Customer Ratings & Reviews

I was going to buy this cleaner online, but it turns out there was a Best Buy right down the street. I anted a cleaner with an on board heater to relace my old Bissel cleaner. Well, Best Buy only carries one kind with an on board heater. I thought it was over priced and ugly. I dont mind putting hot water in my cleaner when i need to, especially if it will save my familly money. I have a Marine as a husband, a 5 year old, a 6 year old, an 18 month old son and a dog. So needless to say, my carpets get DIRTY. I decided on this one because of its look and it price, as well as some great reviews. I went down to the store, the customer service was AWESOME, and the guy even helped me pick our some extra cleaner that would fit our dirty carpet lifestyle! lol. I brought it home, fought with it to put it together and anxiously awaited what would come off my floor. I am attaching a pic so you could see what this magnificent thing did to the carpets that i cleaned this morning. Another awesome feature that this Hoover has, is it has an auto rinse feature. So when you push it forward, it washes, and if you hold the trigger on the draw back, it automatically rinses your floor. It also has 2 SEPARATE tanks for clean water and dirty water. Which is awesome in itself. This is hands down the most rewarding investment I have EVER made. GREAT JOB HOOVER!

I bought this as a Christmas gift for my girlfriend. I reviewed many of the other steam-vac machines and I picked this one because of the price, but also for the quantity and quality of the reviews I found here. The vacuum assembled quickly and we were cleaning carpets within 10-15 minutes. The volume of dirt removed from the carpet was astounding and although it was not able to fully revive the nap of the carpet in high traffic areas, the spot removal and overall cleaning of the carpets was exceptional, especially for a home unit. We are very happy with our steamvac's performance and each container of dirty water we pour down the sink brings a delighted smile to our faces. My only complaint would be the weight of the machine, but that's something that you can live with. And also, the accessory hose doesn't want to stay in it's storage clips when vacuuming, so it's easy to remove it and use it when needed. Overall, we are ecstatic with the power, function and usefulness of our steamvac. And both of us eagerly await the next buckets of dirty water we get to pour down the sink.

I purchased this steam cleaner about five months ago. At first I was amazed at how well it worked. I live in a carpeted apartment and I can't stand to have stains on it. This steam cleaner is very easy to clean, and you do not have to measure out the amount of detergent that goes into it. There is a secondary container built into the water compartment. All you have to do it fill it with carpet cleaner and the machine does the rest. The difference it made on the floor was very noticeable. That may seem like an obvious observation, but I did use regular powder carpet cleaners on the floor before and I thought those cleaners worked well enough. Unfortunetly now that I have had the cleaner for a few months now, I noticed it wasn't working as well as when I originally got it. First of all, before I go to far without mentioning it. The cleaner requires hoover brand cleaner. Not that it does a better job, but because it doesn't foam up as much as other cleaners. Other brands foam up and cause the bottom tank to stop taking in more dirty water. There is a float that rises and blocks the vent so no more dirty water can enter the tank. This means, for every full tank of clean water, you will have to empty the bottom tank two or even three times. Back to the main problem. The steam cleaner wasn't cleaning nearly as well. I checked the brushes and found out they weren't spinning. The brushes are run by a cheap green plastic piece that is attached to the motor of the cleaner. It's a simple gear style turning setup. I found out it had stripped off and a replacement is going to cost 30 bucks. That's the cheapest I have found it for online. When I called Hoover, they wanted me to take it to a repair shop in Syracuse. I can only imagine what that would have run me to fix.

I did a lot of research and this was the best machine for the money. Best Buy also had the best price I could find! I have a new puppy that is still in the potty training stage and this cleans up messes very well. It removes the stains and fluffs the carpet at the same time. (For pet stains get the pet stain detergent). The water compartment is small so you may need to refill several times for 1 room, but it's really easy to fill, clean, and work. Just make sure you go SLOW! Run over the same strip several times to remove all excess water and the carpet will be bone dry within an hour. My mom has the same machine and we will never own any other brand but Hoover. I have not tried the attachment for upholstry yet so I cannot give a review on that feature. But for the floors you will not be dissapointed with this machine!

Bought this one to replace a ten year old one. This one does a super job, easy to fill, set up, especially like that the water tank and shampoo tank are separate so you can use the rinse only when you need it. I tried the hand tool and it worked better than any others I've used. Compared to my old one, I especially like that you can break the whole thing down to clean it when you are done using it. The only thing I was disappointed in is the little drips of dirty water that come out of the recovery tank when you first pull it out of the machine, however, my old machine had many more drips than this. This machine also did not come with the squeegy attachment for bare floors. This came with my other machine.

