**UPDATE: On sale now with EOFY sales** Review: Tineco Carpet One Cruiser — much more than a carpet cleaner

Sometimes, when you have a new pet, accidents happen.  Or, according to my wife, when you have a messy husband, sometimes bigger accidents happen.  For times like this you need a carpet cleaner.

Professional carpet cleaning can be expensive and for that reason you can now buy DIY carpet cleaners.  One such cleaner is the Tineco Carpet One Cruiser and when it got offered to me I jumped at the chance to check it out – we have far too many little puppy-sized marks on our carpets (and a couple of large Pepsi Max-sized couch stains that are well over six years old).

The Tineco Carpet One Cruiser turns up and I was looking forward to cleaning my carpets and putting it through its paces but I was in for a shock.  Sure it does carpets, but in a surprise to me, it also does upholstery! All my Christmases had come at once. My favourite couch could finally be restored to its glory.

The other main features of the Tineco Carpet One Cruiser include:

• Strong suction of up to 130W
• SmoothPower technology with bi-directional assist wheels
• High temperature PowerDry Technology
• Spot cleaning tools
• Complete self-cleaning system
• iLoop Smart Sensor

“The new Carpet One Cruiser is easier to handle than previous carpet cleaners, delivers powerful suction and an enhanced drying process for improved cleaning performance and effectiveness. With the Carpet One Cruiser, carpets and rugs can be deep cleaned more frequently, improving the aesthetic of the home, and contributing to a healthier indoor environment.”

Setup

Somehow, the folks at Tineco managed to fit this carpet cleaner into a relatively small box.  After assembling it, which was just a matter or sliding parts such as the handle, into where they are needed, you are basically good to go.

There is an app you can use to run the Carpet One Cruiser but I’m not sure why you would ever really need to use that given you need to be next to it or holding it to use it anyway.

Cleaning

Cleaning with the Tineco Carpet One Cruiser is super easy, in both a brain-power and muscle-power sense. 

For stubborn stains Tineco recommend you use their Pre-Treat Formula at least once to help the cleaning process.  The puppy-pee stains have been there for a while now so that got a good spray, and the couch Pepsi Max stains are at least six years old so they go a good spray too.  

For truly stubborn stains, Tineco suggests repeating the process with the Pre-Treat Formula and the carpet cleaner a few times.  I didn’t have to for the puppy-pee and the Pepsi Max stain, which was surprising given how long they have been there for.

After spraying, you leave that for five minutes to loosen up the stain/dirt.  While waiting, I filled the water reservoir with clean water – the clean water tank isn’t as big as you may think so keep an eye on the level of that as you go.  It isn’t difficult to pause halfway through and go and fill the tank up again.

Once the clean water tank is full you pour in two capfuls of the ‘Carpet Care and Deep Cleaning Solution.’  This is essentially a detergent designed to assist the carpet cleaner in its job.  There is a bottle of this included in the box, and it should last you quite a while, given you most likely do not need to clean your carpets all that often.

Then you turn the Tineco Carpet One Cruiser on, tilt it back, select either ‘Auto’ or ‘Max’ and away you go.  The carpet cleaner, as mentioned above, has ‘SmoothPower technology with bi-directional assist wheels’ which basically means it drives itself – you just need to steer it and give it a gentle push in the direction you want it to go.

It only sprays water in front of it while going forward, so you need to make sure you go forward at least once over the area you are cleaning, but I always went over each area twice, just in case – can’t hurt surely.

My advice is not to clean the carpets in socks like I did, if you don’t want wet sock prints all over the house afterwards – and that was even with trying to avoid the wet areas with my feet.

After a single clean (and a couple of passes, but only one treatment), the puppy-pee stain on the floor was gone.  Simples.

Next up was the upholstery and the biggest stain you’ve ever seen.  Every time I have tried to clean it, the ring of Pepsi Max just moved further out and as such I’d since given up on it, and the couch was relegated to the games room.

I sprayed the stains like crazy – see video – and then attached the upholstery/spot cleaning tool to the front of the Carpet One Cruiser.  There aren’t a lot of instructions in the box, so I figured this out myself — I’m sure there are instructions in the app and online but “boys will be boys”?  There is a trigger on the spot cleaning tool which sprays the liquid from the clean water tank, underneath the tool.  This means that most of the work is as the tool is going backwards.  

When you attach the spot cleaning tool to the cleaner, the cleaner automatically selects the Accessory option and will thus only operate while standing straight up.

The tool has a brush on the end of it which I used to massage the cleaning fluid into the stains.  Running the tool back and forwards over the couch a few times resulted in a lot of water being used and I had to refill the clean water tank halfway through – it was a bad stain.  

After about 15 minutes, I was done.  It shouldn’t take that long but I redid the stained areas quite a few times just to be sure. In the end the stain was totally gone and my wife was amazed. The problem, though, was that I had scrubbed so hard in the stained areas that I had restored them to their original colouring, but the rest of the couch, which I didn’t scrub as hard, is a shade darker. Looks like I need to get back onto it this weekend.

The surprising thing to me after all this was how quickly it dried.  After just two hours, the carpet was dry.  The couch, on the other hand, took overnight to fully dry – but I used a lot more water for that.

Cleaning the Carpet One Cruiser

Cleaning the Carpet One Cruiser is super easy.  Simply, make sure there is enough water in the clean water tank (it will tell you if there is not enough), then hit the cleaning button on the handle, and the device will take care of the cleaning for you.

It cleans the brush roller, suction inlet and brush roller cover for two minutes, followed by three minutes of 75°C high-temperature drying of the brush.  Then simply empty the dirty water tank and put it away. 

Should you buy the Tineco Carpet One Cruiser?

The Tineco Carpet One Cruiser is a decent investment for anyone. At a tick under $1000 it is not cheap but if you have pets who dirty floors, messy kids (or partners) or just like or want your house to look immaculate at all times then this is a worthy investment.

It cleans carpets incredibly well — I can imagine it would clean carpets even better if you got onto stain almost immediately after they appear rather than wait months and months for them to get trampled in like I did. As a bonus it can be used to clean you upholstery such a couches and chairs. Be careful cleaning any rugs as not all rugs are colourfast and may lose colour when cleaned.

The Carpet One Cruiser is easy to use with its SmoothPower technology and bi-directional assist wheels doing all the work for you. Simply point it in the right direction, give it a small nudge and its on its way.

If you want to be able to keep your carpets and upholstery as clean as the day you got them, then I can highly recommend the Tineco Carper One Cruiser. The Tineco Carpet One Cruiser has an RRP of $999 and is available now at Harvey Norman.

For a limited time, Harvey Norman has the Tineco Carpet One Cruiser on sale for $848 ($150 off) as part of their EOFY sales.