I live in a state that is know for, among other things, Red Clay.  What exactly is red clay?  It’s a type of dirt that tracks everywhere, stains stuff, and is overall one of the biggest annoyances of my life.  It’s kind of like sand but way more annoying since it doesn’t vacuum up very well (or at all).  I also live in a house with…wait for it…WHITE CARPETS.  Yeah, you read that right…the builders of my house were design geniuses.  So, let me break this down for you: I live in a house with white carpets, with two messy kids, two cats that pee to mark their territory or whenever they are mad, a husband who has a weird fondness for his yard and who also happens to be a clean freak, and me, the person who wears her flipflops everywhere (indoor and out) because I can’t stand having my feet touch the ground.  What kind of state do you think my carpets are in?  I’ll answer that and make it short and sweet: BAD.

Hubby and I have tried two carpet cleaners in the past, an upright as well as a handheld.  The best thing that I can say about the upright cleaner is that it was a POC.  The handheld worked ok for about 6 uses and then it started leaking water from the dirty water container back onto the cleaned carpets; that was annoying to say the least.  Our carpets are so bad, that even I, the rather messy member of this house, once tried to get our carpets back to a more normal shade by putting color safe bleach into one of our old carpet cleaners.  As you can tell I have no experience with cleaning and the only thing that yielded was a polka dotted patch of stairs.  So, when I recently was given the really cool opportunity to review the Hoover Platinum Collection Carpet Cleaner I just at the chance (and so did my clean freak hubby)…our rather beat-up and gross carpets are the perfect testing grounds to see how well a carpet cleaner really works.

So when the box came I was a bit worried about how easy it would be to put together because it is a serious machine…”large and in charge” is a good phrase to describe it.  But putting it together was really simple and it was ready to go.  So after using it to clean our living room rug and the upstairs which is ALL carpet (except for the bathroom), here is what we (and by “we” I really mean hubby) think about the Hoover Platinum Collection Carpet Cleaner.

Features that we really liked:

* Seperate compartment for detergent/cleaning liquid and water.  Hubby really liked the fact that the Hoover Platinum Cleaner had separate compartments for these two things…the other two carpet cleaners we have had experience with did not have this feature and it bothered hubby; mostly likely because I always put too much cleaning stuff in the water.

* It’s easy to tell what goes where.  I am about as technical as a shoe, so when I say that this cleaner was one big, mean, and in charge machine I was little worried that I wouldn’t be able to figure out how to use it and see what went where.  But, I didn’t have any trouble figuring out how to use the cleaner and where stuff like the water and detergent went in.

*The front spotlight is great for helping point out stains that you might have missed.  According to my hubby this feature is “kind of gross” but still useful.  Why is it gross?  Because it points out allthe stains on the carpets and rugs…even the ones that might not be hugely noticeable.  This means that it pointed out a lot of stains that we would have preferred to turn a blind eye to LOL.  You know how on CSI there little nifty black light shows all kinds of stains?  Well this spotlight does the same thing.

* The cleaner is heavy duty and has some serious cleaning brushes so it really cleans the carpets and rugs, getting out dirt and stains.  Like I previously mentioned, this is one large and in charge machine…it is heavy duty and it gets some heavy duty cleaning done.  When we first tested it out on our living room rug it got up milk and juice stains, along with dirt and crayon markings; the dirty water container was filled with water that was black and brackish…and those are the nicest words I can use to describe it.  It was actually embarrassing to know that the dirty water in the container came from MY rug.  The brushes in the bottom part don’t just gone in one direction of it makes sure to get the dirt and other crud out of all kinds of textures of carpets and rugs.  Like I said…it does some seriously heavy duty cleaning.  (Just to give you a size idea…Ellie is pictured next to the Hoover Platinum Carpet Cleaner…she is 3 feet tall)

* The handheld attachment makes it really easy to clean stairs.  Unlike some carpet cleaners that don’t have attachments, or that don’t have attachments that work very well, the handheld attachment on the Hoover cleaner makes it really easy to clean stairs and other harder to reach places.  I am even going to use it on my car seats and carpets one of these days when I get the time.

*  The cleaner gets up most of the water it puts down on the carpet.  This means that the carpets aren’t sopping wet when you are done.  I did notice that it pulled more water out of the carpet we used it on rather than the rug we tried it out on…I think the rug is a much more dense weave so it holds water more than the carpet did).

*  It’s an automated system. 

Now, I really like the Hoover Platinum Carpet Cleaner, but there are a couple things that do bug me just a bit.  While it is really easy to push around and use on flat surfaces, it is kind of hard to get up and down the stairs.  We have a two level house (three if you count the basement) and the carpet cleaner itself doesn’t really have a good handle that you can use to just grab it and haul it up and down the stairs; it’s kind of bulky to wrap your arms around and lift LOL.  It also gets pretty heavy when it is full, which makes no difference on flat surfaces, but again trying to trudge up and down the stairs with it is a bit much.  One other thing to note is the fact that it is not a space saver, it is kind of large so if you live in a small apartment or if you are lacking in storage space that is something to think about.  This cleaner is also a bit loud…it’s not like jackhammer loud, but I would say that it is a bit lounder than my vacuum cleaner or the other two carpet cleaners I have used in the past.

So overall what is my opinion?  Well, you are actually going to be getting my hubby’s opinion since he is the neat/clean freak in this family.  He likes it, he was happy with the performance and functionality…in fact he bragged about it a bit to people he knows (and if you know my hubby he doesn’t brag about or get excited about ANYTHING).  Granted this cleaner is a bit big, so it takes a bit to store it, but I am quite happy with the heavy duty nature which allows it to clean my rather gross carpets and make them look pretty good…the only way my carpets are going to look great is to replace them!  This cleaner runs about $400 + taxes so it is not a cheap product to say the least, but I do think it is worth the cost, especially since it comes with a 6 year warrenty.