If you want a good, inexpensive solution to animal oopsies...this is one great carpet cleaning machine. Easy to use, easy to put together. However...you MUST follow the directions for use and DO NOT be in a hurry. It is super on pet stains and with a little peroxide on the carpet first will also get out the number 2 stains well as well as red clay and other stains (test carpet first). Go slow and sure and you will have a great looking carpet for a small price. Pet owners...make SURE YOU VACUUM FIRST before using and take the three minutes when you are finished to clean out the brushes on the bottom of the cleaner. This is my second Dual V purchase in 10 years and it is SO WORTH IT!

This cleaner works great! We had cleaned our carpets less than a month with a store rental. It did not clean very well over all and the stains started showing up again. The first unit would not release the solution, so we had to dump it out (wasting solution) return it to the store get another start over, after cleaning the machine before we got started. Don't waste your time or money. The Hoover wide path works much better. This machine is easy to use. We could not believe how much dirt this machine got out of the carpet. It cleaned the high traffic areas and pet stains the rental could not. It uses much less cleaning solution and picks up better than any cleaned I've used Vacuum the carpet, use the right cleaning product and use the right spinscrub mode and you can't go wrong. If you think the carpet needs to be more dry set the spinscrub mode to spill pick-up and go over the area. The carpet was dry almost after we were done cleaning. My wife and I are very happy with the way this cleaner works(you will also)! We are glad we made the purchase. Best Buy had the lowest price we could find.

I’ve been looking to purchase a carpet/steam cleaner for about a year now and of all the brands and models available, I spent a lot of time reading reviews trying to sort through stated facts and issues vs. what somebody didn’t ‘like’ about their machine. I find in many cases reviews were written negatively when a product did not perform a task that it was not designed for – basically, the owner didn’t do their research and had expectations that could never have been met with the product they purchased. After many cumulative hours researching, I decided on a Hoover product. My original intent was to buy the Hoover SteamVac with Clean Surge (Model: F5914-900) but ended up with Hoover - SteamVac Dual-V (Model: F7412-900) for $15 more. There was a Hoover representative onsite at the time I went to the store but they were speaking double talk and were not very knowledgeable about the machines, I actually caught two conflicting statements about the use and a false statement about the operation. My solution? Read the manual and touch the machine. Between the two models I named above I spent about an hour reviewing the manuals and taking the pieces apart to get a better feel for using the machines. I ended up choosing the Dual V model because it seemed to be a more sturdy machine, as my biggest fear was breakage. I put it to use immediately, starting with a 8’ x 6’ throw rug that I use in my linoleum kitchen. This rug has never been steam cleaned, only vacuumed, over its 18 year life. The machine was very easy to put together and only required me to have a Phillips head a screwdriver (not included). The instructions on use were fairly clear and I read through them prior to filling the tanks and starting my test. Once I filled the clean water and detergent compartments, which is probably about a gallon of clean water or so, and maybe a pint of detergent, contained within one unit – I did my first pass over the carpet. Wow, amazing, cool, awesome. I spent about an hour working on this carpet and getting a good feel for the machine before using it on the wall to wall carpet in the rest of the apartment. The row of cleaning brushes spin in opposite directions which I prefer over other brands/models that have a vacuum like brush, spinning only in one rotational direction – I feel like the Dual V agitates the carpet fibers more and in all directions, thereby cleaning more effectively. So pass one was the ‘wash’ with soap, pass two was the suction only, pass three and four were ‘rinse’ which was only water, and the following 3 passes were suction only to get the carpet a dry as possible. I played with the number of passes until I felt comfortable that I wasn’t saturating the carpet, but still enough to grab all the dirt. The carpet now smells clean, looks cleaner and has made me feel good about this purchase. The next day I moved on to the wall to wall carpet in a hallway measuring about 20’ x 4’. This took about an hour also and it now looks like new. There was one area at the entry door that was heavily soiled which I went over about three times (the whole wash, rinse, suction cycle) before I saw all the dirt come out - this machine is great. The suction power is really good and I think that’s key in ensuring your cleaning process is complete – nobody wants a wet carpet. I was able to walk on the carpet in socks right after finishing and my socks did not get wet. The carpet is obviously lightly damp, but it’s as if it’s more dry than wet…little hard to explain, but with less suction you might be waiting a long time for it to dry or potentially damage whatever is under your carpet. I set up a fan in the hallway to assist in drying. I consider my testing complete and over the next couple of weeks will finish the rest of the carpeted areas of my place. I live in a 450 square foot apartment in San Francisco, and about 300 sq ft of it is carpeted. I’ve been here for 4.5 years and this is the first time the carpets have been steam cleaned (it was new when I moved in), and the carpet looks new again. I think anyone looking to purchase should be ready for the task at hand, it is a good amount of effort to finish a section of carpet but it is so worth it. Edges (like walls and doorways) are a bit of a challenge so you’ll have to use the attachment or a separate handheld brush to scrub those areas without the machine and then use the machine to suction up the fluids. The Dual V containers hold enough to make the machine not too heavy but still enough to complete a good amount of space before refilling and emptying. I noticed many reviews complaining about dripping of the waste fluid upon removal of the tank… I found that if you don’t let the tank fill up to it’s maximum shut off point, it’s more manageable to remove and empty and tends to not spill over. As for the clean water/detergent tank, it’s so simple and clean, no spillage whatsoever if you’re careful about filling it. Another cool thing is that you can leave the clean water/detergent tank filled for those times that you need to do a quick run over, which I did 1 day after the kitchen throw rug cleaning. I had a spill and just grabbed the unit, plugged it in, did a quick wash and rinse, empty the dirty tank and put it away… done. Easy, and very satisfying. Our cat spits up sometimes so if you have pets making accidents I think you’d like this machine. I purchased the 4 year geek squad coverage since I did read a lot of reviews about breakage, and for a $200 product I think it’s worth it. One other important thing to note, which may seem obvious but... be sure to do a complete and thorough vacuum prior to steam cleaning your carpets, remember, dirt and water = mud. Not much else to tell – it works as advertised, just know what you want and know what you’re buying so false expectations do not exist and disappointment doesn’t surface.

