Best Carpet Cleaners 2024: Our top picks for refreshing carpets and upholstery

The Vax Platinum SmartWash Carpet Cleaner is a great way to keep your carpets, rugs and upholstery looking fresh although it does come with a high price tag. 

At 7.4kg and measuring 1070 x 325 x 480mm, the Vax Platinum SmartWash is undoubtedly a hefty appliance, which means you will need to consider where you’ll store it when it’s not in use. Having said that, the Platinum SmartWash is still surprisingly flexible and can easily be manoeuvred around furniture. 

The carpet cleaner is made up of three tanks: one for clean water, another for dirty water and a dedicated tank for the cleaning solution, which the Platinum SmartWash will mix automatically with each clean.

Once you’ve filled up the necessary tanks, to begin cleaning you just need to push the Platinum SmartWash forward to automatically dispense the cleaning solution or pull it back to mop up the dirty water. 

There’s also a Dry Only button that turns off the solution dispensing, allowing you to just mop up the water and get the carpet as dry as possible.

Vax includes various cleaning attachments, including the main floor head and a handheld SpinScrub tool which agitates tough and dried-in dirt. 

Also included are 250ml bottles of both fabric pre-treatment and detergent. It’s important to note that when the bottles run out, you must replace them with Vax’s own detergent or you’ll invalidate the Platinum SmartWash’s warranty. 

We found the Vax Platinum SmartWash to be nothing short of an excellent carpet cleaner that’s able to cope with tough stains easily. Even stains such as thick mud and dried in ketchup were tackled with minimal effort. 

Although it’s a costly expense, the Vax Platinum SmartWash Carpet Cleaner is a fantastic appliance that makes light work of cleaning carpet and upholstery stains. If your home is full of carpets and rugs then this is a great tool to own.

Full review: Vax Platinum SmartWash Carpet Cleaner review

Reviewer: David Ludlow

If you don’t have much carpet, say just one room or a couple of rugs, then the Bissell PowerClean could be for you. This is a compact carpet cleaner that doesn’t take up much room. The main downside is that it lacks handheld tools, so it isn’t ideal for spot-cleaning stains. You’ll either need a separate spot cleaner or a bigger upright if you want handheld precision.

This upright cleaner stacks the tanks on top of each other: a 2.36-litre tank for water and detergent, and a 1.72-litre tank for dirty water. Typically, a clean will mean emptying the dirty tank once before the clean tank is empty.

Detergent is manually dispensed. It’s worth squeezing while moving forwards and then releasing to clean up the mess. Carpet cleaners that auto dose are easier to use but more expensive.

Cleaning performance is good: our mud stains took a couple of swipes to clean up, but our tough ketchup stain took quite a bit of working to get out (a cleaner with a handheld tool is faster for this kind of mess).

If you don’t have much storage space or much carpet, this compact cleaner has comparable power to its bigger rivals.

Full review: Bissell PowerClean review

Reviewer: David Ludlow

Tineco’s first carpet cleaner is an incredible bit of engineering, bringing some of the smarts from the company’s cordless vacuum cleaner range. The good news is that the new tech needs no complicated controls to use it, and the Tineco Carpet One Pro is just as easy to use as any other carpet cleaner.

There’s a 2-litre detergent tank, which should be filled with water and detergent, plus a 1.5-litre dirty water tank, which has a float that cuts off water flow when full. This dirty tank has a foot pedal to remove it, which keeps the tank secure in place while the carpet cleaner is in operation.

What makes the Tineco Carpet One Pro different is its LCD screen. This shows you troubleshooting information and can show you how to set up the cleaner. The ring around the outside shows how clean the carpet is: if there’s any red, the carpet is dirty; when it goes completely blue, the carpet is clean. Cleverly the cleaner auto doses: dispensing detergent when pushing forwards and sucking up on a pull-back.

Next, the cleaner heats its cleaning solution to 40°C, which is the optimal temperature for the company’s cleaning products.

To help dry the carpet, the Tineco Carpet One Pro has a dry-only mode and can blow hot air at between 70°C and 80°C. Again, the LCD comes into action, showing how dry the carpet is, using the onboard humidity sensor.

The cleaning is impressive. Our mud stain was gone almost instantly, thanks to the powerful brush agitating dirt, while the cleaner left our carpet almost dry to the touch. Our ketchup stain needed a bit more work, and we finished it with the handheld tool.

The Tineco Carpet One Pro is a lot more expensive than the competition, but it has a lot more technology. If you want the best, then this is it.

Full review: Tineco Carpet One Pro review

Reviewer: David Ludlow

Designed for convenience, the Vax Spotwash is a cordless spot washer best used for removing small household stains from carpets and upholstery. 

You may worry about how powerful a battery-operated carpet cleaner actually is compared to a wired appliance, however the Vax Spotwash boasts a 4Ah battery which is the among the largest available in its bracket. We also found in our tests that the Vax Spotwash lasted for a decent 25-minutes while on standard mode.

