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After testing six models, we still recommend the Bissell Little Green 1400B Portable Carpet Cleaner. If you’re constantly dealing with messes, consider Bissell 2891 Little Green Pet Pro Portable Carpet Cleaner.
If you spill a cup of coffee or a glass of red wine on your white carpet or couch, don’t expect a portable carpet and upholstery cleaner to work miracles. Despite what you see on TikTok, stain removers can only do so much, and you can probably remove many stains with the tools you already have.
However, a good carpet and upholstery cleaner will be easier on wet or sticky stains and keep dirt in accessible areas.
For occasional cleaning, we recommend Bissell Little Green 1400B Portable Carpet Cleaner. If you’re constantly dealing with messes and are willing to sacrifice some cleaning power for a better-equipped (and more expensive) machine, the Bissell Little Green Pet Pro 2891 Portable Carpet Cleaner has you covered.
This vacuum removes stains as well as any model we’ve tested and costs less than most other models. But the package only includes a cleaning attachment, and the design of the tank is awkward.
This model doesn’t clean as well as our top pick, but it has a more user-friendly reservoir design and comes with more accessories.
We’ve tested 29 stain removers since 2016, including six products from Bissell, Dirt Devil, Hoover and Kenmore in 2023.
We subjected our test model to a variety of common stains, including peanut butter, red wine, yard dirt, and coffee.
For each model, we took into account the convenience of cleaning tools, water tank design and overall ease of use.
After cleaning the test carpets, we checked how quickly they dried and whether the fibers looked new or rough.
This vacuum removes stains as well as any model we’ve tested and costs less than most other models. But the package only includes a cleaning attachment, and the design of the tank is awkward.
The Bissell Little Green 1400B Portable Carpet Cleaner is a good (if somewhat limited) carpet cleaner. This comes in handy if you occasionally clean food stains or wet stains from carpets, furniture, or car interiors.
When we used this model’s hand-held suction brush along with hot water, cleaning compound, and plenty of elbow grease, the Little Green 1400B cleaned best in our tests, removing peanut butter, peanut butter, yard dirt, and neon stains. better than competitors. It can lighten stubborn stains like red wine, but it can’t completely remove them (no stain remover we’ve tried can do that).
The package includes a brush that is suitable for most situations. But its water tank is a bit fiddly and the hose is a bit stiff to use.
This model doesn’t clean as well as our top pick, but it has a more user-friendly reservoir design and comes with more accessories.
In our tests, the Bissell Little Green Pet Pro 2891 Portable Carpet Cleaner didn’t perform as well as our top pick. But it requires less cleaning solution (and lube) and is more versatile, which may be attractive if you’re constantly dealing with messes.
It cleans peanut butter and peanut butter well, but falls a little short of our top pick when it comes to tackling yard dirt and Fanta stains.
It comes with three effective attachments (including a convenient crevice sprayer) to suit a variety of cleaning needs. The tank is twice the size of our options, has a handle for carrying and a flat bottom to lay down.
Staff Writer Sabine Heinlein has been a journalist for more than two decades. She is obsessed with cleaning cat drool from velvet sofas and hairballs from the family rugs.
If your carpet, couch, or car seats have a lot of stubborn food stains or nasty wet stains (coughs, fishy-smelling hairballs), a portable carpet and upholstery cleaner can be a useful tool.
Most portable carpet and upholstery cleaners, also called stain removers, have a spray nozzle on the handle that, when pressed, releases a dose of cleaning solution. The brush stirs the stain and works the solution, suction pulls out dirt and water, and air flow forces the dirt into a disposal tank.
You may already have tools to simulate some or all of these machines’ actions. Adding a small amount of dish soap and hot water to a rag (for simple stains like food stains) or using a strong detergent and brush (for tougher stains) can often have the same effect as a stain cleaner. For stains containing complex dyes or tannins, including Fanta soda or red wine, the handheld stain remover’s built-in suction mechanism prevents stains from being carried into surrounding fibers. But it doesn’t necessarily clean better.
A portable stain remover is not a simple magic tool, it requires some prep work and elbow grease. First, check the label of the item you want to clean to see if it is safe to use one of these machines on it. If you have questions, please consult a professional. Next, you need to take the stain remover out of storage, fill it with water and mixture, and plug it in. These machines weigh between 10 and 14 pounds and are not very light. To scrub the stain, you will have to expend almost as much energy as you would with a rag or brush. When you’re done, you’ll have to drain both tanks, rinse out the dirty tanks and hoses, wrap the power cord, and put it all away.
Disadvantages aside, the dirtier the material (bodily fluids and semi-solids, for example), you’ll likely be more appreciative of a machine that sprays dirt with cleaning product, washes it off, and then vacuums it up while keeping your hands slightly still . away from everything rough. . (Be aware, however, that rinsing the disposal hoses and tanks after cleaning may expose you to the very dirt you want to avoid.)
Portable stain removers are designed to remove individual stains and messes. If you want to lighten the entire carpet or remove dirt, consider using an upright carpet cleaner. Or, for better results, hire a professional cleaning service.
Cleaning Efficiency: We cut white polyester carpet into six squares, one for each carpet cleaner. We then stained each square with carpet’s worst enemies: oils (peanut butter and peanut butter), dyes (Gatorade, Coke and Fanta), tannins (red wine and coffee) and yard dirt. (We skipped urine: In our recent tests of upright carpet cleaners, this was the easiest substance to remove.) We used a knife to work yard dirt, peanut butter, and peanut butter deep into the fibers.
