Best Carpet Cleaner

What is the best carpet cleaner? Well, it certainly depends on you and your needs, but we'll cover some options and great carpet cleaners below.

First, do you want to rent or buy? Buying is a great option that pays for itself quickly, but you need to store the machine somewhere and deal with any repair issues. Also, you can easily rent a more powerful machine than a typical consumer grade machine. Most rental machines are very powerful professional units. In fact many people who own machines, a great option for many, occasionally rent them for whole house or very deep cleaning.

We're only going to look at stand up machines here. There are also handheld devices, usually much cheaper, and generally for spot cleaning. For spot cleaning I simply use, Resolve Carpet Cleaner, a spray on carpet cleaner whose effects can border on miraculous! You don't want to do a whole carpet or house with a spay bottle and wet towel though.

There are probably hundreds of different brands of carpet cleaners to consider! Two stand out in their categories for reliability and performance, and are great deals as well with strong warranties.

For an entry level stand up carpet cleaner machine, one that costs around US$100, it's hard to beat the Bissell QuickSteamer PowerBrush 2080, our favorite. At only 12 pounds, it's a fantastic little machine.

It's wonderful for spot cleaning jobs and small rugs , It's neither great nor designed for larger rug or whole house cleaning due to its small tank 1/2 gallon tank, which simply has to be emptied too often. And not surprisingly, it's not as powerful as heavier and more expensive machines

But it's very well designed and easy to use. The Bissell QuickSteamer PowerBrush 2080 gets rave reviews.

In the somewhat more expensive and heavier category, the Hoover F5914-900 SteamVac with Clean Surge is a clear standout! Consistently rated extremely highly by users, and you can buy one for about $150.

It cleans very well, at least as well as its competition, and it sucks up water and cleaning solution out of carpet very well, leaving carpets dryer than with most machines. It's a fantastic carpet cleaner.

There are plenty of other choices. Both Bissell and Hoover have other well, regarded models, but these are our favorites and most people by far agree. There are also plenty of other reputable manufacturers of carpet cleaners, but these are our favorites based on both our experience and the experiences of literally hundreds of other users.