The Bissell SpotLifter 1716 Handheld Vacuum was an absolute life saver. I had just had the carpet in my small condo replaced when a friend of mine had to leave town unexpectedly on business. As a last resort, he left his dog, a medium sized Golden retriever mix in my care for the duration of the week. Unfortunately, shortly after leaving. The poor animal began to suffer from separation anxiety and threw up multiple times in the corner right on my new carpet! Not noticing it right away, I was unhappy to find the dried mess on my new floor and the average carpet cleaners that you scrub in didn’t appear to help with anything.

As a last resort I went to the store and picked up the Bissell Spotlifter 1716, paying $39.95 from Wal-Mart. It was the only thing I could really afford to get so I was really hoping that it would work. I got it home, opened the box, the instructions were fairly straight forward. I filled the top cup to the fill line with Bissell pet stain and odor cleaner then filled the rest with hot tap water. At first I was really worried because when I sprayed the stain it didn’t appear to spray a lot, then I realized I had to squeeze the lever repeatedly, like a spritzer bottle to continue to apply the solution. My next concern was that when I ran the vacuum over the spot the scrubbing brushes seeped to be spreading the spot further that it originally was. In a panic I started cleaning the entire area and the area around it just to be safe and soon enough, after about thirty minutes, the stains were completely gone. I was even surprised by the amount of suction a device of that size had. Its next test came when the same dog left a large puddle of diarrhea in the middle of the floor while I was at work, but with the same patience, I found that I was able to get this stain up as well.

Equipped with a cord that reaches up to 18 feet, two scrubbing brushes, an easy to fill solution container, and a dirty water storage compartment, I have nothing but good things to say about this little vacuum. The only issue I had was that the brushes tended to spread the stain to clean areas of the carpet before cleaning everything up. Cleaning the device itself was as simple as rinsing it out and storing it on a shelf. It truly was worth the money.


Recommended: Yes

Amount Paid (US$): 39.95