Old laminate, engineered plank, or locking vinyl tile may show gaps between the slats that weren’t there originally. This is a consequence of the linear expansion of the floor covering. Such gaps can be removed without dismantling the floor.

If one laminate board in the middle of the floor is damaged, you have to remove all the adjacent boards to the nearest wall and, after replacing the damaged one, put them in place. A lot of hard and painstaking work. But there is an option to replace one board with defects without removing the adjacent ones.