I shopped online for weeks before deciding. I have been borrowing Bissell carpet cleaners for a while, this one seems to be the best so far. Assembly was easy. It was a little heaver then I expected. I like the water resivoir, they have improved the seals & latches. The stairs are labor intensive, as the water shoots out very concentrated & it takes a lot of work to get them dry. Maybe it just takes a while to get the hang of it. Overall, glad I bought it.

I would much rather have different flooring, but we have carpet on much of the main floor of the house (and elsewhere). Although we have wood in the foyer, we inevitably track dirt into the livingroom and den. We have three children who take food in the living room even though THEY ARE NOT SUPPOSED to! And, we have this fantastic Bissell Carpet Cleaner that removes almost all the dirt and stains.

I truly appreciate this carpet cleaner. We bought it based on the reviews of several different companies' machines. We also purchased it to avoid paying a professional carpet cleaner and decided it would make sense to have one of our own. It is a purchase we are glad we made! Every month or so, my husband (his job) moves most of the furniture, gets the carpet cleaner out and cleans our carpets. They always look great afterwards and they dry within a few hours. The machine really scrubs stains and is able to suction up much of the water. It leaves big wet dusty piles of cat hair (even though we vacuum before cleaning), but I pick those up easily (my job). Our machine gets lots of use and has not caused us any problems at all.

I've read that cleaning carpets frequently is not very good for the carpet-- it's supposed to add a lot of wear and tear. However, our carpet is still going strong and we try to use the machine every month or so. Our carpet can get so dirty looking after a while that I don't really care if it will affect its longevity-- having our carpet clean and fresh-smelling is much more important to me.

I found putting the unit together was easy,it cleaned the white carpets of all foot traffic and dog markings,some months old , and although the carpet was wet for a day, due to the heavy clean it proformed as I expected. It was fantasic on the bamboo flooring and doesn't need a wipe over with a dry towel as I've always had to do. Very good product for the price and cheaper than calling in carpet cleaners four times a year.

After much research I chose this carpet cleaner versus a Hoover. I wish I had paid more attention to the negative reviews as they were spot on. First, the single tank for clean and dirty water is a PAIN. It holds very little and there is no indicator to tell you when you are out of solution. So you are working away and then realize you have been out of solution for who knows how long!! You are constantly emptying and refilling the tank.The separate compartment for the actual cleaning solution never seemed to empty, so I guess the machine was just spraying water. Next, as others stated, it does not seem to do a very good job of extracting the dirty solution. When I would go to empty the tank it was usually less than half full. The carpets felt very wet and took quite a while to dry. Finally, after only a few uses and 6 monthes the thing doesn't spray anymore. What a waste of money! I wish I had gone with the Hoover!!!

One day last week I walked in from my outdoor patio with a tray full of cooking ingredients, chili sauces, red wine vinegar, cooking oil, etc. and dropped the entire thing in the middle of my very light colored carpet I have so carefully maintained for many years. Every piece of cooked food with sauce all over it went on the carpet, including all the spices and liquids I use to cook asian food outdoors. I panicked and couldn't believe I did that.
I quickly picked up as much of the food as I could and ran for the Bissell, but all the while thinking my $4,000 carpet was gone. I couldn't imagine it would even come close to removing these types of stains to the degree the carpet was soaked with them. Dark red heavy stains and chili sauces? No way.
But I was going to give it a shot anyway. No choice. I used some cleaner in the machine I have had good luck with, which is called "Resolve" for carpet cleaners, not their other product for spot stains you do by hand. I ran to get the water in the machine as fast as I could and let it heat for about a minute. Then I went to work and made many passes over the mess. I had to empty the tank many times because of the stuff it was picking up. At first I thought it wasn't going to work. Huge red stains, but I persisted. A half an hour later and about twenty passes with lots of cleaner, the carpet was PERFECT. This thing saved me the cost of a complete carpet replacement! To this day, I still don't believe anything could get the stains I had out and I have tried most products, none with this success. THANKS Bissell.

