Review - VAX Dual Power Pro Carpet Cleaner

When we moved into our new house about four years ago the first thing that we did was to have the carpets cleaned - the carpets were already several years old, the previous owner had a dog, and with a crawling baby we wanted them to be as clean as they could. At first we were quite precious about our newly cleaned carpets, but over the next few years snacks found their way into the living room, there were inevitable drink spillages, and even though we take off our shoes as we come in there was still tracked in dirt in the entry way. It was high time that they had another good clean, and so the opportunity to review a VAX Dual Power Pro Carpet Cleaner (affiliate link) could not be turned down!

The VAX Dual Pro Carpet Cleaner is a powerful, deep cleaning and quick drying carpet cleaner. The cleaning system agitates and helps to lift deep down embedded dirt, and the carpet cleaner comes with a hose and hand held upholstery attachment as well as the SpinScrub powered hand tool for scrubbing stains and a hard floor squeegee tool. The accessories can be stored in the included handy bag.

The carpet cleaner was easy to assemble. The handle can be easily removed for transport and so you can fit it all back into the box for storage. There are two removable tanks - one at the top for adding water and cleaning fluid and one at the bottom for collecting the dirty water. It has a long power cord and is easily switched on and off with a foot pedal at the base of the machine. There is a second foot pedal to tilt the machine backwards, which activates the brushes underneath for cleaning the carpet.

To set the machine up you need to add the cleaning solution and warm water. The carpet cleaner comes with two small bottles of cleaning solution (250ml each), and I would say that one small bottle is enough to do two medium rooms. It's easy to see where the different liquids need to go, and it was quite straightforward to set the machine up for cleaning.

When the water and cleaning fluid have been added you first need to set the machine to Wash and move the cleaner slowly forward over a small area of carpet, while depressing the trigger to release the water and cleaning solution. Then bring the cleaner back over the same area, this time without pressing the trigger, to suck up the dirty water. When you have covered the entire area of your floor, repeat the process but this time with the setting changed to Rinse. It's the same procedure when using the attachments, and you can see me using the cleaner in my video at the bottom of this post.

The carpet cleaner and water reservoirs do go down fairly quickly, and to clean one room you probably need to fill them up (and empty the dirty water at the bottom) at least twice, possibly three times. Each time I filled it with 80ml cleaning solution and 2 litres of warm water. The removable tanks for clean and dirty water are very easy to remove and to click back into place.

The machine isn't too noisy, and is quite easy to manoeuvre about. It did produce some gunky lumps of fluff/scummy bits that had to be picked up as I went along, so it's important to vacuum the area first as thoroughly as you can. The dirty water removed from the machine was quite disgusting!

It was a bit difficult to take accurate before and after photos due to the change in lighting, but here is my living room carpet. I think you can see that all the small grubby marks have gone.

After cleaning, it took a few hours for the carpet to feel dry enough to walk on, and you'd probably want to leave the carpet to dry overnight before replacing heavy furniture. The flattened pile on the carpet came right up again, and it felt lovely and soft to walk on as well as smelling nice and fresh.

Then I tried out the upholstery attachment on my stairs. The hand accessories are used while the machine is in the upright position, and it's easy to clip the hose to the front of the cleaner and then snap the attachment of choice on to the other end of the hose. It's a similar process to carry out the cleaning, pressing down the trigger in one direction to release the solution and releasing it in the other to suck up the dirty water.

I was really impressed with the difference to my stairs - the carpet cleaner instantly removed many small spots of dirt that I had learned to put up with! The hose only reached safely about two thirds of the way up the stairs - it would have reached longer but I found that the water and cleaner release wasn't effective enough as the hose wasn't straight. Luckily our stairs are curved so we have a larger stair in the corner where I could sit the machine while I finished off at the top.

Finally I used the SpinScrub powered hand tool for some stubborn stains. The brushes spin around while you hold the tool, and once again you press the trigger to release the water and cleaner. It didn't remove all the older stains entirely but it did a good job and I'll definitely be using it the next time I need to do some spot cleaning, especially when I can get to stains as soon as they occur.

I found the VAX Power Pro Carpet Cleaner easy to use and I was really pleased with the results. Below you can see a short video of the VAX Dual Power Pro in action, for cleaning a carpet and using the upholstery tool for stairs and the SpinScrub powered hand tool on a particularly grubby patch.

I received the VAX Dual Power Pro Carpet Cleaner in exchange for this review. Amazon links are affiliate.