Carpet and hard-floor cleaners · Which one do I need
Spot cleaner or full-size carpet cleaner: which one you need
You want to wash carpet at home, and the choice is between a small portable spot cleaner and a full-size upright carpet cleaner. Which one fits what you actually clean? This page answers with one measure, how much carpet you wash in a typical session, and shows what the makers' own tank figures mean for that.
Quick picks
Who each model fits, judged on this page's criteria. Full figures and the reasons to skip each one are further down.
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BISSELL Little Green Mini (4075), portable
Small fresh spots on rugs, stairs and furniture, in a home with little storage space: the smallest tank and body in this list.
- Tank stated 16 oz*
- Hose stated 4.0 ft*
- Cord stated 12 ft*
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Hoover Spotless (FH1130 series), portable
Spots on carpet, stairs and upholstery with a hose rinse the listing names, from a portable you carry to the mess.
- Hose stated 5.0 ft
- Self-cleaning named Yes
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BISSELL TurboClean Pet XL (3746), full-size upright
Whole rooms of carpet: BISSELL states a one-gallon clean tank, a 7-foot hose and a 20-foot cord.
- Tank stated 128 oz*
- Hose stated 7.0 ft*
- Cord stated 20 ft*
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Shark CarpetForce (EX501BRN), full-size upright
Whole rooms and area rugs, from an upright its listing describes as lightweight, for a closet where a heavier machine is hard to lift out.
On this page
What we compared and why
- Area per session. A spot cleaner washes a patch through a hand tool; an upright washes a strip of floor as you walk it. The area you clean in one go is the single biggest factor.
- Clean-water tank. One tank is one stretch of work before a trip to the sink. We use the figures from the makers' own spec pages.
- Hose and hand tool. Stairs, upholstery and car seats are reached through a hose. A portable is built around its hose; an upright may or may not have one.
- Storage. A portable fits on a shelf; an upright needs floor space in a closet. The machine you can reach quickly gets used while a spot is fresh.
The models compared
| Model | Tank stated | Hose stated | Cord stated | Self-cleaning named | Amazon link |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| BISSELL Little Green Mini (4075), portable | 16 oz* | 4.0 ft* | 12 ft* | Yes | See on Amazon |
| Hoover Spotless (FH1130 series), portable | Not stated in listing | 5.0 ft | Not stated in listing | Yes | See on Amazon |
| BISSELL TurboClean Pet XL (3746), full-size upright | 128 oz* | 7.0 ft* | 20 ft* | Not stated in listing | See on Amazon |
| Shark CarpetForce (EX501BRN), full-size upright | Not stated in listing | Not stated in listing | Not stated in listing | Not stated in listing | See on Amazon |
Table values are read from each product's current Amazon listing at the time of this page's build and normalised to one unit by us. "Not stated in listing" means the listing does not give the figure; "Listing gives two values" means the listing states it two different ways, so we show neither. Values marked * come from the maker's own spec page, linked under Sources.
BISSELL Little Green Mini (4075), portable
Who it fits: Small fresh spots on rugs, stairs and furniture, in a home with little storage space: the smallest tank and body in this list.
Skip it if: You expect to wash more than a few patches in one session; its 16-ounce tank runs out first.
Hoover Spotless (FH1130 series), portable
Who it fits: Spots on carpet, stairs and upholstery with a hose rinse the listing names, from a portable you carry to the mess.
Skip it if: You expect to wash more than a few patches per fill; its listing gives no tank size to plan with.
BISSELL TurboClean Pet XL (3746), full-size upright
Who it fits: Whole rooms of carpet: BISSELL states a one-gallon clean tank, a 7-foot hose and a 20-foot cord.
Skip it if: Your carpet work is mostly small spots; filling and wheeling out an upright for one patch is more work than the job.
Shark CarpetForce (EX501BRN), full-size upright
Who it fits: Whole rooms and area rugs, from an upright its listing describes as lightweight, for a closet where a heavier machine is hard to lift out.
Skip it if: You clean stairs or furniture as well; the listing names no hose, and Shark's US site has no page for this model number.
The short answer
Buy a spot cleaner if most of what you wash is a patch at a time: a spill on a rug, a mark on a stair, a car seat, a sofa cushion. Buy a full-size upright if you wash whole rooms of carpet, even a few times a year. If you do both often, many homes end up with one of each, because the two machines are built around different jobs: a spot cleaner around its hose and hand tool, an upright around a wide brush head you walk across the floor.
The tank arithmetic
The clearest difference between the two kinds of machine is how much water one fill holds. Using the makers' own figures for two machines on this page:
| Machine | Clean tank (maker) | Fills to equal the upright's one tank |
|---|---|---|
| BISSELL Little Green Mini 4075 (portable) | 16 oz | 8 |
| BISSELL TurboClean Pet XL 3746 (upright) | 128 oz (1 gallon) | 1 |
Eight fills of the small portable equal one fill of the upright. That is fine for a patch: a spot uses a small part of a tank. For a whole room it means many trips to the sink, which is why a portable is the wrong tool for that job however good its hand tool is.
You can run the same check on any two machines: divide the larger clean-tank figure by the smaller one. The answer is the number of refills of the small machine per refill of the large one.
Where each one wins
A spot cleaner wins when:
- the mess is small and you want to get to it while it is fresh;
- the mess is off the floor: stairs, upholstery, a car interior, a pet bed;
- storage is a shelf, not a closet floor.
An upright wins when:
- you wash a whole room, a hallway or a large rug in one session;
- you would rather walk the machine across the floor than kneel with a hand tool;
- you have closet floor space for it between uses.
Hoses: not only on portables
Do not assume an upright cannot do stairs. BISSELL's page for the TurboClean Pet XL 3746 states a 7-foot hose, longer than the 4-foot hose BISSELL states for the Little Green Mini. What the upright cannot do is be carried up the stairs with you as easily. For a closer look at hose length and stairs, see carpet cleaners for stairs and upholstery.
Three questions to settle it
- How many square feet do you usually wash at once? If the answer is "a spot", go portable. If it is "a room", go upright.
- Where are your usual messes? Off the floor points to a portable; across the floor points to an upright.
- Would renting an upright a few times a year be enough? If your whole-room cleans are rare, a portable for spots plus an occasional rental may cover you. Work through that in rent or buy a carpet cleaner.
Reading the table
Figures with a mark come from BISSELL's own spec pages for the 4075 and the 3746, linked under Sources. Hoover's site lists the Spotless under a different model number from the one in this listing, and Shark's US site has no page for the EX501BRN, so those two rows show listing figures only, and "Not stated in listing" where the listing gives none. We would rather leave a cell blank than borrow a figure from a sibling model.
For pet accidents in particular, see the pet accidents guide; for whole-room uprights side by side, see full-size carpet cleaners compared.
What this page does not tell you
We have not used these machines, and we do not rank them. We do not say how clean a carpet gets or how long it takes to dry, because that depends on the carpet, the formula and how the machine is used.