Minty Fresh

I had never heard about the Mint family of devices before. If you haven't either the short version is that they are floor cleaning robots similar to the concept of a Roomba but for hard floors rather than carpet. I actually found out about it from woot.com which, in its typical style, had a one day sale on an older Mint model. I read the reviews and saw some issues with that model. However, when I looked into the newer model it seemed that most of those problems had been solved albeit at a higher price.


I figured, what the heck? Why not give it a shot? The mint arrived as the typical Amazon shipments do -which is to say quite quickly. The packing and packaging were first rate. I suspect this is a significant portion of the product cost, but probably results in a near zero DOA rate. It also helps improve your sense of the product quality.

The kit I received included two "heads" for the unit for which you can use with Swiffer wet or dry cloths. Alternately it comes with 4 reusable towel-like, cotton cloths that can be used with the other head in either a wet or dry mode. You can also buy additional cloths if needed.

So far, I have had the unit for over a month. I've had it clean my kitchen floors made of tile, the hallways and two bedrooms - all wood floors. I've used the different Swiffer cloths and the Mint cloths. For the kitchen, the wet Swiffer cloths are definitely the best bang for the buck. They are easy to use and can be used with a Swiffer hand mop as well if you need some additional scrubbing.

How well does the Mint Plus work? Well, it does pretty well in making sure it covers the entire room. It comes with a little "GPS" cube that helps the unit track where it's been and it seems quite effective. Additionally, it's great to run to provide maintenance cleaning for your rooms. It is pretty low to the floor and is able to go under a variety of furniture to fish out dust and hair clumps. Typically when it is done, the cloths are quite dirty so it definitely is pulling up a load of dirt each time.

However, keep in mind that this unit will not do deep cleaning. The Mint will not clean grout or scrub floors. It is a fairly light unit so it can't bring that type of pressure to bear. You will still need to do regular scrubbing on your hands and knees, but this unit should remove the pain of maintaining the floor and lengthen the period between scrubbings. Additionally, if you have a lot of odd shaped open floor areas, such as long narrow strips of floors bordered by rugs it may take a while to learn its way through the gauntlet.

The Mint Plus unit is also nice and quiet. It does make a soft whirring sound as well as a soft thunk when the head encounters an object, but nothing intrusive. It does sound a set of tones when it turns on, starts to mop, gets stuck or is done so that you can hear it from a room away and rescue or collect it as need. A note for animal owners... while there was significant curiosity from the furry side of the house, they all quickly got used to it to the point where until it was going to hit them, they didn't even move as it scooted by them.

Overall, I'd highly recommend the unit for doing what it should and doing it well. Just don't think that you can get this and never have to scrub again.