Verdict

It’s big and noisy but the Bissell ProHeat 2x Revolution Carpet Cleaner offers superb carpet and spot cleaning performance at a great price.

Pros

• Excellent stain removal
• Brilliant dirty water pick-up
• Well-made and sturdy
• Long cable and hose

Cons

• Very noisy
• Tricky to clean out

What is the Bissell ProHeat 2x Revolution Carpet Cleaner?

The Bissell Proheat 2x Revolution is a serious carpet cleaner with an 800W motor, heated cleaning, and a rotating brush bar featuring 12 rows of bristles. It’s equipped with helpful tools, a long hose, two different cleaning modes and a choice of three fragrant solutions for new, robust and old stains.

Filling and emptying the clean and dirty water containers is super simple and the Bissell was easy to assemble. Our only issue was the noisy operation with a high-pitched screech, but since our carpets and rugs have never looked better, this is a great all-rounder at under £230.00.

Related: Best carpet cleaner

Bissell ProHeat 2x Revolution Carpet Cleaner – Design and features

The Bissell’s appearance resembles the body of a Transformer with a mix of sharp reds, black and grey colours. Despite its complex looks, it was easy to assemble, and the manual included is precise and detailed.

The floorhead is large and has 12 cleaning rows of DirtLifter PowerBrushes that aim to deliver deep cleaning into the carpet pile. Heated cleaning mixture is sprayed onto the surface using the trigger on the handle that is easy to push down. The fluid is agitated into the pile by the brush bars and vacuumed up from the front edge of the head, complete with the carpet dirt. You can see the muck being drawn up through the clear plastic shell. The ProHeat heating uses the residual heat from the motor to keep the cleaning solution warm, improving both cleaning performance and carpet drying times.

The ProHeat 2X Revolution gets two cleaning modes; Deep Clean and Express Clean. These can be selected by popping the red button down on the left side of the machine. For the best cleaning performance, Bissell recommends using the Deep Clean Mode for tougher areas, with the carpet likely to take around four hours to completely dry. For the lighter clean and rejuvenation of carpets, the Express Clean Mode uses less fluid and will take around one hour to dry.

Quality is a virtue with the Bissel as all the parts feel well made and clipped together nicely. As is typical with full-size carpet cleaners, the Bissell is rather heavy in the hand and weighed in at 8kg fully loaded with clean fluid.

There is a clean water tank that holds 3.7 litres of the cleaning fluid mix of water and one of Bissell’s supplied solutions. The tank is easily removed and can be filled up under the sink with measuring the solution is aided by a helpful black jug, which has measurements at 74ml per tank of water for Deep Clean and at 37ml for Express Clean Mode.

The dirty water tank is slotted in low down under the clean tank, is removed easily and has a capacity of 4.5 litres. There is a marking on the side of the dirty water container indicating when it is full, so you know when its time to empty. For larger rooms, there is plenty of reach and freedom thanks to the lengthy 7m power cable, that can be wrapped around the back of the machine for storage.

Cleaning out the machine is something of a challenge. The top vacuum cover unclips from the floorhead but the main brush bars can only be accessed once you have removed four Philips screws in the side cover and then dropped the little washers on the ends on the rollers. Re-assembly was equally as fiddly. On the plus side, Bissell supplies a flexible nozzle cleaning tool that helps in getting fluff out of the narrow vacuum channels.

Bissell ProHeat 2x Revolution Carpet Cleaner – Accessories

At over 2m long and very flexible, the hose pushes snugly into the port on top of the floorhead. It all fits together very nicely, and the low down fitting means there is no danger of toppling over the cleaner when using the hose and tools. A chunky, rounded trigger on the hose handle operates the clean fluid jet on the attached tools. The tools push on and clip snugly into pace.

The main cleaning brush is Bissell’s Tough Stain Tool, comprising single spray jet, three rows of nicely stiff bristles and a clean plastic vacuum nozzle at the front. Simply spray on the cleaning fluid, agitate with the brush and slowly vacuum up the dirty water.

The 2-in-1 crevice tool and brush are a little odd on a carpet cleaner. It is more of a traditional vacuum cleaner tool, albeit with a spray nozzle. The idea is that it can be used to get in areas that are too awkward for the main brush, such as corners and very close to skirting boards, or for small spot cleaning.

