Choosing a floor: the fields you will regret ignoring
Almost every regret about a rigid vinyl floor traces back to one of four fields, and three of them are missing from the tables people actually compare: what the wear layer is made of, what the joint is called, what the pad is, and what the warranty refuses to cover.
Thickness is the number most shops lead with and it is the least useful one here. An eight millimeter plank is not a more durable plank; the only part of it that takes wear is the clear layer on top, measured in mils, and a thick plank with a thin wear layer will show traffic before a thin one with a thick layer does. Twelve mil is 0.305 mm. The two numbers are not alternatives, and a floor described only by its millimeters has told you nothing about how long it will look new.
What the wear layer is made of matters as much as how deep it is. Where a maker names a reinforcement, that name sits beside the mil figure on this site; where it names none, the mil figure stands alone and should be read as a thinner promise than the same number carries on a treated layer.
The joint, and why installers ask about it first
The locking system decides how the last row goes in, whether a damaged plank in the middle of a room can be lifted and replaced, and how the floor behaves when it is walked before it has settled. Almost no consumer-facing table carries the column at all. Where a maker declares a named system, that name is a checkable fact about the mechanism; where it says only that the system is patented and proprietary, that is what gets recorded here, and a joint that cannot be identified cannot be assessed for repairability.
An attached pad is a constraint as much as a comfort. A floor with one bonded on at the factory almost never permits a second underlayment beneath it, and adding one anyway is among the more common ways to void a warranty on a floor that was otherwise laid correctly. The pad material is worth reading too: most tables collapse it to a yes, and closed-cell foam and cork do not behave the same way over an alkaline slab.
Not one of the 16 products here declares how many distinct plank faces its collection prints before the pattern starts over. It is the field that turns up in one-star reviews of floors that were correctly specified in every other respect. A floor whose visual repeat lands twice in the same room reads as a mistake even when nothing about it is defective, and every maker in this release is silent on it. That silence is recorded as a declaration of nothing, not as a blank, so it can be counted here.
What each product declares
16 products in this release have evidence complete enough to publish. Each row links to the full record: the installation limits that come with it, the standardized test results the maker publishes, and the exclusions its warranty names.
The fields that decide whether a floor is right for the room, for every product with a page.
8 columns. The table scrolls sideways inside its own box; the row headings and the column headings stay in place while it does.
| Product | Core | Wear layer | Wear layer finish | Total thickness | Pad material | Locking system | Residential warranty |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bruce LifeSeal Classic | rigid core (core chemistry not declared) | 12 mil (0.3048 mm) | urethane finish; no wear-layer reinforcement named | 5 mm | no declaration | angle-angle (no system named) | 35 years |
| Bruce LifeSeal Trending | rigid core (core chemistry not declared) | 20 mil (0.508 mm) | urethane finish; no wear-layer reinforcement named | 6 mm | no declaration | angle-angle (no system named) | Lifetime |
| Ambient SPC Rigid Core 7x48 | SPC (65% limestone stone polymer composite) | 20 mil (0.508 mm) | vinyl | 5 mm | held pending resolution | click lock (no system named) | Lifetime |
| Cali Longboards 9x71 | SPC (limestone composite core) | 20 mil (0.508 mm) | no declaration | 8 mm | IXPE | angle-angle (no system named) | 50 years |
| COREtec Pro Enhanced 7x48 | SPC (solid polymer core) | 20 mil (0.508 mm) | no declaration | 5 mm | cork | angle-tap (no system named) | Lifetime |
| COREtec Pro Premium 9x72 | SPC (solid polymer core) | 20 mil (0.508 mm) | no declaration | 5.2 mm | cork | angle-tap (no system named) | Lifetime |
| Karndean Korlok Select 5.87x23.46 | rigid polymeric (SPC or WPC not stated) | 20 mil (0.508 mm) | K-Guard+ PU coating | 6.5 mm | no declaration | Valinge 5G Fold Down (5G short edge, 2G long edge) | Lifetime |
