimes, but so long as you only use it for a guide, it does a good job.

The edge-to-edge roller head is good for cleaning close to the wall and cabinets. It’s not as close as the extendable mop pads on something like the Ecovacs T50 Pro Omni, though, leaving maybe a 1 cm gap.

Battery life is about the same as the other Tineco models I’ve tested, which is enough to get you through a clean of a 3-bedroom home (minus the two carpeted rooms) without needing to recharge.

But the key differentiator of this model is the FlashDry system. From my testing, it works well, but it’s not really a noticeable difference over other models.

I never found myself concerned about the cleanliness or odours of the S6 Pro Extreme model when using it. While the FlashDry does clean and dry the mop head a bit faster and more thoroughly, the reality is you will press the self clean button on either model and walk away, forgetting about the appliance until you need to use it again.

What could the S6 FlashDry improve?

Tineco has a Floor One S6 variant that lays flat called the S6 Stretch, which lets you get low enough to clean under your bed and other lower furniture.

The FlashDry doesn’t lay flat, though, so you can’t use it to clean under low furniture.

And yet, the S6 Stretch also cleans the mop head with 70ºC hot water and dries it with 70ºC hot air. So why would you consider the FlashDry, when the Stretch does most of the same things?

And that’s probably my biggest issue with the S6 range – there are too many variants with minor differences, when there should really just be a single model. Remember, there’s also an S5 and S7 series of floor cleaners, plus the iFloor models.

And for anyone who has carpets in their home, remember that this is exclusively for your hard floors.

Verdict

I think Tineco has done an impressive job establishing itself as a leader in the floor washing appliance category. Its products have repeatedly excelled in the actual cleaning of hard floors, while being easy to use and easy to maintain.

But I don’t understand the reasoning behind breaking out variants for features like hot air washing and drying, a more flexible design or using “electrolysed water”. It confuses the product lineup, and doesn’t really offer enough difference between models.

Currently, there are three S6 models on sale: The Pro Extreme, the FlashDry and the Stretch. All are priced at $899 RRP, though retailers vary between models. The FlashDry is exclusive to Harvey Norman, but if you’re willing to shop around and find any one of these models on sale, you’ll get a solid floor cleaner.

Behind the scenes

Specs comparison

Tineco doesn’t have specs on its site, which makes things much more difficult for someone like me.

The specs below have been pulled from a range of sources, including international Tineco sites. Occasionally, there are regional differences, so please only use this information as a guide.

Tips and tricks

• Honestly, Auto mode is all you really need for most usages, but Max mode is good if you want to really attack stubborn stains.
• If you’re cleaning up a liquid spill, try starting with the suction only mode to pick up most of the mess, before switching back to Auto to give it a proper clean.
• Always clean the dirty water tank after you use the S6 FlashDry. Trust me on this. If you leave it, the stench of dirty water and the debris you collect amplifies, making it an extremely unpleasant experience to clean out. The longer you leave it, the worse it gets.
• One thing that kind of bugged me about the S6 FlashDry was the voice notifications. Not the notifications themselves, where the appliance told you what it was doing. But the FlashDry announcement when you put it in cleaning mode. Specifically, it said "Flashdree". It's mind-boggling. So to turn it off, you can, you just need to connect the device to the Tineco Life app and control it from there.

Additional thoughts

These wet/dry vacuums aren’t a necessary purchase, but they can make cleaning up a lot easier. I wish I had one back when my kids were babies and liked to throw food on the floor because it would make it a lot easier to clean up after young children.

Particularly given how robust both mid-range and high-end robot vacuum cleaners are these days. If you have a good robot vacuum, you probably don’t really need one of these floor cleaners.

They also aren’t really ideal for heavily carpeted homes, given they only work on hard surfaces.

That said, if you do have a lot of hard floors in your home, and like having a clean home, a weekly vacuum mop to supplement your robot vacuum is going to help keep your home feeling much fresher.

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