I Tested All Laminate Flooring To See Which Is Better

[Music] foreign we'll be torture testing the cheapest versus the most expensive laminate flooring that you could buy at Home Depot to make sure that it's worthy enough to be in your home let's get started cheapest laminate so far 99 cents a square foot let's go with this okay so this one is 349 a square foot laminate not vinyl the most expensive this is 419 that's more expensive but that's final that's an unfair comparison [Music] we have our platform we have our cheap and our expensive laminar flooring we're going to be running against five different tests scratch resistance water resistance impact resistance stain resistance and cleaning first up scratch resistance let's scratch this thing up has this ever happened to you laminate flooring has four different layers the top being the protective layer and it has the AC rating AC stands for abrasion class one through five one being the lowest scratch resistance five being the highest level of scratch resistance they create now that's the classic you can worry about if you have pets in the house I don't have any pets but I have the next best thing I have a bear clock cheap ones hold it up pretty well let's try the expensive stuff okay pass the claw test let's scratch it up something else kids football cleats [Music] let's see what else we got classic computer chair [Music] this is exhausting [Music] something else Classic Furniture drag I don't have any bumpers on this though which is good [Music] oh no I dropped all these nails oh oh goodness right now I'm kind of impressed by both of them this one more than that but still being cheap not bad now what if one of my kids found one of these nails now the traffic Master the cheapest stuff the box says it's scratch resistant but it doesn't say what AC rating it is I see a ton of scratches here partly probably because it's a darker material but still I would say it's probably nothing more than a level two clasp the perga defense plus that's a different story this is right around the box for AC level five the highest commercial grade and I mean even if you look at the glare from the light apart from a very hazy one right there maybe a small one there I don't see anything and I bet you all the other stuff will get hidden if we put some kind of polisher on it or something like that overall really impressive next up is the impact test has this ever happened to you [Music] the thickest part of laminate flooring is a substrate layer it's made together by composite material head together with the resin this is the section that gives you the durability of your laminate flooring and the only way to test durability is just drop something heavy on it the classic scenario home of dropping stuff maybe in the kitchen is maybe dropping your pots and pans but I'm afraid my wife will kill me if I drop her Caraway pan now the perfect alternative to that is this 2.5 pound little weight that's roughly about the same amount so let's do some damage [Music] all right let's see what the nice stuff does if I drop it on the edge it has a higher tendency of cutting into it but not as much as that one that's a little well that's just a marker thank you but then what happens when you have something heavier like a 35 pound kettlebell that one just split it wide open [Music] so let's do a recap the cheaper stuff would definitely split open so much more I mean almost all of these are punctures then the nice expensive stuff for the most part nothing will really split wide open and just bent it a little bit that's a little bit and not as much as I thought and you know what the 35 pound kettlebell actually did even less damage it looks like it didn't puncture through as much as it did maybe over there here I mean here's a comparison this one almost looks like a footprint if you look at this one it looks like more of like a deeper narrower footprint and this is more of a wider it doesn't go deep as much you disperse the energy a little bit more I think that might be the worst one to hit the edge of the Kettlebell next up the water resistance test has this ever happened to you now typically laminate flooring is not advertised as waterproof it's water resistant if you're looking for a waterproof product of waterproof vinyl is a great option if you have a basement you're afraid from flooding or maybe you have a pool and kids are running in the house in their wet swimming trunks the best test in our situation for the laminate flooring is the classic case when the kid is getting a glass of water and oh no they spilled it by the fridge and they forgot to tell you so what we're going to do is cover this in water and come back in the morning to see if anything delaminated and even worse swell up at the seams see you guys in the morning all right folks it's the next day we made sure to keep this thing as wet as we can in fact I kept probably on three occasions putting more water on it just because some of it dripped off this morning some of it dripped off last night and I wanted to really soak the sucker so let's see what we got clearly this swole up I mean this is obnoxious that not only swell up but actually delaminated that as well it's still tight here and here but this one delaminated oh my gosh yeah look at these bumps let's see like the nice one though this is the part that blows my mind everything is nice and tight no swelling no lips on it and no delamination very very impressed for a product that's not marketed as waterproof wow next up is the stain test isn't