A vacuum-mop combo can vacuum and wet-wash your bare floors at the same time. It’s arguably the quickest, most convenient tool for thoroughly cleaning your dirtiest floors—usually kitchens and mudrooms, but really anywhere.
But we don’t think most (or many) people actually need a mop-vac combo. There are lots of other tools that work just as well, and most of them cost way less, even if they take a little longer to finish the job.
In the right homes, though, mop-vac combos can make your floor-care routine much easier. And the best models are decent-quality appliances that do the job they say they’ll do. A mop-vac combo can be especially valuable in households where messy floors seem to just emerge from nowhere. They’re great for sucking up spills, too, especially if there are solid chunks mixed with liquid (certain models can even do this on rugs). Personally, I got a visceral thrill from watching the dirty-water tanks on the best mop-vac models fill up with murky, swampy water, knowing that the filth was no longer on my floor.
On the downside, mop-vac combos are much more expensive than almost any other type of mop, and they don’t clean edges or grout lines very well. Only some mop-vac combos can work in a dry, vacuum-only mode. And even those that can are worse at digging dust and hair out of rugs than most standalone vacuum cleaners. It can also be kind of nasty to empty out a mop-vac combo’s dirty-water tank, especially if the machine sucked up a bunch of food and pet hair, mixed in with all the turbid fluids.
How they work
Vacuum-mop combos have suction, like a regular vacuum. But they also dribble out some cleaning liquid and automatically scrub the floors with a spinning brush, sort of like an electrified mop-scrubber thing. And they can safely suck up and store solids and liquids alike.
Some models, including the Bissell CrossWave (our top pick), can optionally run as dry vacuums and won’t dispense liquid until you press a button. Others, like the Tineco iFloor3 (another model we recommend), will automatically wet-wash whenever the power is turned on—there’s no vacuum-only mode. Both styles have merits, which we cover in our pick sections below.
Plenty of people (and even brands) call this type of product a “wet-dry vacuum.” But that’s also a common term for workshop vacuums, which can safely suck up solids and liquids but don’t wet-wash your floors (no cleaning solution, no brush). So we’ve decided to (somewhat clumsily) call products like the Bissell CrossWave “vacuum-mop combos,” to avoid confusion with other types of floor-care products.
In some homes, certain mop-vac combos could be the main floor-care product (supplanting a separate vacuum and mop). The more bare flooring you have and the more often you’d like to mop it, the stronger the case for mop-vac primacy. This doesn’t seem to be a common use for these cleaners, and most bare floors don’t need to be wet-mopped very often anyway. But it’s an option, and it can make a mop-vac combo’s price seem less intimidating. If you think you want to go this route, be sure to pick a model that can run in dry-vacuum mode alone, like the Bissell CrossWave.
Performance-wise, a mop-vac’s vacuum suction tends to be on a par with that of a cheap stick vacuum—totally fine for getting almost any kind of debris off bare floors, but mostly ineffective on rugs, especially rugs with long, dense fibers.
Most mop-vac combos’ mopping performance is strong enough to wipe away any stuck-on stains and a lot of built-up grime, leaving floors looking pretty polished. Like any wet-mopping tools that use water or mild detergent, mop-vac combos are safe to use on any sealed bare floors, including most wood and stone tile, and all ceramic tile, laminate, vinyl, and linoleum surfaces. In relative terms, mop-vac combos work much better than a wet Swiffer or robot mop (or other pad-style cleaner). But they are not quite as effective or versatile as a traditional wet mop (when used properly); for example, combos don’t clean grout lines as well as traditional mops do.
Some mop-vac combos claim to work on rugs as a way to “refresh” their appearance (we saw this claim in an ad for the Bissell CrossWave Max). That’s a meaningless term, and we’d argue that it’s borderline misleading, based on our testing. Combos can be useful for sucking up fresh spills from carpeting. But we have not found one that makes a noticeable dent in set-in stains or grime the way a dedicated carpet cleaner does.
With a vacuum-mop combo, you’re meant to use the manufacturer-supplied cleaning solution; this may or may not be ideal for your floor type or fragrance preference, and it costs more than a lot of common detergents. All of the user manuals imply that using third-party cleaning solutions (Bona, Murphy’s, Mrs. Meyer’s, Mr. Clean, whatever) can cause long-term problems in the machine’s liquid dispenser, but we don’t know how seriously to take this.
Dirty downsides
Mop-vac combos can clean your floors faster than other floor-care tools, but they still require some cleanup after you’re done using them. This takes at least a few minutes of hands-on effort that’s grosser than what is necessary with other types of mops.
You’ll need to dump and rinse the dirty-water tank (often labeled “DWT” on the machine) promptly after you’re done cleaning, or when the DWT gets full. Hidden in the murky liquid of the DWT, you’ll often find chunks of food and grit and whatever else was on your floor, plus a few stringy globs of hair. The solid stuff tends to cling to the sides of the DWT, even if you swish the waste water around a bit before dumping it out. The gunk will usually come loose with a clean-water rinse, but you might have to brush it out manually (while trying not to flick any filth back toward your face).
After each use of the mop-vac, you’re supposed to let the entire DWT assembly, including the filter, dry out in pieces for 24 hours before reassembling it and putting it back in the main machine. If you ever get lazy or distracted and neglect to empty the dirty-water tank for a few days after a cleaning session, it may turn foul—like, potentially really smelly and slimy, as we learned in our own testing. Several models have a mode that automatically washes the brush roll, while others require a little more manual effort to rinse away the murky residue. And no matter what, you’ll eventually have to bend down, pop off the splash guard, and pull or cut some matted hair patties by hand.
Maybe I’m just more grossed out by the nature of the DWT than the typical owner and am blowing it out of proportion: Only a small percentage of user reviews for any mop-vac combos even mentioned this step as being disgusting, according to our AI-assisted analysis. However, close to 20% of owners of popular models criticized the overall amount of effort it takes to properly clean the machines after each session.
Consider the cost
Another major downside to a mop-vac combo is the high cost of the best models. There’s no doubt a lot of people would find them useful for cleaning a few super-dirty rooms, but maybe that convenience is not worth the price. For illustrative purposes, here are conservative price estimates of some other combinations of floor-care products (some of which are Wirecutter picks) that can do roughly the same job as a mop-vac combo:
Basic: $11 broom with dustpan + $10 self-wringing mop
Electric: $155 cordless stick vacuum + $30 spray mop + $15 reusable pads
Combo: $220 plug-in mop-vac combo
Robots: $250 robot vacuum + $180 robot mop with reusable pads
What’s the best option? Setting aside the matter of price, the best option depends on how much cleaning you need to do—and how much time you’ll take to do it. The best products in each of these categories all have similar user ratings, which is a sign that there’s no single category of mop that’s clearly superior.
My personal take: While I was testing mop-vac combos, I was also testing robot mops. Plus, I own a Swiffer WetJet spray mop. So for almost six months, I could use whatever kind of fancy mop I wanted—and I found myself rotating among the different types pretty consistently, with no strong, enduring preference for one over the other. The Swiffer WetJet was almost always the quickest way to wipe up a small spill or stain, and I was glad I had one around. In times when I had to clean up a lot of crumbs and splatters—maybe after cooking a big, saucy meal—the mop-vac combos made the fastest work of the mess. And if I was out of the house or just didn’t need to use the kitchen for a while, robots turned out to be a great way to tidy up. I never used a traditional mop because I didn’t have one around. But I did wish I’d had one to clean edges and tight spaces better.