I spent what I think is an UNGODLY amount of money on this product (around $300) after reading nothing but good reviews about it online. The hard floor cleaner attachment broke off on my FIRST USE then the floor cleaning portion (the MAIN part) broke after only using it about 4 times (the soap/water mixture stopped coming out...). By this time it was over a year beyond my buying it and my warranty was up so my husband took it apart and found that the gasket between the solution tank and the manifold wouldn't seal and lucky for me my hubby is a handy guy so he fixed it somehow. BUT on my very next use the hand-held wand portion stopped working! I cannot believe what a piece of junk this thing is for how much it cost me. I don't use the thing THAT much - all in all I've used it NO MORE than 6 times total in about 3 years ($50 per use!) and it has been broken more than it's worked. The thing is garbage now since I see no use in my hubby fixing it again, only for it to BREAK AGAIN on the very next use! Why should my husband keep having to rebuild the thing after every use? I figure I might as well just buy one that won't keep breaking every time I use it! I'm never buying a Bissell again, that's for sure!

I had read all the reviews and having made what I thought was an informed decision i bought this floor cleaner and for the first day it worked great! I followed the instructions and the floor cleaner right afterwards, unfortunately when I went to use it the second day the floor agitators no longer functioned. When contacting Bissell I recieved nothing more than the help responses that were already in the instruction manual. Their only other suggestion is that I take it to one of thier repair centers. All I can say that after a great start with this Bissell product I end up feeling very disappionted.

I LOVED my Bissell ProHeat for the first two years -- it did an effective job of cleaning and got out a number of tough stains. In addition, there were a number of cleaning solutions available I could use with the Bissell that left the carpet smelling great. This was especially effective at removing the evidence of failed puppy training.

Then one day -- all of a sudden -- the thing lost all of its suction. It would spray out, but wouldn't recover the water. I took it to the appliance repair shop -- they said this was a very common problem with Bissell that could be easily repaired. After a $100 refurbishing, the suction worked fine -- but the sprayer wouldn't work. Several months after the overhaul, the machine wouldn't spray water from the upright position, it had no suction, and the upholstery/spot cleaner sprayer wouldn't spray -- it dripped, like a leaky faucet. Then the plastic tank broke. The dispenser for the cleaning solution wouldn't dispense. After learning that these are all common problems with the Bissell, rather than investing more in this thing, I ditched it and bought a Hoover for about half the price.

The Hoover also cleans great. The things I prefer about the Hoover (on top of the lower price) are the separate clean and dirty water tanks, the design of the dirty water tank -- which should prevent the unit from becoming clogged with dirt and debris, the lighter weight and smaller size, and the fact that the solution is mixed into the clean water tank. The separate clean & dirty tanks on the Hoover require slightly more effort to deal with -- two trips to the sink rather than one -- but they're much, much easier to empty and keep clean.

The Bissell has a built-in heater which my Hoover does not, has a longer cord, and seems to require less frequent changing. The heater and long cord are nice features, but not sure they're worth the extra price & hassle. The Bissell gets clogged & jammed very easily.

Overall, I think I got my money's worth from the Bissell, but once it started on its midlife crisis, there was no point trying to salvage the thing. It cleaned well -- but certainly no better than my Hoover. Since these things seem to have limited life spans, for my money, I'll stick with the new Hoover.

I have an older model of the Pro-Heat Series (the 7950, which I purchased in '05 for almost $300) and I see that Bissell certainly has not addressed any of the problems I have with my machine, because I am reading about the same ones here!
The machine leaks water, the trigger stopped working, the supposed "powerdrive"
also stopped working, making it a very, very heavy machine to drag back and forth, across the carpet. How we are cleaning our whole room is to get down on our hands and knees and use the small powerbrush. we used the machine about 5 or 6 times since we bought it; it has worked correctly once, maybe twice.

After going through an unbearably long list of what to do(nothing worked!)at the customer service number,their conclusion was to bring it into a repair center. For the hundred dollars or so that I will pay, I would rather buy the Hoover for $139 that's sold here on Amazon. Of all the products for my home I have bought, this definitely is the worst. After I write this review, this hunk of junk is going in the garbage!!

I've owned two of these. I don't shampoo often, but I like having my own cleaner when I do. The first one lasted about a year. Used less than a dozen times. The second one lasted about the same, with the same amount of use. I checked into having the first one fixed. It cost as much as buying a new one. I won't buy another Bissell cleaner.