it annoying what this happens to you [Music] the top protective layer is the same layer that protects it from not only water resistance but also keeping things from staining and penetrating into the wood it's essentially if you didn't have clear coat on the wood anything you put on it will actually be absorbed like a sponge let's see how crazy you can get we're always nervous about doing this at home how about some paint huh [Music] thank you what about those times like a graffiti artist breaks into our house and now all that's left is we wait for it to dry [Music] all right while the paint's drying we're talking about protecting the inside of our home by having good durable floors well we got to talk about something to protect your house from the outside and that's where Arlo comes in Arlo creates a ton of home security products and this one specifically I'm really excited about because a bunch of my friends have these at their cabins or their rental properties or even their personal home if you've been watching these videos long enough you know that I'm not an electrician so I need something that's simple and easy to use so this Arlo Pro 4 is a wire free Spotlight security camera let's open it up the Arlo Pro 4 camera captures clear details and colors in 2K HDR it looks like there's a lot of maneuverability that comes with it one of my favorite features about the Arlo Pro 4 camera is that it has advanced object detection that could discern between animals packages or cars this is my favorite part anytime there's texts and with all the footage being uploaded directly to the cloud I can access all the recordings anytime from anywhere I want this Arlo Pro 4 comes with a 160 degree wide view noise canceling two-way audio color night vision built-in Spotlight all while other same time being able to connect through your OK Google Amazon Alexa or IFTTT wow that literally can't get any easier through the app you can set up custom activity zones that will give you notifications straight to your phone and at the same time reduce any unwanted notifications that you have set up I'm excited about the Peace of Mind of this Arlo Pro 4 is going to give our family if you want to go check it out click the link down description below use my promo code Mr buildit to get 15 off your camera today now let's go check on these floors next up the cleaning test with the Steam test we want to see how easy it is for us to clean these floors going from the least invasive to the most invasive we're going to first hit it up with the classic old soap and water if that doesn't work we'll use our floor cleaner partner together with a steam up that a lot of houses have then if that doesn't work we're gonna hit something a little more harsh some Pine tool let's get cleaning [Music] the cleaning is probably the least fun part about this whole experiment I want to go back to Smashing things for the most part all the paint is removed all that's left is we have a ton of crayon and definitely a lot of spray paint let's try the steamer foreign [Music] there's not a clear winner so far with step two of cleaning spray paint's still there crayon's still there plenty of crayon and spray paint here although the Sharpie was removed which is kind of weird to me let's try Pine salt this is this is like an antibacterial and disinfectant but I mean I've remembered being a harsh chemical so we'll see what it does it might be out of order I don't know this stuff stinks [Music] this one does not like moisture at all it's look at it's delaminating completely maybe we try like goog off hey you might be wondering what this white canvas is in the back I built a garage home simulator you get to make all my swings that I want with my golf clubs and have a lot of fun doing it videos out go check it out one of my favorite things that I've built for myself so far all right that's freaking Miracle look at this paint coming off wow so that it goes to show if a graffiti artist breaks in your house use Goo Gone [Music] it's like a murder that I'm trying to clean up in my house [Music] so the verdict on staining is I think the nice stuff is a little bit more difficult to clean as opposed to the cheaper stuff and the reason why I think the cheaper stuff is a little more easier to clean this because it's not as coarse as the nicer stuff the the nicer stuff you can actually it kind of resembles the wood a little bit more than this here so the deeper the grooves the crayon actually absorbs on the lower part of the groove as opposed to the top part but maybe the brush we can get that out but all in all I think they both rank about the same when it comes to cleaning wait I got one more test I forgot to do now I know after smashing kettlebells on our floors smashing dishes almost defeats the purpose but I promised you guys the most realistic torture test and here we go so let's say you're fighting your significant other and they're like you it's more like it [Music] no scratches I guess our job here is done all right guys to summarize the traffic Master the one dollar a square foot more prone to scratches more vulnerable towards water damage and very vulnerable when it comes to impact and the burger defense plus less likely to get water damage less likely to get scratches and much tougher when it comes to impact and none of these are sponsors of today's video I just hope that you had as much fun watching this video as I had destroying these floors hey make sure you subscribe and here's a quick playlist that I think you'll enjoy watching as well