After letting the mud dry overnight, we handed over each square of carpet to the cleaner. We mixed each brand’s cleaning formula with 110°F water, sprayed the stain with the cleaning solution, and let it sit for a few minutes. We extracted as much of the solution (and stain) as possible and scrubbed the carpet vigorously, alternating between spraying and wiping, until we saw further improvement; this should take about 10 minutes.
We repeated the test on white organic linen upholstery fabric filled with wool batting to see how the machine handled sofas and pillows. (We’ve found that many pillow and upholstery fabrics are now stain-resistant, so we opted for untreated bedding.)
After 24 hours, we compared the results, noting the severity of the remaining spots. We rated each spot square on a scale from one (virtually no difference) to five (completely clear). We then added up the ratings of each site cleaner and compared them.
Drying Time and Carpet Appearance: A good carpet cleaner should not leave your carpet or rug covered in water and soap. Depending on the thickness of the product, material and room temperature, the surface should dry completely within 2-24 hours.
We let the test squares dry overnight and then felt how wet they were. We also checked their appearance, looking for crisp, even fibers rather than chewed fibers.
Design and How It Works: No stain remover cleaner is truly easy to use, especially when the stain requires you to squat down and scrub the floor for a few minutes.
We recorded how comfortable the machine’s basic cleaning tool was to hold throughout the cleaning process and assessed the trigger sensitivity of the spray gun. We looked for machines that seemed heavy or awkward to use and noted whether they had carrying handles, which was a plus. We also took into account the ease of filling and cleaning the water tank: the most convenient designs have a flat bottom, so they can be placed downwards.
We checked that the hose was long and flexible enough to provide the required cleaning radius and noted that it was easy to store. We also rated the models’ cleaning attachments and how easy and safe they were to open and close.
Reliability, customer service and warranty. Portable carpet cleaning machines are not particularly durable. Amazon reviews complain about broken spray triggers, leaks, and broken hoses. We focus on models with the best (or worst) reliability as well as good customer service. Most stain cleaners come with a one or two year warranty.
This vacuum removes stains as well as any model we’ve tested and costs less than most other models. But the package only includes a cleaning attachment, and the design of the tank is awkward.
While no portable carpet cleaner can magically remove all types of stains, the Bissell Little Green 1400B Portable Carpet Cleaner does a decent job and is one of the most reliable and affordable stain removers. Whether you happen to have food stains or a major mess, this machine can help you clean them up.
Has good cleaning ability. Although the model is far from perfect, it received the highest overall score in both rounds of testing. It removes Nutella, peanut butter, caramel syrup, yard dirt, red Gatorade and Fanta soda better than the competition. But like all the machines we’ve tested, it struggled with blue Gatorade, red wine, and coffee. (It still lightened those stains significantly, however.) If you have dark or patterned carpet or upholstery, you’ll likely be pleased with the results.
Very easy to clean. Bissell recommends cleaning hoses and machines after each use to prevent dirt buildup and odors. This model features Bissell’s HydroRinse Self-Cleaning Tool, which makes cleaning easy: Attach the HydroRinse tool to the hose, fill the solution tank, turn on the machine, and pull the trigger to rinse.
Relatively light. At 9.65 pounds, Little Green 1400B is the second lightest stain remover in our latest round of testing. So it will be a little easier for you to pull this model out of storage when you need it.
It’s more reliable than most. The Little Green 1400B seems to be the most reliable (or least problematic) model in this category. Several Wirecutter employees have owned it for years and love it. (They especially praised its ability to clean up cat vomit.) On Amazon, this stain cleaner has an overall rating of 4.6 out of 5 stars out of 60,000 reviews.
Bissell has excellent customer service. If you have a problem, Bissell offers text, email, or chat options. When we couldn’t find the self-cleaning hose tool included with this model, we contacted customer service via live chat. A representative responded within a minute and offered to send us the tool for free.
Its tank is of awkward design. These containers do not have handles and have a rounded bottom, making them impossible to fit in the sink. The line that measures the powder is at the bottom of the clean water tank, so you have to add the powder first and then the water, which we found counterintuitive. There is no measuring line in the tank to measure the amount of cleaning solution needed for small cleaning jobs.
It’s a little bulky and the hose is stiff. Despite being relatively lightweight, the Little Green 1400B is significantly larger and bulkier than other models we’ve tested, and its hose is less flexible, making it difficult to maneuver.
The kit includes a neat brush. The Little Green 1400B comes with a 3-inch cleaning brush. It’s sufficient for most situations, but it requires more manual effort to clean than the large brush of our equally great pick, the Bissell Little Green Pet Pro 2891 Portable Carpet Cleaner.
This model doesn’t clean as well as our top pick, but it has a more user-friendly reservoir design and comes with more accessories.
In our tests, the Bissell Little Green Pet Pro 2891 Portable Carpet Cleaner didn’t clean as well as our top pick, and it’s a little more expensive. But it is more versatile and easy to use. This model is the most convenient option if you often encounter stains from pets or children, which are easier to clean up.
It cleans almost as well as our top pick and is more convenient to use. In our internal tests, this model performed as well as our top pick. But when it came to Fanta, red wine and peanut butter on the carpet, things lagged a little. However, with a larger cleaning tool, flexible hose, and well-designed water tank, the Little Green Pet Pro 2891 is more convenient than any model we’ve tested.
It comes with three effective tools. In addition to the 3-inch stain brush, the Little Green Pet Pro 2891 also has a pet brush head that is slightly larger and has a hard rubber handle in addition to the bristles. It took us about half the time and effort to clean the same amount of stains with the pet tool as it did with our favorite single-brush tool.
Post time: Nov-16-2023