There’s a handy boost mode which increases the washer’s power and reduces the amount of passes needed to clean. In our tests we found the battery lasted around 18-minutes when using boost mode which should be long enough to see you through the clean. 

Using the Spotwash is easy too with a large button to turn it on and off, and an equally large button for turning the boost function on and off. You can also check how much battery charge is remaining by pressing the top button which will indicate its level using LED lights.

Its 1.1L water tank has clearly marked fill lines for water and detergent, so you can be sure you’re always using the correct amount. There’s also a 700ml tank for dirty water which can be lifted out easily for emptying after washing.

The Spotwash also comes with various tools to help remove those tougher stains, including a larger handheld tool with both a soft carpet cleaning brush and stiff bristles for hard floors. You’ll also receive a smaller handheld tool with just a brush, particularly useful if you have pets, and a nifty crevice tool for getting in hard to reach areas.

We found that the Vax Spotwash removed most stains well, however deeper stains or those notoriously difficult stains, such as red wine, needed multiple passes to completely clean. 

If you want the convenience of a battery-operated carpet cleaner that you can easily take around the house then the Vax Spotwash is a great choice. 

Reviewer: David Ludlow

Full review: Vax SpotWash Home Cordless

At 5.5kg, the Vax SpotWash Max Pet-Design is a beast of a spot cleaner, able to run for much longer and clean faster than its predecessors, thanks to its powerful 450W suction that makes light work of tough, dried-in stains. 

You’ll find a 2.8-litre tank for clean water and detergent, plus a second 2.2-litre tank for collecting dirty water. Both are impressively large and allow you to use the SpotWash for longer before needing to add more detergent or change the dirty water.  

Despite its size (which is actually one of the largest we’ve seen on a spot cleaner), the dirty water tank is especially easy to empty and takes a matter of seconds to wash out and replace.  

Vax has also thrown in lots of useful tools for an entire home clean, including a wide head tool for everyday jobs, a soft brush for carpets and upholstery and the Messy Clean Up tool – a brush designed for those particularly nasty pet messes. 

There’s also Vax’s own Spin Scrub, a motorised tool that spins as it cleans to agitate hard, dried in stains and removes them just as quickly. 

Finally, there’s a crevice tool which has a small brush and a suction-only size, created for getting into hard-to-reach areas. 

Overall we found that the Vax SpotWash Max Pet-Design cleaned quickly, with even notoriously difficult dried-in red wine carpet stains taking just five minutes to clean entirely. It’s worth noting that some stains will naturally require more detergent than others, which can result in dampened upholstery. 

Having said that, we found in our tests that the maximum carpet humidity was around just 26% which although does feel slightly damp to touch, didn’t take long to completely dry. Just ensure you don’t saturate a delicate surface area. 

Boasting a host of useful tools, large capacity and powerful suction, the SpotWash Max Pet-Design is perfect for busy households that need that extra bit of cleaning. 

Full Review: Vax SpotWash Max Pet-Design

Reviewer: David Ludlow

With a 4.5-litre cleaning tank, innovative floor head design and a 7.6m-long power cord, the Vax SpinScrub Power Plus is perfect for busy households with lots of carpet to take care of.

Included as standard is an upholstery tool for cleaning across soft furnishings, however we’d recommend upgrading to the bundle which comes equipped with an additional SpinScrub hand tool for dealing with tougher stains.

On-board are three tanks including one for clean water that’s a mighty 4.5-litres and a three-litre tank for dirty water. There’s also a separate tank for detergent, which the Vax SpinScrub Power Plus will then mix with fresh water at the correct ratio.

Unlike the Vax Platinum SmartWash Carpet Cleaner, the SpinScrub Power Plus doesn’t automatically dose solution to the floor and instead requires a manual trigger. This isn’t necessarily an issue, just be wary that you don’t saturate an area. 

While most carpet cleaners have a rotating brush bar, the SpinScrub Power instead has five spinning brushes to help agitate dirt from carpets. Although the brushes make light work of ground-in stains, we did notice when we left the cleaner switched on and stationary that the machine can leave a mark on the carpets.

That issue aside, the Vax SpinScrub Power Plus is a mighty device that removes messes from carpets with just a few passes. Although in our tests we found the main floor head didn’t fully remove notoriously difficult red wine stains, switching to the handheld SpinScrub tool did the job. 

Once the carpet was clean, we used the SpinScrub Power’s main floor head to extract any remaining liquid from the floor. We were seriously impressed with the results and measured the carpet’s humidity level at just 18%, whereas other spot cleaners can only manage around 25%.

Finally, we should mention that the Vax SpinScrub Power Plus is an exceptionally noisy appliance, so we’d avoid using this at anti-social hours.

Full review: Vax SpinScrub Power Plus

Reviewer: David Ludlow