Vax Dual Power Pro Advance Review

Verdict

Pros

• Exceptionally good deep cleaning
• Superb stain removal
• Wash and rinse action
• Hand tools ideal for upholstery
• Long reach hose for stairs
• Leaves carpets fairly dry

Cons

• Heavy and quite slow to use
• SpinScrub tool lacks power
• A proper faff to clean and put away

What is the Vax Dual Power Pro Advance?

The Dual PowerPro Advance is Vax’s top-spec domestic carpet cleaner, boasting powerful dual wash and rinse action, multiple carpet-scrubbing brushes and accessories for almost every carpet cleaning instance. Its powerful motor sucks the carpet dry after the wash, placing the dirty water in an easy to empty container.

It’s a big beast too, capable of covering large areas of carpet quickly, yet offers an upholstery cleaning tool and Vax’s SpinScrub hand tool with rotating brush for detail cleaning. It’s a bit of a faff to set up and clean afterwards, but the Pro Advance won us over with its seriously effective cleaning abilities.

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Vax Dual Power Pro Advance – Features and Accessories

The Dual Power Pro Advance is large and fairly heavy even when empty, thanks to its wide floor head. This has both a full-width roller brush and a row of smaller brushes that rotate horizontal to the floor. The two sets of brushes together create a unique scrubbing pattern that Vax describes as 360-degree cleaning.

The main handle, waste water bin and the twinned water and cleaning fluid container all clip together with the sort of ease that comes from Vax’s longstanding experience in carpet washers. Both clean and dirty water containers are suitably capacious, and ample to clean an average-sized room. If you want to do a full wash and rinse clean, you might need to empty the waste and refill water mid-way around the room.

For those stubborn stains and small spillages, this model comes with a lengthy hose and Vax’s innovative SpinScrub hand tool. This is like a miniature version of the rotating brushes on the floor head, with a single brush that rotates under the power of the air-flow.

There’s a trigger release to spray water/detergent mix onto the troublesome spot and a front suction slot to vacuum up waste water. It spins fairly slowly thanks to some internal gearing, but we found it didn’t really have enough grunt and could easily be stopped if you pushed the brush into the carpet.

We found Vax’s more basic upholstery tool much better for detail cleaning on carpets. This tool has a trigger spray release and suction slot, with scrubbing action provided by manually agitating the leading edge of the tool into the carpet.

A separate wand and hose is supplied for pre-treatment of super-tough stains. This sprays a much tighter jet of the pre-treatment fluid and is ideal for spot cleaning. A large Vax-branded cloth bag is supplied to house all of the tools and accessories, save the SpinScrub tool, which has its own clip on the main handle.

The Dual Power Pro Advance is supplied with 2 x 250ml bottles of detergent and 1 x 250ml bottle of pre-treatment fluid to get you started, but it’s well worth stocking up on the full-size 1.5l bottles when you buy the machine – you will use plenty.

Vax Dual Power Pro Advance – What is it like to use?

For those new to carpet cleaning in the home, here is a quick 101 guide using the Vax Dual Power Pro Advance. First, vacuum your carpets with your normal vacuum cleaner to reduce surface dirt, hairs and debris that will get caught around the scrubbing brushes. Pre-treat any serious stains with a squirt or two of the pre-treatment fluid using the pre-treatment wand and hose.

Next fill up the machine with warm water and the supplied detergent. When started, the Vax simultaneously scrubs with its dual brushes and vacuums up liquid from a full-width slot on the front. As you move the Vax forward, squeezing the trigger on the handle releases a full-width spray of water and detergent that the brushes then scrub into the carpet.

At the end of the forward stroke, you release the trigger and pull the cleaner slowly back towards you. This gives the carpet a second scrubbing; the vacuum slot at the front of the floor head sucks up the dirty water. You can see the state of the water through the clear front panel and as it is deposited in the waste water container.

For areas that are particularly dirty you can increase the amount of detergent and water mix sprayed onto the floor using a boost switch that can be found on the handle. This gives the carpet a more serious soaking, but does consume water and detergent at quite an alarming rate.

The method is much the same for using either of the smaller cleaning tools. Having attached the nicely long and flexible hose to the body of the cleaner, you spray, scrub and vacuum up dirty water as you go. We preferred the upholstery tool for serious carpet scrubbing, but the SpinScrub tool worked wonders on an old faux-leather sofa.

