Its smaller tanks make it lightweight and easy to maneuver and store, though it does mean you can cover less area before you’ll need to refill them. The included cleaning solution is ready to use without mixing with water. The ProHeat’s water tanks can easily be washed out, and Bissell includes a hooked plastic tool for fishing out hair and other bissell crosswave costco debris in the nozzle. You can also pop off the ProHeat’s nozzle housing by holding down two clearly marked buttons on the cleaner’s front side. We also take into account the usability by reporting on the machine’s design features that would make it practical to use in your home, such as cord length, water tank size, and hose attachments.
For help locating and removing the cleaner’s tanks, consult your owner’s manual. Usually, all you have to do is lift up some plastic clips to free the tank. Models that were easy to carry bissell cordless around, clean and maintain earned the best marks throughout our testing. The Hoover’s Dry Only button disables its auto-cleaning spray function, letting it work like a vacuum cleaner.
Genuine Bissell supplied replacement part for a variety of Carpet Cleaners. When replacing Right Belt it is recommended to replace the Left Belt as well for best operation. If belts are worn or stretched they need to be replaced to provide best performance. Overtime the Belt will wear and stretch, causing the pump to not work properly. Thanks to the Hoover CleanSlate Pet’s 7-inch vacuum head and compact design, you won’t have to sacrifice performance for portability.
To use a Bissell carpet cleaner, start by filling the cleaner’s tank with hot water and cleaning formula. Then, if your machine has a cleaning dial, set it to light, normal, or heavy, depending on the dirtiness of your carpet. Next, turn the dial to the floor cleaning option, and press the power and heater buttons. As you clean, pull the trigger to spray the carpet, then let go of the trigger and pull the cleaner back to suction up the dirt and water.
We also record whether it’s difficult to empty the dirty water tank and clean the machine after use. We weigh these factors against the price to determine the overall value of each and whether we would recommend the cleaner to a friend or family member. At home, several other models are put to the test in real-world situations and rated according to the same attributes. Our editors boil down all of the insights and data from our testing to create this list of the best carpet cleaners. During our carpet cleaner tests at The Lab, we’ve put dozens of carpet cleaners—commercial, upright, and portable—through the same series of tests to compare their strengths.
In practice, many of the carpet cleaners we recommend are almost hybrids, incorporating carpet-cleaning solution to treat or pre-treat carpets, in addition to the hot water extraction. The Hoover Power Scrub Elite Pet FH50251 performs at two extremes. It’s one of two carpet cleaners that gets the poorest marks for cleaning in our tests. But it also gets one of the best scores for leaving behind a dry carpet, earning an Excellent rating in that test. It does have some nice convenience features, such as separate tanks for clean and dirty water, a hose that’s more than 8 feet long, a carrying handle, and brush attachments. But bells and whistles don’t make up for poor performance in our ratings.
Our experts evaluate carpet cleaning machines for how well they clean pre-soiled, dingy industry-standard white carpet test panels. We take color measurements before we start, set up each cleaner according to the manufacturer’s directions and run each machine over the dirty carpet for an identical number of passes. After cleaning, the carpet panel is weighed to assess how much moisture each machine leaves behind.
Make sure hot water is flowing from your sink’s faucet, then put the tank’s spout under it. The tank will have a line, about ¾ of the way up, indicating how far to fill it. Other features like the weight, included accessories, battery charge/runtime and noise level are rated and culminate in the overall score assigned to each model. We also assess how easy the appliances are to assemble, use and store.
While the Hoover Spotless Portable Carpet & Upholstery Spot Cleaner is no longer our pick for spot treatments, it’s still incredibly effective at cleaning fresh and set-in stains. It was also one of the easiest devices to use during our initial round of testing. It has two separate tanks—one for dirty water and one for clean water.
One of the higher-performing Bissell models on the list of top carpet cleaners has “pet” in its name. So does the Bissell DeepClean Deluxe Pet 36Z9, but that’s where the similarity ends. Unlike bissell cordless the Bissell ProHeat 2X Lift-Off Pet mentioned above, the DeepClean Deluxe Pet is only so-so at cleaning and worse at leaving a dry carpet behind, earning a Poor score in that test.