| Karndean Korlok Select 8.86x55.91 | rigid polymeric (SPC or WPC not stated) | 20 mil (0.508 mm) | K-Guard+ PU coating | 6.5 mm | no declaration | Valinge 5G Fold Down (5G short edge, 2G long edge) | Lifetime |
| Mannington ADURA Rigid 6x48 | SPC (solid polymer core) | 20 mil (0.508 mm) | urethane with ScratchResist and Microban antimicrobial protection | 5.5 mm | no declaration | click floating angle/angle (no system named) | Lifetime |
| Mannington ADURA Rigid 7x48 | SPC (solid polymer core) | 20 mil (0.508 mm) | urethane with ScratchResist and Microban antimicrobial protection | 5.5 mm | no declaration | click floating angle/angle (no system named) | Lifetime |
| MSI Andover 7x48 | SPC | 20 mil (0.508 mm) | not collected | 5 mm | held pending resolution | unnamed proprietary, angle/angle | Lifetime |
| MSI Cyrus 7x48 | SPC | 12 mil (0.3048 mm) | CrystaLux | 5 mm | held pending resolution | unnamed proprietary, angle/angle | Lifetime |
| MSI Prescott 7x48 | SPC | 20 mil (0.508 mm) | CrystaLux Ultra | 6.5 mm | held pending resolution | unnamed proprietary, angle/angle | Lifetime |
| MSI XL Cyrus 9x60 | SPC | 12 mil (0.3048 mm) | not collected | 5 mm | held pending resolution | unnamed proprietary, angle/angle | Lifetime |
| Tarkett ProGen 12x24 | SPC (rigid polymeric core) | 20 mil (0.508 mm) | no declaration | 5 mm | IXPE | angle-angle (no system named) | Lifetime |
| Tarkett ProGen 7x60 | SPC (rigid polymeric core) | 20 mil (0.508 mm) | no declaration | 5 mm | IXPE | angle-angle (no system named) | Lifetime |
- Bruce LifeSeal Classic — 12 mil wear layer on a 5 mm plank, 8 of 9 installation limits declared.
- Bruce LifeSeal Trending — 20 mil wear layer on a 6 mm plank, 8 of 9 installation limits declared.
- Ambient SPC Rigid Core 7x48 — 20 mil wear layer on a 5 mm plank, 5 of 9 installation limits declared (3 in conflict).
- Cali Longboards 9x71 — 20 mil wear layer on a 8 mm plank, 9 of 9 installation limits declared.
- COREtec Pro Enhanced 7x48 — 20 mil wear layer on a 5 mm plank, 9 of 9 installation limits declared.
- COREtec Pro Premium 9x72 — 20 mil wear layer on a 5.2 mm plank, 9 of 9 installation limits declared.
- Karndean Korlok Select 5.87x23.46 — 20 mil wear layer on a 6.5 mm plank, 9 of 9 installation limits declared.
- Karndean Korlok Select 8.86x55.91 — 20 mil wear layer on a 6.5 mm plank, 9 of 9 installation limits declared.
- Mannington ADURA Rigid 6x48 — 20 mil wear layer on a 5.5 mm plank, 9 of 9 installation limits declared.
- Mannington ADURA Rigid 7x48 — 20 mil wear layer on a 5.5 mm plank, 9 of 9 installation limits declared.
- MSI Andover 7x48 — 20 mil wear layer on a 5 mm plank, 9 of 9 installation limits declared.
- MSI Cyrus 7x48 — 12 mil wear layer on a 5 mm plank, 9 of 9 installation limits declared.
- MSI Prescott 7x48 — 20 mil wear layer on a 6.5 mm plank, 9 of 9 installation limits declared.
- MSI XL Cyrus 9x60 — 12 mil wear layer on a 5 mm plank, 9 of 9 installation limits declared.
- Tarkett ProGen 12x24 — 20 mil wear layer on a 5 mm plank, 9 of 9 installation limits declared.
- Tarkett ProGen 7x60 — 20 mil wear layer on a 5 mm plank, 9 of 9 installation limits declared.
Before you buy, read one more thing
Read the warranty’s exclusions before its length. "Lifetime" is a term of art rather than a duration, and what a term is worth is decided by two columns beside it: what the warranty excludes, and whether labor is covered. Taking a failed floor up and laying the new one is generally the larger half of the bill, the labor column prints who carries it, including the makers who cover it only under a stated condition.
Then read the room. These floors carry a service temperature band that must hold for the life of the product, which is the clause that catches holiday homes, unheated rooms and enclosed porches. They carry a maximum run before a transition strip is required, which decides whether an open-plan floor can be laid in one piece. And they carry a subfloor moisture limit measured by a named test. A slab can meet one test and fail the other, because the two measure different things and do not convert.
Where a maker publishes any of that, it is on the comparison page in one unit, with the document the figure came from. Where a maker publishes none of it, the cell says so instead of being left blank. If a figure here matters to your decision, follow its citation and read the sentence it came from: that is what the citations are for.