Bosch Unlimited 7 ProHygienic Aqua review: A vacuum cleaner that can also mop hard floor

The Bosch Unlimited 7 ProHygienic Aqua is a combination cordless vacuum cleaner and hard floor mop, which puts it into a relatively new category.

It isn’t a dedicated hard floor cleaner like the Shark HydroVac Cordless Hard Floor Cleaner WD210UK or Eufy Clean Mach V1 Ultra, which have clean and dirty water tanks and can suck liquids up. It’s more like the Dyson V15s Detect Submarine – essentially a regular dry-only vacuum cleaner with a mopping attachment that carries its own water. This is deposited on the floor through the mopping floor head and wiped up again with a pair of spinning mop pads.

This type of combination device still works well and offers a different proposition to an all-in-one hard floor cleaner, because it’s a vacuum cleaner first and a mop second. Hard floor cleaners tend to be much better at mopping than regular vacuuming, meaning that you’ll still need to keep a regular vacuum cleaner around for the dry jobs. This Unlimited 7 has both functions in a single unit.

Bosch Unlimited 7 ProHygienic Aqua review: What do you get for the money?

I’ve tested a Bosch Unlimited 7 before, albeit without the mopping nozzle. This ProHygienic Aqua model is essentially identical to the base version (Bosch Unlimited 7 Graphite BCS711GB, RRP £249) except that it comes with the additional mopping floor head.

Adding a premium of another £250 for this seems a tad steep – it may double the functionality but to get there it shares many parts with the existing vacuum. Interestingly, the Dyson V15s Detect Submarine is only £100 more expensive than the standard V15 Detect that it’s based on. That must be one of the few occasions in which Dyson looks more generous than one of its rivals, but it’s worth remembering that the whole Dyson package remains a lot more expensive than the Bosch Unlimited 7 ProHygienic Aqua.

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Bosch Unlimited 7 Pro Hygienic Aqua review: What’s it like to use?

The new ProHygienic Aqua mopping nozzle uses a system similar to the best robot mops. It has two circular mopping cloths mounted onto discs, which use the vacuum’s motor to rotate them at 200rpm in opposite directions.

A small 250ml water tank sits above the pads and feeds water down to moisten them. Unlike many manufacturers, Bosch isn’t selling any special detergent to add to the water mix. While the manual contains a long list of cleaning products you shouldn’t use, it suggests you can use any neutral multi-purpose floor cleaner, which makes a refreshing change. Bosch states that the 250ml of liquid can clean up to 50m2 of floor.

What the mopping nozzle doesn’t do is suck up any water into the vacuum. It draws power from the battery to rotate the cleaning pads, but suction is bypassed and no water passes up through the extension wand to the collection bin.

Otherwise, the dry element of the vacuum is the same as the non-mopping version. The floor head is relatively basic, with a single brush roller and no additional technology to help against hair tangling. The extension wand has a bend in it, which you can release to reach under low furniture.

Accessories include the same combi tool for both upholstery and dusting, depending on whether you engage the retractable brush. There are also two crevice tools supplied, one short and rigid, the other long and bendy.

Up at the top of the device, the wand is directly attached to the collection bin. This means you can’t easily empty the device without removing the extension wand first. However, it doesn’t suffer from tight angles on the collection path and I wasn’t troubled by any blockages during testing, even when vacuuming larger particles.

In my tests, the suction power of the Bosch wasn’t spectacular. On its highest setting, it summoned just over a third of the suction power of the Dyson V15s Detect Submarine. I’ve also compared it to the Samsung Bespoke Jet, which has a similar mopping system, and the Numatic George.

However, the Bosch trails behind these vacuums too, ending up with the weakest suction of the bunch, as you can see in the chart below. Suction isn’t the be-all and end-all of vacuum cleaning power, but it’s often a good indicator of likely performance.

The Bosch Unlimited 7 ProHygienic Aqua comes with a single battery that can only be charged on the device. However, it is removable, and is compatible with Bosch’s range of power tools, and a selection of garden equipment brands including Gardena, Flymo and Husqvarna.

In my tests with the vacuuming floor head attached, the battery trailed behind its rivals from Dyson and Samsung when using its Eco setting, lasting 38mins 29secs compared to the 52mins 47secs of the Dyson. It out-lasted the Samsung when on full pelt, though, but still fell a couple of minutes short of the Dyson.

Bosch Unlimited 7 ProHygienic Aqua review: What’s it like to use?

Little has changed in the general use of the Bosch Unlimited 7 ProHygienic Aqua from the regular Unlimited 7 before it. It uses the same control system, which is a simple four-option sliding thumb switch that toggles the vacuum between Off, Eco, Turbo and Auto modes.

When the mopping nozzle is attached, the manual states that you should use the Auto setting for best results. If the mopping pads were put on dry it will take a bit of time for the water to infuse into them, though there is a water boost button that can increase the flow to speed the process up. You can also use the button to deposit more liquid on the floor if you hit a particularly stubborn stain that isn’t shifting.

