Like our coworkers, carpet cleaners come in different sizes. While we’re lifelong fans of our professional carpet cleaners (hello Galaxy 2000!) for heavy-duty jobs and full-sized cleaners (e.g., the Big Green) for full house projects, we realize not everyone needs quite as much cleaning power. In fact, we’ll admit that even we prioritize portability more than other factors at times. Fortunately, there are a lot of options out there when it comes to keeping your home or apartment clean.

When and Where to Use a Portable Carpet Cleaner

As we noted above, portable carpet cleaners are best suited for tasks that demand portability over power. They aren’t for cleaning entire houses or even very large rooms; you’ll want full-sized cleaners for those. Portable cleaners shine when you’re working on specific parts of rooms (e.g., with stains), furniture and upholstery, and vehicle interiors. Basically, if you’ve got a limited working space, this is when you bring out the portable. Now let’s look at the most effective three: the Bissell 3624, the Bissell 5207F, and the Bissell 33N8A.

Bissell 3624 SpotClean Professional Portable Carpet Cleaner – Pros and Cons

The Bissell 3624 is our favorite portable cleaner. It’s primarily suited for stain removal, and Bissell describes it as a spot cleaner for removing spots and stains from upholstery, carpets, stairs, and area rugs. They emphasize that it isn’t a steam cleaner. We find it does a good job cleaning most stains you’re likely to encounter in a carpet, including those from dogs or cats.

We like the 22 foot long power cord, the 6-inch wide stair tool, and the 3/4 gallon capacity tank.  We also like the fact that it comes with a sample of Bissell’s best carpet cleaner, which we’ve noted is our favorite in a previous review. At 13 pounds, it’s on the heavier side compared to many portable cleaners, but with the cord length, you don’t have to move it too often. We do wish the warranty was more thorough and lasted longer than 2 years.

Bissell SpotClean ProHeat Portable Spot Cleaner, 5207F – Pros and Cons

The Bissell 5207F is a good portable cleaner, but it has a few weak points compared to the 3624 that make us prefer the 3624. First of all, the cord is significantly smaller at 15 feet, which makes a significant difference in the portability of the cleaner. While we appreciate the much lighter weight at 9 pounds, we’d personally rather have had the extra weight and extra cleaning power.

Like the 3624, it includes a tough stain tool, but instead of the 6″ stair tool, it includes a deep stain tool that isn’t as valuable. And although it’s also rated for carpets, area rugs, upholstery, and even auto interiors, we found the 3624 tended to do a better job when it came to actually removing stains from each of these surfaces. We also have durability concerns about the design, and doubt our model will hold up as long as the 3624. Fellow cleaning teams have reported leaks in their models, which gives us pause, as we prefer spending more money up front to avoid spending more money and time later on.

Bissell Spotbot Pet Handsfree Spot and Stain Cleaner with Deep Reach Technology, 33N8A – Pros and Cons

Finally, the Spotbot is the most futuristic carpet cleaner of the three, and one of the more interesting domestic cleaners on the market. It’s designed to be hands free while cleaning spots and stains; you essentially choose the setting you want and let the machine do the work. But how well does it work?

In our experience, rather decently. It didn’t take long to decide we preferred it over the 5207F, even though we still slightly preferred the 3624 over the Spotbot. There are a pair of cleaning cycles that each do a decent job in spraying, brushing, and sucking away stains. All you really have to do,  besides taking the machine out and plugging it in, is to fill up the clean tank with warm water and cleaning solution, choose your setting, and leave it to get the job done.

We found it did an acceptable job on carpets and area rugs, although it struggled a bit with upholstery (which, of course, also required manual intervention). It was the heaviest tool at 14 pounds and also unfortunately only comes with a 15 foot cord, but aside from these flaws, we found it hard not to like.

Conclusion – which portable carpet cleaner is the best deal?

All 3 cleaners are worth considering, and we found it easy to like features of each. If forced to choose, we’d buy the 3624 first, followed by the Spotbot, with the 5207F in third positon. However, there are certainly people happy with all three, including several members on our cleaning team.

You can buy the Bissell 3624 SpotClean on Amazon here. The Bissell SpotClean 5207F is available here, and the Bissell Spotbot 33N8A is available here.

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