Your morning coffee is brewing, and you hear tinkling laughter from the living room – it is time to get up! Your feet land on plush, warm carpet as you stand up for a stretch. Today is going to be a good day. Or, so you thought.
Your living room is a disaster. The dog tracked in mud and your sweet child is rubbing it deeper into the carpet to “help.” A vacuum won’t cut it for this job. You need a carpet cleaner.
Not only has mud now been tracked into your home, but your carpet is teeming with unpleasant bacteria, dust mites, and irritating allergens that your vacuum cannot reach. The top-rated carpet cleaners can remove these particles to give you cleaner, odor free carpet. Give our Rug Doctor review a thorough read-through to see why it is a good fit for you!
Rug Doctor Deep Carpet Cleaner for Home and Office
The Rug Doctor is a professional-grade carpet cleaner with a price tag that we can appreciate. Brighter and cleaner carpets can be seen immediately after one simple backwards pull of the machine.
We love this carpet cleaner for its ability to quickly clean carpets and remove odors – the reduction of allergens helps us breathe easier and feel healthier inside our homes.
Even high traffic areas and stubborn stains were no match for the boosted spray option. Your carpet and home are left cleaner and happier, and your feet will land on a plush carpet with each step.
This Rug Doctor review specifically covers the Rug Doctor Deep Carpet Cleaner. The Carpet and Rug Institute even gave this model the gold certification for its top performance.
Rug Doctor Review
The Rug Doctor Deep Carpet Cleaner is a user-friendly product designed with us, the customers, in mind. Whether you have stairs or hard to reach spots, this cleaner can cover it! Its 11-amp motor provides deep cleaning and 75% more suction than any other leading deep carpet cleaner.
A 28-foot long power cord lets you reach far into your house without needing to unplug and plug in over and over. The width of this beast’s cleaning path is 12-inches, so it covers a lot of space in one go. Its 10 rows of bristles ensure that bacteria and dirt build-up are cleared out.
Weighing in at 25 pounds makes this cleaner just a little bit over the average weight for market machines. However, the compact design and collapsible handle allow this machine to be stored easily.
Let’s dig deeper into what you’re getting with this cleaner.
Design and Features
Simple lift one-gallon tanks make filling and emptying as fuss-free as possible. A measuring cap is included so you can know precisely how much solution you are pouring into the tanks. Don’t worry about cross contamination, there are separate tanks for clean and dirty water. Rug Doctor also offers its own line of various cleaning solutions.
The Rug Doctor portable spot cleaner detaches with a removable tool caddy for hard-to-reach locations. The attachment for upholstery and stair cleaning will clean up after dogs and kids alike! A 7.7-foot-long hose is perfect for stairs so you will not have to lug the machine up each step. This attachment is gentle enough that you can clean furniture, mattresses, cars, and even your spoiled pup’s bed.
What’s more, you can turn up the back dial to initiate the Super Spray Boost! This feature blasts stubborn carpet stains from behind the rear wheels, allowing you to effortlessly control your aim. Carpet-friendly, extra-large wheels make it easy to maneuver around your home, even when both tanks are full!
Dual cross-action brushes provide a deep and even cleaning. This allows for the powerful suction to absorb deposited moisture and leaves you with a drier carpet faster. Allergens and other carpet dwelling soils don’t stand a chance! Rug doctor instructions are also clear enough to follow and set it up right away.
Built To Last
Rug Doctor is a trusted brand that is known for producing premium machines for a wonderful value. They back their reputation with this product by providing a two-year limited warranty. If your machine breaks within that time, you can connect with their customer service department for a replacement carpet cleaner or Rug Doctor replacement parts.
Competing Products
Shark Navigator Lift Away
The Shark Navigator Lift Away is a powerful deep cleaning vacuum, competitive with the Rug Doctor Deep Cleaner and with a more budget-friendly price tag than comparable models.
This lift-away carpet cleaner does not pick up messes quite as fast as the Rug Doctor, but it definitely tops comparable carpet cleaners within its price range. It is quick and effective on carpets as well as a number of other household surfaces, including drapes and upholstery. Its “lift-away” design allows the vacuum canister to be separated from the heavy floor base of the vacuum so that you can use it on raised surfaces as well as floors.
This is a lightweight and relatively quiet vacuum compared to others. It uses cyclonic suction technology and its deep cleaning brush comes with an on/off switch, so you can safely switch from carpet to hardwood with just the press of a button. The dust cup has a capacity of up to 1.2 liters, or even more, according to Shark – big enough that you will not have to empty it halfway through the cleaning job.
Though not as high-quality as the Rug Doctor Deep Cleaner, the Shark Navigator is an excellent, versatile carpet cleaner at a great value price.
Overall, you can expect highly competitive performance from the Shark Navigator on nearly all surfaces.
One area where the Shark Navigator struggles is with hardwood. Though it is advertised as a versatile, multi-surface cleaner, it does not perform as well on hardwood as some other brands. It does leave some mess behind on the first go when cleaning larger debris like spilled cereal.
However, it is extremely effective on carpet, and the lift-away feature for use on drapes, stairs and furniture is super convenient for everyday household cleaning. The on/off feature of the deep cleaning brush means that, while you may have to go back over hardwood surfaces more than once, your floors will always be free from scuffs or scratches after cleaning.
Compared to a similar or even more expensive vacuum, the Shark Navigator cleans faster and more effectively, especially on carpet. It is also lighter and significantly quieter than some others, making it a top competitor in its price range.
This is a great vacuum for someone looking for versatile quality at a mid-range price.
Bissell Big Green Professional Carpet Cleaner
The Bissell Big Green Professional Carpet Cleaner is a heavy-duty carpet and floor cleaner. It does not have quite as high-rated performance as the Rug Doctor steam cleaner, but it does work very well on a number of surfaces.
This carpet cleaner has an extra large dirt-lifter brush, designed to scrub deep into carpet. High suction power lifts dirt and large debris and helps floor dry even faster. The huge water tank and 24-ounce bottle of cleaning formula make it great for large carpeted surfaces. An additional hose with high suction power allows you to clean in tough-to-reach areas like upholstery and the edges of walls.
This is a heavy machine – well over 40 pounds empty and nearly 60 pounds when full. It is also much noisier than smaller vacuum cleaners in its price range and can be a little expensive for the quality you get out of it.
When it comes to Rug Doctor vs Bissell – we have to side with the Rug Doctor.
The Bissell Big Green is a great carpet cleaner for big, professional jobs, but it simply does not provide a detailed enough clean for a household cleaner. The Rug Doctor is a little lighter and generally performs better.
However, there are some benefits to this Bissell’s performance. It is fast – fast to clean, and fast to dry. Its forward and backward cleaning power means that you should never have to go over the same spot twice, no matter how deep the stain is. The high suction power dries carpets as you go, so you don’t have to wait quite as long for the carpet to fully dry after you have cleaned it.
One area the Bissell struggles in comparison to other models is with cleaning along edges. It does come with an attachment hand hose to help you reach tougher spots, but that means more effort on your part, to reach down and clean against the edges with the hose rather than just running the carpet cleaner over it.
All-in-all, the Bissell Big Green is a great professional-grade carpet cleaner, and it does perform well when compared to other cleaners in its same price range. We have to say, though, the Rug Doctor carpet cleaner simply outperforms it. Given the choice between the two, we still recommend the Rug Doctor.
Conclusion
Trust us: After putting the Rug Doctor Deep Carpet Cleaner through the tests, we feel that this is the best option for anyone needing to give their carpets a thorough deep cleaning. This powerful machine will remove dirt, allergens, mites, stains, and other organisms from your carpet in one-pull.
