Design and features

• Mop sized
• Clever detergent mixing
• Charges via USB-C

Most hard-floor cleaners, such as the Dyson Clean+Wash Hygiene, are quite large devices, with big water tanks and sizeable motors and batteries. The Philips OneUp 5000 Series Electric Mop is the opposite and, at 1.9kg, barely larger than a regular mop.

It needs a little assembly when you first get it, with the wand requiring attachment to the main body, with a single screw holding it together. It’s a quick job and, once assembled, you’ll never have to do it again.

There’s no dock with this floor cleaner, nor do you need one. When you’re done cleaning, you can just pop it in a cupboard out of the way.

While the Philips OneUp 5000 Series Electric Mop may look like a mop, it’s actually got a lot in common with a hard floor cleaner, including two tanks: one for clean water and detergent, and one for dirty water.

Using a pump, the Philips OneUp 5000 Series Electric Mop takes fresh, clean water and detergent and doses it onto the mop pad. Suction is used to take dirty water and feed it back into the dirty tank.

In this way, the clean water and detergent aren’t contaminated with dirt. That makes this cleaner better than a mop, although be aware that the mop pad isn’t constantly cleaned, unlike the roller on rival hard floor cleaners, so it does get saturated with dirt.

The 281ml clean tank should be filled with fresh water to the fill line. Then, to mix the detergent, you just press the bottom on top to dispense the perfect amount. It’s a really clever system that’s fast to operate.

Philips provides one cartridge bottle of detergent in the box, with replacements costing £16.99 for a box of two. Each one can be used for 40 cleans, so it’s not bad value. As the cartridges screw into the water tank, you have to use Philips’ detergent.

The dirty water tank is 178ml, and it only takes in liquids, with no solids, making it easy to empty.

At the business end of the mop is the mopping pad, which is a combination of sponge and microfibre cloth. It’s springy and absorbent, but moves smoothly on the floor.

Philips says that you should soak the mop pad before clicking the mop body onto it for a clean. Then, there’s a power button and a choice of two dispensing levels of the detergent mix.

Using the Philips OneUp 5000 Series Electric Mop is very easy. It’s extremely light, and the mop head pivots to make it easy to get into tight spaces. It was easy to use a bit of force to scrub away at stains as I went.

A potential downside is that the Philips OneUp 5000 Series Electric Mop is entirely manual in the way it moves. Sure, it’s light, but with a roller-based floor cleaner, you can leave it on a stain and let it do the job itself.

At the end of a clean, the mop pad can be removed and washed at 40°C in the washing machine. It should be left to dry naturally, although you could use it straight from the machine if required, skipping the step where you soak it with water.

Then, the two tanks need emptying and, if the Philips OneUp 5000 Series Electric Mop is running low on battery (shown by the LED lights by the power button), you can charge it via USB-C.

Performance

• Cleans fast
• Can’t deal with particles
• Sucks up a surprising amount of dirt

I put the Philips OneUp 5000 Series Electric Mop to work on my regular dried-on floor stains, and was largely impressed with how well the cleaner worked.

First, there was my dried coffee stain. The wide, wet mop head made short work of this, and it was gone with a couple of passes.

My red wine stain was easy to remove, too. Thanks to a wet mop head, just a solid push over the top was enough to remove it.

With both of these stains, the Philips OneUp 5000 Series Electric Mop worked faster than other floor cleaners that I’ve used. Good, wide contact with the floors and a bit of pressure works well for these kinds of stains.

With my dried mud stain, things weren’t so simple. While the mop could remove the dried-on stain, the solid particles were just pushed around the floor. Philips does recommend vacuuming first, but if you end up with a spill that has lumps in liquid, such as a dropped bowl of cereal, this mop can’t deal with the mess.

Similarly, my ketchup stain is the toughest test. It took a few passes to get this one off, but the initial problem was that the ketchup was pushed around, and some got onto the mop head itself.

After getting into the cleaning, the stain was smeared a little bit at the start, while it was first being cleaned.

However, at the end, the ketchup was removed and the floor was back to being clean and shiny.

What this shows is that if you’ve got a fairly major spill, say because you’ve dropped something, the Philips OneUp 5000 Series Electric Mop can’t suck up that much liquid in one go, where a regular floor cleaner can.

With just a small pump inside, the Philips OneUp 5000 Series Electric Mop wasn’t any louder than background noise, so it’s nice and calm to use.

My mop pad was quite saturated at the end of cleaning, so I had to wash it, getting it ready for the next clean.

Should you buy it?