Best Portable Carpet Cleaner Review

Find out what is the best portable carpet cleaner for your home and deep cleaning. See the features, pros and cons of the top selling small and compact vacuum cleaners.

Portable or hand held carpet cleaners are designed lightweight and compact, mainly for quick, spot cleaning and hard to reach areas. Even small in size, some provide a great suction power and performance close to the bigger upright vacuums. They are easy to store and transport. Compact carpet cleaners might use just suction, or combination spray, brush cleaning and suction.

When searching for the best rated and selling portable cleaners for carpets online, one manufacturer carries the most of models. This is a Bissell manufacturer.

There are eight Bissell's small and portable carpet cleaners that are designed for a variety of applications; from the spot and stain cleaning to carpet deep cleaning. Some of them are hand-held, hands free, with and without built-in heater.

What is the best portable carpet cleaner?

Bissell SpotBot

Bissell SpotBot Compact Deep Carpet Cleaner, 1200B is recommended by hundreds of users and expert websites such as consumersearch.com.

This portable carpet spot cleaner is actually a hand-free cleaning machine. With the pre-programmed cycles, you can simply leave it on the carpet and walk away. Very convenient.

It can effectively work on both surface stains and more difficult older stains that penetrated deep into your carpet.

SpotBot automatically sprays and scrubs the carpet. Manual mode is also there, mainly for cleaning upholstery, car interior and hard to reach areas.

Bissell portable carpet cleaner is using a mixture of water and cleaning liquid and with the Unique Spiral Brushing effectively removes stains from juice, coffee, even your pets.

You can find over 550 user reviews on Amazon.com, who rated SpotBot with 4.2 stars out of max. 5. This is a pricey machine, it costs around $150.

Pros

It works while you are gone. It beeps upon completion.
Bissell's SpotBot is easy to setup and use.
It takes several minutes to remove the stain. There will be a small circle where the scrubber brushes were, but it will fade away in few days.
It cleans even older stains.
It is great for pet owners and parties... spills are gone before they ruin your carpet.

Cons

It might damage your carpet (depends on the quality).
Machine is not powerful enough to suck up all the water and soap. If the carpet is not perfectly dry the mixture left will collect the dirt again and leave black mark on the carpet.
Occasional problems with part failures, leaking, unit doesn't spray.
Some complaints that the SpotBot will spread the stain around in a circle and increase its size.
Very expensive.

Bissell SpotLifter

Bissell SpotLifter 2X Portable Deep Carpet Cleaner is the hand held cleaning machine that is designed to clean emergency spots and spills on the carpet, upholstery, stairs, car...

SpotLifter is a cordless unit that is using rechargeable 9.6 V battery, which allows 15 minutes run at its full power.

Bissell's SpotLifter 2X is the portable carpet cleaner that uses a combination of the brush scrubbing and suction to clean the spills. Soiling area has to be sprayed with the mixture of the cleaning formula and water. For better results pre-treating of the highly soiled areas is recommended.

With over 190 reviews it is rated 4 out of maximum 5 stars. The price is approximately $50 and it comes with one year warranty.

Pros

It does small jobs effectively for less money.
Bissell's SpotLifter is great small and compact cleaning machine that cleans effectively beds, upholstered furniture and rugs from fruit, juice and dried blood stains.
Convenient to use since it is cordless. It provides enough running time to remove several spots. Easy to transport and carry in your car.
It cleans even older stains.
It is great for pet owners and parties... spills are gone before they ruin the carpet.

Cons

SpotLifter doesn't provide enough suction power to remove stains and smell left on the carpet from the pets. Some complained that it didn't even suck the water up.
Machine is producing a burning smell.
It takes too long to recharge battery (12 hours) in order to use it for 15 minutes only.
SpotLifter has a brush but it is stationary, so you have to push the cleaner back and forth. This is what causes very weak scrubbing action.
The machine does not have a charging indicator light so you don't know when recharging is over.

Eureka 71B

Eureka 71B Hand-Held Vacuum cleaner is ideal for cleaning smaller places on the carpet, inside of your car, upholstery and carpeted stairs. A clear plastic cover called Riser Visor allows vertical and horizontal cleaning.

Designed as the portable carpet cleaner, Eureka 71B weighs 7 pounds only. It uses 5.5 amp suction and revolving brush for quick pick-ups and to clean accidental messes.

20 ft long power cable allows you convenient cleaning, especially stairways, and it stores neatly on the back of the machine (with the crevice attachment).

This bagless, hand held vacuum carpet cleaner is one of the top sellers on Amazon.com... it has over 930 reviews (over 840 positive reviews) and is rated 4.5 out of 5 stars. And the price is very affordable; it sells for approximately $42.

Pros

With the bagless design it still holds a good amount of dirt.
The hose is pretty stretchy, it stretches 3 times. The power cord has a good length of 20 ft.
It cleans even older dry bloody stains.
Riser Visor allows cleaning horizontally and vertically. The crevice tool allows suction of dirt in awkward places and corners.
Well built machine with the strong motor that allows high suction.

Cons

Cleaning Eureka 71B cleaner is messy. It is hard to clean around the filter, and it needs to be washed every time when cleaning bigger areas. The canister is small so it needs frequent emptying.
It is little heavy for many users (especially seniors) when maneuvering around the furniture.
The rotating brush might be too aggressive for cleaning the upholstery.
There is no brush attachment.
It might be loud.
When the power cord is wrapped up around the base it is loose and slips often, requiring you to recoil it again.

Many portable carpet cleaner users are buying these machines, for convenience. They are spot-vacuums designed to remove from the accidental spills to treat dirty spots and for pet hair and pet litter removal.

Summary

The best portable carpet cleaner is small, lightweight and has a great suction power. If it is cordless running time should be long enough to provide convenient carpet, floor, upholster, car cleaning, while recharging time should be shorter. They are also known as hand held vacuum cleaners, and if they are using a power cord, it has to have a decent length... at least 20 ft. The best model will also use a combination of rotating brush and suction, and water with the cleaning agent should improve cleaning.