The option of making the extension wand bend is handy, as it can operate with both the vacuum cleaner floor head and the mop. I haven’t seen many wet cleaners that can easily reach under low furniture, so it’s a welcome addition.

Being able to switch between vacuuming and mopping by just switching the floor head is useful, just as it is with the Dyson V15s Detect Submarine and the Samsung Bespoke Jet. Compared to the conversion you need to make to switch the Numatic George from dry to wet mode, it’s a very simple process.

What you don’t get is the self-cleaning stand that you’ll often find on dedicated hard floor cleaners such as the Shark HydroVac WD210UK or Eufy Clean Mach V1 Ultra. However, cleaning up after the mop is relatively straightforward, as it doesn’t collect any dirty water.

Instead, you just have to deal with the dirty mopping pads, which rip away from the floor head thanks to their Velcro attachments. They can then be rinsed through by hand or slung into the washing machine at 40-degrees. A total of four pads are supplied in the box, with two being used each time.

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Bosch Unlimited 7 ProHygienic Aqua review: How well does it clean?

The Bosch Unlimited 7 ProHygienic Aqua has the same suction and cleaning ability as the dry versions of the vacuum cleaner. You can read more about its results in our cleaning tests in the original Unlimited 7 review, but the overall headline is that it fared reasonably well in all but the hard floor Cheerio tests. The ProHygienic Aqua collected 78% of the Cheerios I spilled.

As you can see from the chart below, it doesn’t rival the Dyson V15s Detect Submarine for overall cleaning ability, but it’s a step above the Samsung Bespoke Jet and the Numatic George.

What I didn’t test on the Unlimited 7 was its ability to pick up pet hair, as this is a new test that has been introduced since that review was written. I took the opportunity to test this out on the ProHygienic Aqua, collecting a measured volume of dog hair from a groomer, spread out and pressed into both carpet and hard floor. The Unlimited 7 performed well, collecting all the hair I dropped on both surfaces.

To test the mop attachment I soiled a patch of laminate flooring with a muddy footprint, some undiluted blackcurrant squash and a squirt of tomato ketchup. All three were left to dry out before I cleaned them up, to provide the greatest challenge.

With just water in the tank, the cleaning power of the attachment proved impressive. The muddy print took two passes to clean, but that was only because I sent it down the middle of the attachment on the first pass – the area where the two spinning cloths meet appears to be the weakest cleaning area. By offsetting it slightly on the second pass the concentrated effort of a single cloth offered a stronger clean.

Its skills were further demonstrated with the squash. Here mops tend to take two or three passes to clean up, with the first pass taking out the bulk of the stain but the subsequent passes required to clean up the dried-on edges. Here the spillage was eliminated in a single pass.

Ketchup tends to be the trickiest customer in these tests and, true to form, the Bosch took 17 passes to eliminate every trace of it. However, compare that to the 27 passes required by the Dyson V15s Detect Submarine floor head and it begins to sound more impressive. It even fared better than the two dedicated floor cleaners I’ve reviewed recently, with both the Shark HydroVac WD210UK and the Eufy Mach V1 Ultra taking more than 20 passes to clear such a stubborn stain.

Bosch Unlimited 7 ProHygienic Aqua review: Verdict

The mopping performance of the Bosch Unlimited 7 ProHygienic Aqua proved to be very impressive. Its spinning pad system is the mopping method that appears to work best on robot vacuum cleaners, and it performed well here too. It doesn’t suck up mess, so won’t collect up a spilled bowl of cereal, but does a grand job of giving your floor a watery wipe.

The vacuum cleaner side of things is less impressive. It performs well enough, except for large particles on hard floor, where it can struggle. Where it falls down is that it lacks some of the best recent advancements that other manufacturers are introducing, such as a decent anti-tangle system to stop long hair from winding around the roller.

If you want vacuuming that leads the way then the Dyson V15s Detect Submarine is worth a look, as long as you’re happy to pay its premium price. The vacuum function here is top-notch. However, it’s worth noting that its roller-based mopping attachment didn’t fare as well as the rotary mop pads used on the Bosch. It will collect some spilled liquid but not in the same way as a dedicated hard floor cleaner can.

Speaking of which, if you constantly need to clean unsavoury damp messes, then the Shark HydroVac WD210UK is your tool. It’s not a great vacuum cleaner, especially on carpet, but it has tanks for clean and dirty water and can be used to mop the floor and clear away reasonably serious spills.

Lastly, for anyone regularly having to hose down their living areas, we’d plump for the Numatic George. Again its dry mode isn’t brilliant, with a floor head that isn’t motorised and doesn’t have a brush bar. However, its wet function is good on both carpet and hard floor and offers a level of heavy-duty cleaning that you don’t get with most domestic devices.