Grout-free Cliks tiles can crack under pressure

The promise of a ceramic floor that you can install yourself without cement or grout sounds tempting. But when we put Cliks by Daltile through its paces in our recent flooring tests, it chipped in our dent test. And because the tiles lock together, you can't easily replace just one.

Sold at Home Depot for $5 per square foot, Cliks works much like engineered wood and plastic laminate, with interlocking tongues and grooves, but it uses a thin layer of real porcelain tile over plastic. Easy installation and impressive resistance to scratches, stains, and sunlight made Cliks look like the perfect blend of beauty and practicality. But in our dent tests simulating dropped pots or other heavy objects, it cracked.

Cliks tiles lock together so replacing one requires removing a whole row as well as the molding at the ends, rather than just the cracked tile.