I considered purchasing a steam cleaner after being less than satisfied with the results of a rental cleaner. I had two goals in mind: 1) Spend less than I would on a professional cleaning service and 2) Get my carpets as clean as possible. The Hoover SteamVac Dual-V achieved both these goals. I cleaned all the carpets in my house, including those that I had just cleaned with a rental machine, and saw dramatic improvement throughout the house. All but a few stains (hair dye and rust stains) came up with no additional cleaning. The high traffic areas that get abused by my daughters and their friends even look great. I could not have been more pleased with these results. In our area, a professional carpet cleaning service charges $150 for three rooms. Even with the $40 extended warranty, the Hoover SteamVac Dual-V will pay for itself in the first year of use. Plus, I can clean whenever I choose and only as much as I choose. I have only two issues with this cleaner. First, it does go through a lot of cleaning solution. Using the cleaner just as described in the manual, I used an entire 48oz bottle of cleaner in six rooms, including two small bathrooms. Second, some of the latches for buckets and such do appear to be a little on the weak side. In consideration of the price I paid for the cleaner, including the extended warranty, and the money I will save, these two issues are very minor.

This is an awesome steam cleaner! I had to replace my Bissel when it died after less than 1 1/2 years. This works better than the Bissel ever did! I was ready to replace my downstairs carpets with hardwood but this got them cleaner than they had been since we installed the carpet and made them plush again. They were also dry incredibally fast-- in some rooms, the starting place was bone dry before I finished the room. This also has an automatic mixing feature for the solution and doesn't seem to use as much as cleaner as the Bissel did, but cleans better. The seperate tanks are nice but make sure before carrying it up stairs they are both empty because it's super heavy. The tanks usually need emptied and filled at the same time which is convient. You only need to stop once and not feel like you're wasting time. The tool caddy won't stay on the back, but I haven't had time to mess with it yet and haven't needed to use it. The Wash and Rinse is nice and I think the Rinse actually leaves the carpets plush. I cleaned the heavy spots with Wash first, then did a Rinse. On our bedroom carpets which are practically brand new, I just did a Rinse (soap forward, water back) and they look perfect! I didn't realize they were even slightly dingy until I cleaned them. Great value! And, Best Buy was the cheapest place I found it. Even Walmart (who has downgraded versions) had it for $30 more.

