Verdict

A heavy-weight carpet cleaner that can deal with the toughest stains, the Vax Platinum Power Max ECB1SPV1 is the perfect tool for anyone with particularly dirty carpets to deal with. Sailing through our tests, it brought old carpets back to life and remove stubborn stains. We can't fault its general performance and only real caveats are the machine's weight (10kg) and the risk of fluffing up carpets by going over the same areas multiple times.

Pros

• Great stain removal
• Floors dry remarkably quickly
• Easy to fill and empty
• Long hose and handy detail tools
• Outstanding guarantee

Cons

• Heavy and cumbersome
• Carpets can suffer pilling
• Rather noisy

What is the Vax Platinum Power Max ECB1SPV1?

The Vax Platinum Power Max ECB1SPV1 is described by the company as its best carpet washer to date, and it’s packed with features for convenience, deep cleaning and quick drying. Its 1200W motor and twin-scrub brushes shout powerful cleaning, and the strong vacuum means carpets are dry in under an hour. It will even wash tiles and sealed laminate, thanks to a handy hard-floor adapter.

Best Vax yet? We might have to agree, as the Platinum Power Max delivered outstanding carpet cleaning, quick-drying and brilliant stain removal. It’s a big, powerful beast covering areas quickly, but there’s no escaping its overall bulky feel and slight pilling of carpet fibres. We can live with those at its attractive price, making this one of the best-value, high-performance carpet shampooers you can buy.

Vax Platinum Power Max ECB1SPV1 – What you need to know

• Rejuvenation carpet test – Brings dull and dismal carpet right back to life, deep cleaning and buffing the pile. It’s heavyweight, but very effective.
• Red wine stain test – Cream carpet + red wine = disaster. Not so with this Vax. Excellent scrubbing action and great fluids clean deep – but beware carpet pilling.
• Colour rug test – Brings vibrancy and colour back to well-used rugs, even our lifeless Marvel rug that sits in the main front entrance.
• Hard floor cleaning – Food-stained and sticky kitchen laminate looked very good after a few passes on light clean mode.

Related: Best carpet cleaner

Vax Platinum Power Max ECB1SPV1 design – Targets carpet grime with powerful scrubbing and vacuuming action

The overall setup for the Vax is easy, hassle-free and takes less than five minutes. The first thing you’ll notice is the huge floor-head, equipped with Vax’s XL brush bar and seven SpinScrub brushes. Combined with an injection of cleaning fluid, the system aims to deep-clean carpet, removing bacteria as well as embedded dirt and stains.

Set up and in use, the Vax feels robust – and the company backs up that feel with a class-leading, six-year guarantee. Yet all that cleaning gumption and great build quality does come at a bit of a price – in terms of weight.

This Vax topped our scales at close to 10kg dry, plus up to 2kg of clean water. Needless to say, that makes it a bit of an armful when pushing over deep carpets. Nevertheless, the results are well worth the effort.

The large capacity dirty and clean water tanks are easily slotted onto the main cleaner, and all parts and accessories feel well made and sturdy. Handily, the clean water container has separate tanks for water and cleaning solution, so if any solution remains, you can easily save it for next time.

Included in the pack are two Vax sample cleaning solutions and a bottle of pre-treatment solution. That’s ideal for use with the pre-treatment wand, spraying onto high traffic or seriously dirty areas to start loosening the grime before the main cleaning begins. The machine offers two cleaning modes, Quick Clean and Deep Clean, selected by a control dial on the floor head.

Vax Platinum Power Max ECB1SPV1 cleaning – A great all-rounder for carpets, hard floors, stairs and upholstery

For sofas, stairs and hard-to-reach areas, Vax supplies a fabulously lengthy hose at over 4.5m, plus two dedicated hand-held gadgets: the Upholstery tool and SpinScrub tool. The Upholstery tool is a basic spray/brush and vac nozzle, while the latter uses a single SpinScrub brush to spray solution, work it into the fibres and vacuum up the dirty liquid.

Overall suction power is outstanding, the 1200W motor providing a lot more vacuum gumption than most normal vacuum cleaners restricted to 800W. Combined with the equally lengthy 9m cable, and this Vax gives you exceptional cleaning reach.

The Vax’s heavyweight stance is reflected in its running noise – it’s loud. Don’t expect to be nipping around the house stealth cleaning in the dead of nigh. The big motor, brush bar and seven SpinScrub brushes make quite a racket. We measured the sound well above 85dB, which is the sort of noise level you’d hear standing beside a busy road.

Thankfully, the Platinum Power Max more than lives up to its burly stance and shouty nature with outstanding cleaning results. Deep clean it does, and with ruthless efficiency too. Just a single pass over normal, lightly dusty carpets is enough to see the dirty water tank go brown and the carpet pile look rejuvenated.

Dirtier areas will benefit from a couple of passes. Use caution, though: a lot of repeated scrubbing action can be quite harsh on delicate carpet, leaving light pilling of the surface if you run over the same area too many times.

The powerful suction does an excellent job of pulling up moisture and the dirt, too. That has a direct impact on both how clean the carpet looks afterwards and how quickly it will dry. In both areas this Vax scores top marks, even pulling up dirt left behind by other cleaners, and leaving the carpets only damp to the touch. While Vax’s claim that carpets will be fully dry in an hour will be rather dependent on room temperature, throughout our summer tests that was certainly the case.

For stains and stairs, the Platinum Power Max continues to impress. The hose is fabulously long and the hand-held SpinScrub tool is like a mini version of the main floor head. It sprays, scrubs and vacuums like it’s on steroids. So much so, you need to use a gentle touch of the trigger to stop fluid flooding the area, and then  use the scrub tool only briefly to ensure you don’t start to rough up the surface.

Vax’s Platinum Power Max is a weighty beast to manoeuvre around your home, and it does tend to drip when parked upright between areas. However, cleaning results on carpets, stains and upholstery are first-class. Perhaps it isn’t a cleaner for smaller homes or those with a postage stamp-sized rugs, but combined with the not-too-serious asking price and a handy storage bag for tools, we think this Vax is the brand’s best carpet cleaner to date.

Should I buy the Vax Platinum Power Max ECB1SPV1?

Living up to Vax’s own billing as its best carpet cleaner yet, the Platinum Power Max is an outstanding, heavy-duty carpet cleaner, stain remover, hard-floor scrubber and hand-held upholstery cleaner.

We couldn’t fault its general cleaning and stain-busting performance, with the only caveats being the serious weight of the machine (10kg+) and the danger of fluffing up your carpet fibres if you continue to go over the same area. Like many big cleaning machines, it drips when parked between areas and takes a fair bit of cleaning out afterwards. Yet even there, Vax’s easy-to-remove panels simplify the task.

Overall, a heavy-weight, great-performing and highly versatile cleaner with build quality backed up by a six-year guarantee.