I already bought a pretty nice tool before Prime Day. The vehicle I just bought was owned by a young working couple with little kids, so the seats were stained pretty badly. It's a hybrid, which I've never owned before, so I assumed it's 110v power outlet would run my Bissell upright carpet/upholstery cleaner. I found out the outlet is limited to only 150w though.
This lead to searching the PlugShare site, as it can be set to show not just EV charging stations, but also regular 110v outlets. I found a few close by, but the residents listed for them would not return my messages. A nearby park that showed one in a sheltered picnic area near parking was said to be no longer powered, no doubt due to city budget issues.
So then I started looking at shop vacs, but none had nozzles suitable for extracting deep stains in upholstery. By accident I found out there's now such a thing as cordless spot cleaners though! These are very similar to the little corded plug in spot cleaners, but a bit smaller. I ended up settling on the Bissell Little Green Machine Cordless.
The only other machine of this type I found at the time was a Hoover, but it did not come with a battery and charger, and by the time you bought those separately, it was quite a bit more expensive. It's batteries also don't run as long, and it's said it doesn't have quite the suction power of the Bissell, though that may be due to it having a 6" vs 3" nozzle.
The Bissell's battery is built-in and not removeable, but it seems to be a good quality one, and has good run time for it's power. I use it on Turbo mode, the more powerful setting, and despite the manual saying 18 min run time, it's more like 20 min or more. Honestly though, you would typically do this in dry weather, which here is usually hot. After 30 minutes of pre treating with a spray bottle of shampoo solution, doing a good scrub then spraying the rinse water on and holding the nozzle down tight to suck the dirt out, you're sweating pretty good and ready for a few hr rest anyway.
All carpet/upholstery cleaners typically come with a sample bottle of their cleaner, but I use Zep shampoo, which I buy in gallon size and mix in the recommended 5 oz per gallon ratio in a quart spray bottle. I only use hot tap water in the clean tank of the tool, with no shampoo. This assures your rinse water has the best chance to extract ALL soap residue, which can attract dirt if left behind. Some argue if you don't spray soap solution in with the tool, it will not penetrate as deeply, but honestly, any consumer level tool of this type doesn't spray that hard, in fact you can set a spray bottle with adjustable nozzle to spray harder if you set it to a pinpoint stream.
The reality is, with tough stains, you are likely going to need to do 2 passes on some of them anyway. It also matters a lot what you use to pretreat the tougher stains with. A quart bottle of 6% Hydrogen Peroxide, which is twice the strength of the stuff you find in drug stores, does wonders for really bad stains. It can also be had in 12%, but then you risk permanently discoloring what you're cleaning, so twice over with 6% is preferred. I only had to use the HP on the rear cargo area carpet, on everything else I used the Zep solution, twice over on a few spots. Everything looks very clean now! This machine works surprisingly well for how small and light it is. There were some on Amazon who claimed otherwise, but I find Amazon always has some that either task a product to do unrealistic things, or don't know how to use it the most effective way.
The great thing about the timing of this purchase, is despite not hitting a Prime or other sale, it went up $30 in price right after I bought it for $150. Some would argue that's a lot for such a tool, but this is a smaller niche specialty tool for those whom need something portable due to either not having access to public outlets, or not living in a house with outside outlets. Now I DO have a Bissell upright machine, so I could have removed the seats, taken them into my apt, and cleaned them there, which is how I cleaned the rear cargo carpet and headrests, but removing the seats is far more involved, and my new apt building's cart has been missing since before I started the project. I also didn't want to run the upright much longer in my apt, as it's VERY loud, especially in an apt that only has carpet in the bedroom. I'm holding onto the upright though, as I'm still on a wait list for an apt that is fully carpeted with more affordable rent.
The price on this machine went back down a bit, but only $5 (the up to 35 min run time is on normal mode btw).
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