This is an AWESOME MACHINE! We were looking for a carpet cleaner and really did not know much about how to find one so we asked around, 4 out of five people told us if your going to buy one, get a Hoover...OK so I looked online at comments made for different models of Hoover and for the money, and the reviews we choose this Model and we are SO HAPPY WE DID! IT IS EASY TO HANDLE, LIGHT WEIGHT, AND DOES A PROFESSIONAL JOB. A1 Top job...can't say enough , easy to refill water tank and soap tank, easy to clean brushes...The only drawback was the hose storage ,hose can get in the way sometimes it hangs down kinda knocks around while shampooing. But we can live with that because it CLEANS FANTASTIC! Love this Machine. Buy it! You will Love it!

All in all this is a good product, I did some research before buying, I was going to go with the Hoover that sells for $175.99, it got a 4.8 review, I was looking and ofcourse a salesmen came over to help lol, he mentioned that this was the upgraded model, I figured for the extra $24 it was worth the try. Pros: Cleans Carpets good, got out some stains I wasn't sure was going to come out, I had to use the hose attachment to get some of the stains out, but they came out. Overall a good product. Cons: I had read reviews saying the the carpets try fast, if 3 hours is fast then yes its fast lol, I guess 3 hours is not bad, the carpets are clean, but my socks are wet from walking around lol. The only other complaint was the attachment hose, it did not hold in place real well while I was cleaning the carpets, it kept falling off where it clips in, I finally had to hold it while doing the carpets. That was a little annoying. The whole Steam Vac felt a little unsturdy, probably because of the plastic parts, but it held up. Lastly, to get out some of the bad stains I had to use the hose attachment, the unit itself did not take stains out, just cleaned, but with attachment all stains came out. I know it may seem like I complained a little too long, but I want everyone to know the drawbacks of buying this, as well as the Pros of buying this, All in all i'm glad I bought this, it cleaned the carpets good, and i'm hoping it will last a long time.

Print the online price on bestbuy.com and take it to the store. They will accept the better price. This is a good steam cleaner. Cleans very well. The dirty water tank leaks as you take it off the machine to empty. It's not that big of a deal. Just place your hand over that area. It's easy to use and you can see all the dirt in the tank. For the price ($169) you can't go wrong.

We have two Beagles who don't really make a mess out of the house but for sure increases the need to clean the carpets more frequently. We put off buying a carpet cleaner because it wasn't completely necessary and instead just borrowed from friends on occassion until this week when we dog-sat a pitbull for another friend. This dog pooped and peed all over the carpets and even on our couch. My husband and I did some quick online research and price comparison of carpet cleaners before deciding on this one. It cleaned all of the messes with ease! No remaining smells or stains anywhere to be found! Better than any machine we have ever borrowed hands down! Easy to use attachments and the drying time is phenominally fast. Read the instructions (they're aren't long or hard to understand) and you'll be more than satisfied with the results.

I did a lot of research before purchasing a steam cleaner. I followed the suggestions of many other reviews on this site and read the instructions from cover to cover. I found the cleaner to be very easy. I was impressed at how quickly the carpet dryed after cleaning. The only thing I was not excited about was when I used the hose attachment on my stairs. It was easy to use but did not get the carpet as dry as the machine itself does on large areas of carpet. I feel like my stairs are clean and look nice... but they took longer to dry. (I did lots of "dry strokes" as suggested by manual) I am still giving this product 5 stars because it did a great job even though it didn't dry fast. I would highly recomend it to anyone looking for a carpet cleaner.

I was going to purchase the patriot but seen the water through the containers seemed like an visual advantage. Plus very close in price. The surge is simply extra soapy water. Don't fall for that marketing gimmick. Had not shampooed my cream color carpet since it was installed 7 years ago. This cleaning turned the water black. Left a smoothed color tone. Me like that! Don't spend extra for the xpensive models. this will work just fine. And if you're going to compare the Bissell to this, well ask yourself if it's wise to have the dirty water surround the clean water.

