The Best Carpet Cleaner

We measured suction at three different locations

• Base
• Hose
• Nozzle

Measuring suction at the base required removing the cleaner’s dirty water tank. Behind the tank there’s a port that’s very close to the cleaner’s vacuum motor.

To measure suction at the hose we placed the vacuum gauge over the end of the hose where you would normally attach a spot cleaning tool.

To measure suction at the nozzle we made a wood box. There’s a hole on top of the box and a hole on the side. The cleaner is pushed over the hole on the top of the box. A manometer is connected to the hole on the side of the box to measure suction.

The first test gives us a good idea of base suction near the vacuum motor, the second test gives us a good idea of practical suction for spot cleaning, and the last test gives us the best indication of practical suction applied to the carpet when cleaning in upright mode.

Here are our test results:

Note: base and hose suction are given in terms on inches of water lift. Nozzle suction is given in terms of kPa.

As you can see, there’s quite a bit of variance in all three tests.

You can also see that the best performers in the base suction and hose suction tests are not necessarily the best performers in the nozzle test.

Next, we tested how well each carpet cleaner could clean up especially tough stains.

In our upright stain test we laid down seven different stains in two different rows.
In the top row we put

• Tomato sauce
• Peanut butter
• Chocolate ice cream

In the bottom row we put

• Grape juice
• Caramel syrup
• Chocolate syrup
• Coyote urine (predator urine is easy to source for testing)

We laid down exactly the same quantity over exactly the same area for each test.

We used exactly the same soap and water mix in each cleaner for each test.

And we pushed and pulled each cleaner at exactly the same speed for each test.

Results for our upright stain tests are below:

Again, there’s quite a bit of variance in results for this test.

Note that the number in each row and column represents the number of back and forth passes it took to clean each stain with each model tested. For example, it took seven back and forth passes to clean the peanut butter stain with the Bissell Hydrosteam. The lower the number, the better because the lower the number, the less passes it took to clean each stain.

Numbers greater than 10 represent stains that were not completely cleaned after 10 passes (we ended the test after 10 passes). The higher the number, the darker the stain that was left behind. For example, the PowerDash Pet scored an “11” for the tomato sauce stain because it left behind a relatively light stain. The PowerDash Pet+ scored a “12” because it left behind a slightly darker stain.

The best performers in our upright stain test have the lowest total scores. The best performer overall was the Bissell Big Green Machine, with a total score of 30. The worst performer was the Hoover PowerScrub XL Pet with a score of 63.

*These models were only scored through the center of their cleaning paths. All other models were scored throughout their whole cleaning path (including edges).

Moisture test results are posted below:

Note: results in the first column are for readings taken after the initial 10 back and forth passes in our upright stain test. Results in the second column are for readings taken after three additional “dry” passes.

Dry pass explanation

During our upright stain test we hold the trigger of each carpet cleaner to dispense soap and water on the forward pass, and we release the trigger to maximize suction on the backward pull. During these three “dry” passes we don’t pull the trigger at all to see how dry the carpet cleaner can get the carpet if it doesn’t dispense any soap and water.

Those results are listed below:

Based on how quickly each model’s dirty water tank filled up during testing, we can also estimate each model’s area of coverage per dirty water tank.

As you can see, certain models can cover a much larger area before you need to refill and empty their tanks than others. The top performers when it comes to area of coverage are the largest cleaners we tested (with the largest water tanks) – the Bissell Big Green Machine and the Rug Doctor Mighty Pro X3.

*Average not including the top three outliers

After washing carpet, we had to clean each model’s cleaner head (brushroll(s) + nozzle) and dirty water tank.

It was much easier to clean certain models compared to others.

Models that had

• Easily removable nozzles
• Easily removable brushrolls
• Dirty tanks that came apart easily
• Dirty tanks that didn’t have a lot of components

Were much easier to clean overall.

This table lists hose length and included tools for all of the models we tested:

For our spot cleaning test we only laid down three stains

• Tomato sauce
• Peanut butter
• Chocolate ice cream

Again, we followed exactly the same protocols with each model we tested.

Standard protocol involves:

• Five back and forth passes spraying the stain
• Scrubbing the stain for 15 seconds
• Three back and forth passes angling to spot cleaning tool forward to maximize suction

The steps above comprise one cleaning cycle. We completed five cleaning cycles for each stain.

Results for all of the models we tested are listed below:

Note how most models couldn’t completely clean most stains. Instead, we’re really ranking models here based on the lightness of stains remaining after the test.

Certain models had very narrow cleaning paths. Others had much wider cleaning paths (the path over which the cleaner washes carpet).

Certain models also had special features that we take into account to compare and rank different models.

For example, the Bissell Hydrosteam uses steam in addition to soap and water to clean. This definitely impacted its performance in our testing in a positive way - the Hydrosteam performed relatively well in our upright stain test despite having very low measured suction because it uses steam to clean.

Other features really didn’t make much of a difference in our testing at all. For example, the Bissell ProHeat 2x Revolution has a CleanShot feature which is basically a sprayer on the front of the cleaner head – a sprayer that you can use to pre-spray stains before you clean it. This particular feature really didn’t make much of a difference in our testing so it really doesn’t count as a positive or a negative when we rank the ProHeat 2x Revolution against other carpet cleaners we tested.