The Bissell comes complete with a selection of three sample-sized bottles of different concentrated formulas that all smell rather lovely. For a powerful and fresh smelling clean, the Febreze Wash & Refresh fluid is a great option, while the Scotchguard Wash & Protect formula is designed to remove tough stains and protect the carpet from future spills. The Oxygen Boost is an add-on formula that boosts stain removal power of any solution it is added too.

The hose, tools, jug, sample bottles and the innovative nozzle cleaning tool can all be stored in the mesh bag supplied.

Bissell ProHeat 2x Revolution Carpet Cleaner – how does it clean?

Fired up, the first thing you and your neighbours will notice about the PreHeat 2x Revolution is the noise. It is properly loud at 86-87dB, about the same as standing by a busy street in London, but part of the cacophony was a high-pitched shriek. We are not sure what was causing this whistling noise but it was like a high-speed dentist drill and equally unpleasant. Our ears did adjust to the sound after a little while and carpet cleaners are never that quiet, but best leave carpet shampooing with the Bissell until the neighbours are out.

As a favourite spot for the dogs to sit of an evening, the deep red rug in our living room presented the Bissell with a serious challenge. We used the Deep Cleaning Mode with the fresh smelling Febreze solution at a rate of a 74ml jug full in a tank of warm water. Following Bissell’s manual, we made two slow wet passes spraying the cleaning solution and two slow dry passes vacuuming up the liquid, over the whole area. Considering the weight of the Bissell, the big wheels made it fairly easy to move around and it wasn’t too strenuous on the arm.

After a couple of strokes, we were amazed at the difference. The ProHeat 2x Revolution carpet was picking up a lot of the dirty water as its tank seemed to fill up pretty quickly. That is unusual in that many shampooers will only pick up around half the liquid they put down, the Bissell was near 75%-80% on our short pile rug. That is excellent as it means both a good clean and that the carpet will dry off quicker.

The Bissell did put down a serious amount of fluid in Deep Clean mode and adhering to the manual’s two strokes spraying. We managed to empty a complete tank of solution cleaning a single large rug 1.8m x 2.3m. It’s very effective but when Bissell says Deep Clean they do mean a deep clean and the Express clean is a lot more efficient in solution per square meter. We would also argue just one stroke spraying is enough for most carpets even if you do want a deep clean.

Still, you can’t argue with the results as our rather dog-eared and lifeless rug looked like new! The wastewater tank was just as shockingly grim and thick with dirt. Thanks to the Febreze solution, the room smelt very fresh too.

Moving to the challenging red wine spill test on a cream carpet, the Bissell again impressed us and with a few passes over the area the stain was completely removed. We were also using the lighter Febreze detergent, and from past experience with Bissell products, we know that adding the Oxygen Boost fluid would have cleaned even quicker.

Throwing another good glass of Rioja down in the name of a thorough review, we tackled a similar stain with the hose and Extra Tough Stain tool. It sprays cleaning fluid at a serious rate irrespective of the Deep/Express setting, so use caution on surfaces you don’t want to fully saturate.

Again, the results were excellent. It took a little while agitating and respraying but a few minutes later the stain was gone, and the carpet was remarkably dry. The suction and dirty-water pick up on this Bissell is one of the very best we have used, which goes a long way to justifying the high motor noise.

We even gave the Extra Tough Stain tool a go on an elderly leather sofa that was showing its vintage. The Febreze fluid would have again benefitted from the Oxy additive to speed up cleaning but it didn’t take too many passes to start revealing a much lighter colour sofa.

Should I buy the Bissell ProHeat 2x Revolution Carpet Cleaner?

A serious carpet cleaning over-achiever, the ProHeat 2x Revolution demonstrates that Bissell’s experience counts. It cleans very well, agitates the carpet nicely and has outstanding dirty water pick up. Combined with the ProHeat’s clean water heater, the clean is exceptional and carpets dry very quickly. The detail tool is a similar star performer, delivering fabulous stain-busting performance thank to its stiff bristles and excellent dirty water pick-up. Our only gripes are that its very noisy and a bit of a faff to clean out. If you can live with those caveats, the ProHeat 2x Revolution is a great buy at a reasonable price.

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