Vax Dual Power Pro Advance – Performance

In a move that Jackie described as a “high-risk strategy”, I chose a cream-coloured rug in a high-traffic area and added to its dirty woes by pouring red wine over it to mimic a spillage. The deep crimson colour sank into the untreated pile, and even I thought that I might have set the Vax a challenge too far. To test the machine’s top-line cleaning abilities we gave the wine 30 minutes to sink in, and then washed the carpet without any pre-treatment.

The Dual Power Pro Advance isn’t a subtle device. When it is fired into life, the sound of the motor, suction pump and mechanical noise from the many brushes are quite loud and suggest this cleaner means business. And it does. In just one forward-cleaning sweep and return stroke, the colour of the extracted liquid resembled a muddy puddle. And this from a cream carpet that we’d have otherwise declared fairly clean after the vacuuming!

Note that your cleaning strokes do have to be slower than vacuuming, though, to allow time for the scrubbing brushes to do their thing. Likewise, the back stroke needs time to draw up the dirty water, so must be at an equally sedate pace.

Given the state of the dirty water, we went over most parts of the 2m x 3m rug twice, running a rinse on the second run. That too pulled up extra dirt. The carpet was left looking very buffed and slightly damp to the touch, so it was difficult to determine the full extent of the cleaning straight away.

Moving over the red wine, the dirty water drawn from the carpet immediately turned a reddish-brown. Two or three passes significantly reduced the spill and the subsequent stain, but the long line of red was still clearly visible.

We attached the hose to the Vax and started working the area with the SpinScrub brush. This worked fairly well, but you can’t push it into the pile as the brush simply stops spinning. The upholstery tool became our tool of choice for the spill and following a few passes with some elbow-grease agitation, the wine stain had gone completely. Without any pre-treatment, that is a frankly amazing result. 

The following day, the surface of the carpet felt fully dry to the touch in our warm room. The results were very impressive indeed: a 10-year-old cream rug that has seen plenty of traffic (and two dogs regularly laying on) it looked very nearly new. It was significantly brighter with the removal of some older stains too, and there was no trace at all of the red wine.

So successful was the Dual Power Pro Advance that we started on the furniture using the smaller tools. Care needs to be taken depending on the fabrics, but the upholstery tool certainly brought some light-coloured seat cushions up a treat.

Using the SpinScrub tool, we next attacked the old cream leather sofa in the office. With light pressure it scrubbed the surface clean and drew up much of the liquid. A simple wipe with a cloth afterwards made it look much-revived.

While we can heartily recommend this Vax’s cleaning performance, there are a few caveats. The main one being that the Dual Power Pro Advance is heavy and takes some effort to move around, particularly when it’s full of water. It’s also fairly slow in operation, taking several times longer than it would to vacuum the same carpet area – and a good hour and half to clean our two-seat sofa.

Following the rug cleaning session, a quick look at the scrubbing brushes and floor head revealed a lot of carpet fibre fluff. The Vax’s action is quite aggressive, so we definitely wouldn’t recommend full carpet cleaning too often.

It’s also worth dedicating a single day for carpet cleaning, tackling both upstairs and downstairs at one time since the clean-up of the machine afterwards is a real faff. All of the containers and wet tools need rinsing and drying, and the main floor head will need a good clean and de-fluff. That operation isn’t made any easier by the fact that you need to remove several screws just to take out the brush bar. It’s a good job that the results more than justify the effort.

Should I buy the Vax Dual Power Pro Advance Carpet Cleaner?

This Vax Dual Power Pro Advanced certainly isn’t a daily driver. It takes a fair bit of time and effort to set up, use and clean afterwards. Yet for removing spills and stains, buffing upholstery and giving carpets throughout the house an annual spring clean, it produces outstanding results every time.

Its relatively affordable asking price compared to getting in a professional cleaner make it a bit of a bargain too. We suspect that once you’ve taken the Vax Dual Power Pro Advance for a whirl, you’ll wonder how you ever lived without.

Verdict

This Vax’s outstanding cleaning performance across carpets and upholstery more than justify the time and effort required.

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