BISSELL ProHeat 2X Revolution Pet Pro Plus Carpet Cleaner, 3588F

Why it's worth it

This is the full-size upright to get if you're cleaning bedrooms and hallways, not just spots. It heats the water as it cleans, sprays a pretreater right on the stain, and runs two brush rolls to scrub the pile from both directions.

Heated water is the feature that actually changes results. Bissell's HeatWave system holds water temperature steady through the cleaning pass instead of letting it cool in the tank. CNET's carpet cleaner testing found heated-water machines generally do better than cold-water ones on set-in and older stains, and that's the main line between Bissell's ProHeat and PowerLifter tiers. If your stains are weeks old rather than minutes old, this is where you want to spend.

The CleanShot pretreater is the other half of it. You aim the nozzle at a specific spot, hit a trigger, and it shoots a concentrated dose of OXY formula onto the stain before you scrub. For a dark spot on a bedroom carpet that's been ignored for a year, that beats spraying a bottle and waiting. Owners with old pet stains on light carpet consistently point to this step as the thing that finally worked after other products didn't.

From our review of 6 bissell carpet cleaners

What we like

• +Heated water is the feature that actually changes results
• +The CleanShot pretreater is the other half of it
• +Two DirtLifter PowerBrushes run underneath instead of one, so the pile gets worked from both directions on a single pass
• +You also get two modes

What to know

• –It's bulky and it's heavy
• –Maintenance isn't optional
• –The best results come from Bissell's own formulas, which you'll keep buying