TL;DR
Plus: size, weight, power cable length, suction, cost, cleans well
Minus: Have to use manual scrubbing (i.e. brushes don’t rotate on their own), leaking water when emptying the tank, hose length could be longer, very loud

Have used this once now so bear in mind my review is based on first impressions.

The compact size is what drew me to this product and is definitely a firm plus as I only have a small under stair storage cupboard. It’s easy to move around and lightweight which I appreciate because I had a larger vacuum style carpet cleaner previously that was just the biggest bulkiest thing to move around which meant it never got used.

I expected to have to use “elbow grease” for scrubbing so this is not truly a minus for me, but for someone who wants something completely automated, this will not be the product for them. I also wouldn’t mind the hose being a bit longer. Especially as the machine itself is very(!) loud especially when it was sitting on a hardwood floor next to the rug I was cleaning causing the sound to echo/resonate (honestly, I would probably recommend ear defenders!). However, the biggest minus I have found is that when emptying the tank with the dirty water, there was clearly still water sitting in the housing around the tank which leaked onto the floor after the tank was removed. Maybe I didn’t give it long enough suctioning air after the wet suction? I’ll run it a bit longer next time and see. However, the machine worked well at extracting up the dirty water and the carpet didn’t take long to dry which seemed to indicate the suction works fairly well overall and definitely worked well (using the enclosed solution) at getting out some pet stains.

I photographed the toffee-brown liquid removed during my cleaning of a used car bought just this week. For contrast it’s pictured adjacent to what is actually used washing-up bowl water.

It’s pretty horrible!

This, is what you want though. Having used a Vax machine on carpets in the past I was pretty sure I wouldn’t like what I saw. You think it needs a BIT of a clean, then you do the job, and the resulting dirty water is fairly off-putting. But this is the colour of success of course.

If it produced clear or mildly cloudy waste water there wasn’t much dirt in there at all. Filthy brown, means it was worth it.

Before I did this effort on my new/used car purchase, I’d been using a sponge and rags and washing-up liquid. I spent two hours on just the fronts seats and headrests and realised this had been a fairly heavy smoker’s car with the first try at drying a bit of the seat with kitchen roll. It came away that classic yellow/tan nicotine colour.

In fact, literally the only part of the car that escaped this assault by tobacco was where the driver was sat all this time. Now the question arises, why didn’t I smell this? I’m afraid the used car dealers have discovered the wonder of ‘ozone bombing’ a car’s interior.

Now, they don’t need to rely on dangling de-odorisers or actually doing the effort of valeting the soft spongey seats, they just put the ozone-maker/ioniser in the car for a few hours, and the smell has gone…but the stinking actual source of the smell, the dirty nicotine/tobacco film, has seeped into the first layer or so of seat materials and I cannot sit on that. I won’t ask my family or let my family, sit inside that.

I’m not paid by the company, I have no benefit from this review, except I am just pleased I got some muck out of the textile covering of the car seats, the carpeted rear floor panel of the boot, and the sponge underlayer of the seats too I think probably is worked on.

It smells nice afterward, the dirty mucky water produced cannot be faked, it really works. It takes effort of course, and this was just the first shot at it. If you only have a car for a week you wont bother (eg car dealer) but if you made what is a big purchase to yourself, or are just proud of your vehicle, this is the right tool to clean it up.

The use is simple, clean tank sends soapy water down the pipe to the attachment by a pump, and the attachment almost immediately sucks it back up. ALWAYS wet the surface first with the spray-trigger, because it’s got tobe wetted for it to work.

Clean detergent water, shoved through the fabric/carpet, and dirty water sucked back up into the dirty tank. Pull the dirty tank off, empty it nowhere near your sink, use a street drain or the toilet bowl – it’s pretty horrible gunk sometimes.

So this little Bissel unit, was almost immediately loaned out to my daughter, who suddenly decided her sofa might need it (was us refusing to sit down a hint?!). Which is good. Textiles and foam used extensively in furniture and car seats, really hold smells and the source of smells.

Tips I have: use warm water. Use the right stuff to put in the water, it foams well when aerated by the pump, but if you use this stuff without a proper device like this, it doesn’t foam much at all. My car seats were pretty damp afterward, so I put a heater in there (it has a safety tip-over cut-out switch too), a small one and cracked the windows just a bit.

I gave the seats a really thorough wetting with this cleaner unit, and so them still being damp a day later, even with the heater is not to say this could be avoided. I just put a towel on the seat – use one that matches the colour if you don’t want it obvious – and then resumed the heating and venting once I got back home.

This is a device I THOUGHT I might possibly benefit from using, because I was about to buy a new (used, new to me) car. They have been universally filthy, the ones I had to try out, and big, posh cars are at least as bad. Often, used cars get handed around or illegally hired-out for cash I think, and nobody doing that’s going to clean them.

If you want to know if a car or carpet or other surface needs cleaning, just get a nice white bit of kitchen roll, soap it up, and rub it around on the surface of the seat, curtain, carpet or whatever, and see what comes off.

I almost guarantee it won’t come away pretty, that piece of soapy kitchen roll. It’s a really satisfying job and as I say especially good for used cars where the dealers have found a low-effort way to mask or deceive buyers about the state of the car’s cleanliness.

Plus, if it is too much to afford, you will easily find someone to club together with, like other tenants in the same house, or maybe a family member, and that makes it easier to afford. I got the three-year guarantee/warranty option, because for £15 including accidents, that’s good value.

Take care all.

I love it, so glad I bought it!
I Normally hire a huge cleaner for 48 hours from the local supermarket to clean 2 lounges and 2 car’s seats, but this thing honestly does a better job and I have it on hand whenever needed plus don’t get a hernia wrestling it through a shopping centre and into the car -twice. I honestly wasn’t expecting it to leave the fabric as dry as the hire one, given the huge size and noise difference, but it does. The cleaning head is also better, as it has a brush built in, where the hire one is only the sprayer and perspex sucker thing. Should pay for itself in less than a year. As usual, quick delivery ( 5 days from UK to Blue Mountains even with covid situation) and best price online from Amazon.