Floor mats - the first thing everyone needs
Clean, non-chunky design and no obnoxious logo!
Score: 49/50
Easy Score: 9
Daily Usage Score: 10
Form Score: 10
Function Score: 10
Reversibility Score: 10
Product Link: Model Y: TAPTES Model Y 2021-2023 Floormats Model 3: TAPTES Model 3 2021-2023 Floormats
Long Story Short
Why this product?
Floormats are probably the best and easiest quality of life upgrade for your car. Standard felt floormats absorb literally everything you (or your friends, family, or pets) track into your car, and unless you’re regularly shampooing your floormats, every puddle you splash through, every pile of leaves you shatter, and heaven forbid, every dog poop you step in gets ground further and further into the fibers of your standard mats..
Why this brand?
Personal preference plays a big part here, but I like the more subtle design that doesn’t scream “I’m an all weather mat!” with deep fluid channels and chunky rubber. Those types of mats definitely have their use for people that need them, but I imagine for the average driver, a functional and understated mat accomplishes both goals of form and function quite well.
Any regrets?
Not a one. These aren’t cheap, but probably are the best bang for the buck addition I’ve made for my car.
Long Story Long
There’s a reason more and more households have a no-shoes policy - people don’t want to track everything from the ground outside into their homes. While taking your shoes off (and requiring that of your passengers) is substantially less practical, the same concept applies to standard floormats - everything you step in goes into that mat and works its way down into the fibers. Over time, that accumulates into some horrifying petri dish of detritus that probably contributes to some nasty odors in your car.
Let’s think about all the cases where standard floormats create a unhygienic environment - and if you experience all things things, imagine the cumulative effect!
General outdoors: Every weather condition you walk through ends up in your car. Dust from dry conditions, concrete mix from nearby construction, rain/mud mix, oil from parking lots, gum - as soon as you step on your mat, it starts politely cleaning the bottoms of your shoes and soaking up all that nastiness.
Kids: The best gift you can never return, but between general indifference for the cleanliness of your car and general clumsiness with their food drink, it’s not a question of if your mats get trashed, it’s a matter of when. Personal experience of having milk spilled into a felt mat has taught me that no matter how many internet solutions you try to find to get rid of the sour milk smell, it will always linger.
Pets: You can have mitigating solutions to keep their mess off floormats (small pets kept in carriers/seats, seat covers for larger pets), but the fact of the matter is that their fur will fly around and get into your mats, never to be removed. Also, if you take your dogs to the dog park, think about all the filth your dog (and you!) are walking back to your car.
Activities: Outdoor activities are hardly ever clean. Bikes bring mud and dust in, surfing brings sand, snowboarding brings snow, and on and on. All of those things shed directly into your mats and create a hassle to remove them efficiently.
Now imagine instead of either (a) having to use a vacuum and delude yourself into thinking all that crud got sucked out, or (b) regularly paying someone to professionally clean your mats, you could just pull the mat out and dump off the excess dirt, and if you’re feeling extra ambitious, take a wet rag and soap and get rid of pretty much everything else.
Product Details
What I like:
Lightweight, aesthetically pleasing, large lip at the edge to prevent fluids from spilling over to the floor (though if you have enough fluid to worry about that, a sharp turn is probably going to create a problem).
What I don’t like:
They fit about 99%, but if you’re the obsessive type, the 1% may annoy you. In my case, the driver’s side mat doesn’t sit completely flat, so if I move my foot to the side, I can push down on the mat where it bows up a little. You can’t tell at all visually, but I know it’s there. Also, the mats I got shipped with a small crease in the driver’s mat behind the pedals, but I don’t usually see it, so it doesn’t bother me.
Installation Tips
Really not a lot to say here, pretty much put them in and you’re good to go. I’ve taken out the original mats and replaced them with these, and it’s fine, and I’ve been in a car that has the original mats under these, and I can’t tell the difference. There may be some marginal amount of decrease in road noise if you keep the original mats, but you’d probably need super sensitive hearing to tell the difference.
Alternatives
3D MAXpider (3D MAXpider floormats)
These get great reviews, but they are a little pricier and personally, I don’t like having that logo sticking out like a sore thumb.
SUPER LINER (SUPER LINER)
If you’re a serious outdoors person (or plan to be), these mats will provide more protection against all the things you’ll bring tracking into your car.
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