I have owned this unit for about 6 months now. Bought it when we lived in an apartment. Cleaned the rug under the dining room table and it got almost all of the stains out. Including Koolaid! (We have 3 boys in our household) Then we bought a house in August and I cleaned all the carpets before we moved in. It took many hours to clean the entire house, but it ran almost non stop and just kept dragging the dirt out. There seemed to be no end to the dirt! If worked properly, this leaves the carpets damp, but not soaked and they will dry in a day with good ventliation and some fans. The dual V design really sucks the water out of the carpet! My only complaints are few. I wish it had larger fresh water and dirty water storeage. This would of helped to speed up my whole house cleaning. The hand scrubber is weak and the spray takes a little getting use to. I also wish that there was a way to bypass the floor suction when using the wand attachments. When using the wand, you are just plugging in the hose at the top of the dual V section. So you are not getting 100% suction capability out of the wand due to the suction bypassing down to the floor. Because of this, if you suck up a large amount of water with the wand, it will leak back down onto your floor because it hits the dual V part and then loses enough suction to fall back through the V's and onto the floor. I believe this is why the scrubber is a little weak to because you are not getting a full vacuum. With that being said, if you plan on doing a lot of small projects that will require the wand, I would suggest something else. But this thing works great at doing big rooms. Also keep in mind, different detergents will get out different stains. The standard detergent is great for day to day stains, but does not work well on pet stains. The OxiClean stuff works well on almost everything. And remember, there are some stains that not even professionals can remove. This isn't a magic wand, but it sure comes close!

Let me first give a little background..... I have had a hoover steamvac for almost 10 years... we recently bought this one to replace our old one which just finished faithfully serving us. We have plenty of animals in our house and have to clean our carpets alot due to the animals tracking dirt around. The steam vac cleans very well but there are a few things to remember when using it. READ your directions!!! It will tell you how to best use the machine. If you are having problems with the lid of the dirty water container collecting alot of stuff here are a few things to think of: Did you vacuum before using the cleaner, if not you NEED to. This is not a vacuum and you shouldn't be using it if you did not vacuum first. if you did vacuum then maybe your vacuum isn't doing it's job anymore. With two dogs and ferrets and other furry critters in our house I don't have that problem if I make sure to vacuum first. If you don't think it's cleaning the carpet really well remember this is not like a vacuum cleaner you NEED to go SLOW!!! if you go to fast it can't clean like it's supposed to. Patience patience patience. If you have animals like we do I find that because our caprets soil more than most if you do a cycle horizontally across the floor and make sure to rinse go back over that section vertically and it ensures a clean carpet. I love this product and I will most likely always have one in my home. It does a great job in the house, on the stairs, on the furniture, and even in the cars!!! our last one lasted for almost 10 years and I'm sure this one will too! I would tell anyone to buy this product. I've even cleaned carpets in my friends apartment that were cleaned by professionals and it still took dirt out. Really this product works great and has lasted our use and abuse I would surely buy one again in the future.

My husband bought this for me about a month ago for an early Christmas present. I'd been begging for one, but wasn't expecting to pay this much for a machine I wasn't sure was going to work. I've had a few high powered steam vacs before, and none really got the job done. This thing, it's my new best friend. My husband put it together in less than 10 minutes, and I was using it right away. I have a couch that has been tortured by pets, a toddler w/ juice and spagettios, and a husband that works in the oilfields. It's a sentimental item to me, I LOVE my couch, it was my grandmothers, and I hope to keep in for many many years. But I was heartbroken that it hadn't been taken care of. This steam vac has on board tools that can be used on upholstery, and WOOOW. I don't have a single stain or foul smell on my couch! I LOOOVE it! I also have stupid white carpet, don't know who's idea that was....haha! But it is now stain free and smell free too :) The machine is easy to use, doesn't take too much woman power, and it gets the job done without leave a soaking carpet afterward. My carpets are pretty thick, and the longest it's taken for them to dry so far has been about 45 minutes. So to all of those who are wanting to spend a little less on a smaller machine, don't do it. This has more than paid itself off w/ just my couch alone! It's well worth the money!

I have a dog and 2 kids, and needless to say, REALLY messed up carpets. ... This machine got dog smell out of my daughters room, that nothing else, including other machines, could. It is a truly awesome product, and I have very little negative to say about it. I put on the 4yr warranty with best buy for an extra $50 bucks because my last machine(bissell) broke down 2 times in a year and a half. I use this machine a ton, and it has yet to let me down. Even on stains that were not cleaned up and basically just dried into the carpet--it still was able to clean up most. I'm not going to pretend like my carpet looks brand new or anything, but at least I don't have to be embarrassed when people come over! My daughters were washing rocks in their bathroom and there was mud everywhere and I was able to get almost all the stains out DAYS later. AND... it does not leave the carpets soaking wet like a lot of other do. This machine is truly worth the money. For the amount I would pay to have my carpets steam cleaned professionally, I have a great cleaner for ever day use. I would honestly pay double for this thing--- it is worth every penny!!