Review: Tineco Pure One Station 5 Vacuum

When you have three different floors in your house, like I do, using a cordless stick vacuum is the key ingredient to keeping them clean. It's easy to carry around to different areas, compact enough to vacuum two staircases without pulling a muscle, and still wide enough to vacuum an entire living and dining area in a few minutes.

The downsides, of course, are twofold: the risk of the battery running out, and the canister limit on how much dust and dirt it can gather. I've tried a few stick vacuums, but the one that makes these two downsides feel nonexistent is the Tineco Pure One Station 5 vacuum. That's because it comes with a freestanding charging station that not only holds up and charges your vacuum but also will auto-empty it into the larger canister in said base station. Suddenly, there's no canister-emptying step to deal with after each vacuuming session: I just pop it in the station, and it takes care of itself.

It's a pretty handy package that costs a pretty penny as well. But the freestanding charging and emptying base station has made the Pure One Station 5 feel incredibly convenient and less irritating than having to constantly empty a tiny canister. Plus, it's powerful enough to suck up cat litter and sneaky dust bunnies as well as my toddler's Hansel and Gretel-esque food trails around the house.

Out of the Box

Photograph: Nena Farrell

The vacuum is easy to build, coming with the vacuum base, Tineco's ZeroTangle brush, and a tube to connect the two together, plus a 2-in-1 crevice brush and the base station. There's a little cutout in the base station to store that crevice accessory, plus a power cord to power the suction in the base station and charge the vacuum.

The base station has a 2.5-liter dustbin capacity, larger than you'd find on our favorite floor vacuums like the Dyson Ball Animal 3 Extra—that one has about 1.5 liters. That means you'll have plenty of vacuuming sessions before you need to empty the base station. The dustbin on the actual vacuum itself is much smaller, but a normal size for a cordless vacuum. I was usually still able to vacuum an entire floor of my house, cat litter and all, without needing to take an emptying break, but households with lots of deep-pile carpeting or fluffy dogs could fill this up much faster.

The station promises to both empty the attached dustbin and self-clean the vacuum by pushing air through the vacuum's filter, tube, brush attachment, and of course, the recently emptied dustbin. You can hear the sound change when it switches from just emptying into the “cleaning” stage of pushing air through the vacuum. Both stages are pretty noisy and remind me of the sound you hear when a robot vacuum is emptying itself into a similar base station.

Photograph: Nena Farrell

The freestanding station really is handy, though. Not only does it charge your device when it's not in use, it prevents the top-heavy device from toppling over. (Did I knock over two different stick vacuums just this morning? Perhaps.) Other stick vacuums sometimes come with holding stations that require you to drill into a wall to mount them, but I much prefer saving home improvement projects for things like frames and furniture rather than a vacuum.

My only complaint is that my vacuum didn't respond to the base station's suction right away. I had to help open the canister on the vacuum before trying to stick it on the station, but after a few uses and my playing around with opening and closing the attached dustbin, it got better at opening correctly and presented no other issues. If you see a similar problem, I recommend opening and closing the dustbin on your own a few times to loosen it up.

Power Play

Photograph: Nena Farrell

Let's talk vacuuming power. The Pure One Station 5 promises up to 175 watts of suction and has three modes: Eco, Auto, and Max. The button on the handle makes it easy to switch between modes, but there's no indicator beyond feeling the suction power and the noise ramp up or down. I could tell when I was on Max mode, but I didn't see much of a change between Auto and Eco mode. Both modes were plenty powerful in vacuuming up everything from dust and hair to Cheerios and even the flour I may have thrown all over my floor to test the vacuum.

When you aren't vacuuming up flour that you can easily see on your floor, the built-in green headlight can help identify an alarming amount of dust and debris. I have mostly hardwood floors in my house, so this light was handy to help me see how much cat litter was really on my floors, along with dust and hair. The light had a nice wide angle, wider than other vacuums I've tried, and it was brighter, too. It wasn't particularly useful on carpet, but on hardwood it made it clear where less obvious messes were.

Photograph: Nena Farrell

My flour test was also to see whether the iLoop Smart Sensor really worked. It's a built-in sensor that Tineco promises will adjust the vacuum's suction ability based on the detected mess level. I poured flour and Cheerios onto about a square foot of floor and initially vacuumed a clean section before moving my way over to the mess. The Pure One vacuumed it all up perfectly well (though a little flour did get on the back wheels), but I didn't notice a change in power. Maybe the vacuum knew it didn't need it, but I'm not sure what kind of mess I'd need to trigger the sensor.

The 2-in-1 crevice tool that came with the vacuum was fine, but nothing to really write home about. I found this vacuum compact enough that I wasn't grabbing it often, especially since it meant I'd need to return to the base station where it was stored. Meanwhile, the battery promises between 40 and 70 minutes of runtime, but even with three floors to vacuum, it was plenty of battery to get through my entire house. Plus, any emptying meant it was back on the charger, getting ready for the next round.

All in all, I'm pretty impressed with how clean my house is with the help of the Tineco Pure One Station 5, and how well it cleans my hardwood floors, rugs, and carpeted stairs. If you want something mobile but dread the idea of dumping out a tiny canister every time you use it, this cordless vacuum really hits the sweet spot of convenience in both vacuuming and emptying such a compact, powerful device.