The Tineco Floor One S9 Artist is a hard-floor wet/dry vacuum that’s all about ease of use. It requires minimal setup and cleaning feels effortless once you’re using it.
Whether you’re using it to quickly scoop up a mess or to do a thorough run through your home, the S9 Artist does the job. As a hard-floor only model, it works well across tile, vinyl, and sealed wood floors.
Its attractive design and premium materials give it a sleek look, and the charging dock is small enough to fit into a utility closet. Overall, it’s a solid device that’s only slightly hampered by minor issues.
Overall Rating: 4 / 5
Pros
- Attractive design and a futuristic feel from the LEDs
- Easy setup and minimal friction in use
- Effective pickup on spills and simple self-cleaning
Cons
- Cost feels a little high at RRP
- Hard-floor only means limited use in most Australian households
- Dirty tank gets nasty and difficult to clean
Price: $1199 RRP | For speedy cleanup of everyday messes
Setup & First Impressions
The Tineco Floor One S9 Artist has a typical three-part assembly and solid build quality that makes it quick and easy to set up and get cleaning right away.
Tineco offers an app you can connect with, but it doesn’t seem to provide functions that are useful in the real world, so I wouldn’t feel bad about skipping it.
In the box you’ll find a few extra accessories and consumables, including a spare roller and a full-size detergent bottle so you can get started right away.
Design & Aesthetics
The front of the unit is a satin silver finish, while the top features RGB LEDs that show up when charging and when cleaning. They indicate the soil level and the S9 Artist adjusts is cleaning power to match.
Like other Tineco cleaners, the lay-flat design is low enough to reach under most furniture. If you feel the need, you can drive the unit manually under long and low furniture with the app, but I found this is more of a gimmick than a useful feature.
The S9 Artist comes in at 110 centimetres tall with a compact square footprint, and weighs 5.5 kilograms, making it fairly portable for most users.
Life With the Tineco S9 Artist
I’ve been using the Tineco Floor One S9 Artist for a couple of weeks to perform regular cleans as well as clear up a few accidental messes that happen through life.
I found it matched my expectations for the most part, providing easy cleaning on hard floors.
Positives
The S9 Artist provides great manoeuvrability with its self propulsion. It drives forwards and backwards to help you move it around. When turning, the SmoothDrive system accelerates the outside wheel to perform the turn more easily, and it feels noticeably better than units that don’t do this.
The mop design helps the unit reach nearly flush to edges for superior coverage from edge to edge. Its clean rinsing system helps to prevent dragging dirty water around while minimising streaks.
Tineco’s handle design incorporates a screen that makes it easy to check your settings and battery life at a glance rather than interpreting LED lights that only give a vague indication.
Negatives
Cleaning the dirty tank can be quite repulsive. The system separates solid debris from dirty water, but the whole tank gets a bit smelly. A thorough detail clean of the unit is tricky because the tank is quite deep and it’s tough to reach the bottom with the brush.
Performance & Reliability
Regular day-to-day messes are no problem for the Tineco Floor One S9 Artist. Cleaning up a coffee spill is only a matter of running the unit over the mess a few times, and it’s quickly dealt with.
Edge cleaning is quite good, but not completely flush. For a thorough clean, sweeping along the baseboards helps to gather everything up before running the S9 Artist.
A full water tank was enough to clean all of the hard-floor areas in my 90 square metre apartment with a little left over. The battery provides up to 50 minutes of runtime assuming a regular run.
Practical Considerations
You’ll want to empty and rinse the tank and bin after every single run to help minimise odours and cut down on long-term maintenance, and the concern is that thorough cleans are tricky. Otherwise, the self-cleaning cycle seems thorough enough not to worry about manual roller cleaning.
Rinsing and drying doesn’t take too long, and is the loudest part of the whole process. Unless you’re stuck in the same room with the charger while it’s running a self-cleaning cycle, noise isn’t an issue.
Value & Alternatives
At the recommended retail price, the Floor One S9 Artist is a touch on the pricey side, but we all know that street price on floor cleaners can vary wildly with discounts.
Assuming it comes in a bit cheaper, I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend the Floor One S9 Artist to anyone set on a chemical-based cleaner.
However, in my experience, steam-enabled units lift stains and stuck-on debris a lot better than chemical formulations. In Tineco’s own range, the S9 Artist Steam and the S7 Stretch Steam are natural comparison points, with the latter coming in at the exact same RRP as the S9 Artist.
Would I Buy It With My Own Money?
At a discount, yes. The Tineco Floor One S9 Artist is a solid hard-floor cleaner that comes in just a touch too high at RRP. For nearly effortless hard-floor cleaning, you could do worse.
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