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If you have carpeted floors, a spot carpet cleaner for spills and small messes is a must. The Hoover CleanSlate Plus Carpet & Upholstery Spot Cleaner can do the job.
The Hoover CleanSlate Plus is portable; it can be moved from room to room to clean up small stains or used on stairs for a full cleaning. Weighing less than a pound when not filled with water, the Hoover CleanSlate comes with multiple attachments, including a WidePath tool with bristles and TightSpot tool for corners.
The Hoover CleanSlate is priced at $130 on Hoover’s website and regularly costs $140 on Amazon, but it is on sale there and priced at just $125 right now. The machine comes pre-assembled and includes a small bottle of cleaning solution.
With more than 4,500 reviews on Amazon, the Hoover CleanSlate has a total rating of 4.5 out of 5 stars. More than 74% of customers give the cleaner a full 5-star rating, with reviewers saying it’s easy to use, has great suction power, is lightweight and also works well as a spot cleaner.
While most reviews are positive, a few customers say the spray nozzles didn’t work as well as they had hoped. Others say the product had leaking issues and it doesn’t have enough suction power.
Hoover sent me the CleanSlate Plus to test out, so I made sure to see if I noticed any of the issues some Amazon customers mentioned.
While I have mostly hardwood floors, we have not yet gotten around to removing the carpet on our stairs and upstairs hallway — and I will admit they needed a good cleaning (I do have a spot cleaner from a different brand, but it’s too small to clean stairs.)
While the CleanSlate Plus is also suitable for upholstery, I only tested it on stairs because I had recently cleaned my furniture and it likely wouldn’t be able to pull up enough dirt for a fair test.
The first things that intrigued me about the Hoover CleanSlate Plus were the TightSpot Tool for crevices and the 18-foot cord. My current carpet cleaner does not have extra tools, which means I can never really get into corners. Plus, the cord is quite short, which isn’t great for cleaning stairs because I only have outlets at the top and bottom.
The instructions are easy to follow: simply add water and solution to the fill line, then turn it on. I started at the top of the stairs, spraying a generous amount of water and solution by simply pushing a trigger on the handle.
While other cleaners I’ve used seem to only pull the water/dirt up when pulling backward, this one pulls it up when pushing forward and when pulling back. Because the nozzle is quite wide, I was also able to scrub the areas that seemed a bit dirtier.
It took me a total of 1 hour to clean the stairs, including spraying, scrubbing, sucking up the water and refilling the tank a few times. Take a look at my before and after. You can see the middle of the steps — which is pretty much where all the dirt was — are much cleaner:
My main complaint is that the water tank is fairly small and I could only do four stairs before refilling. Because this machine is meant as a spot cleaner, however, this makes sense. The dirty water section is quite large, so you likely won’t have to empty that more than once even while doing a large area.
While I have only used the Hoover CleanSlate Plus once, I found the suction power better than other cleaners I’ve used and had no issues with leakage, unlike the Amazon customers noted above.
Some customers also complain that the 7-inch nozzle sprays too widely and I have to agree; this can be inconvenient in small spaces. I ended up having to wipe water off my walls. On the other hand, a wide spray cuts down on the time you’re laboring, so it’s a bit of a Catch-22.
The best part in my opinion is the brush for corners. This worked very well pulling up hair and debris that’s been tucked away for quite a while. You simply switch on the main nozzle for the corner piece, spray, scrub a bit, then use the suction to pull it up.
As you can see in the image below, the Hoover CleanSlate Plus fit perfectly on a single stair step. In the other picture, you can see the color of the water after I completed cleaning, which shows how much dirt it picked up:
If you’re looking for something a bit different, Amazon has a handful of similar spot cleaners as well including the Bissell Little Green Carpet and Upholstery Cleaner, priced at $123.59.
The Bissell Little Green cleaner is the No. 1 bestseller in Amazon’s Carpet & Upholstery Cleaning Machines category and has nearly 48,000 reviews. Customers say it’s easy to use, does a great job and is worth the money.
Another option is the Rug Doctor Portable Machine for $216.56. For non-carpeted surfaces, this McCulloch Heavy-Duty Steam Cleaner comes with 18 accessories and is on sale for $50 off right now. You can also add a $7.50 coupon, bringing the price to just $142.49.
Kaitlin is a freelance multimedia journalist with a degree in journalism and psychology. Along with Don't Waste Your Money, she also writes for Simplemost, where she covers new product and food launches and overall general news. You can email her at kaitlingateswrites@gmail.com or find her on Facebook at Facebook.com/KaitlinGatesWrites. More.
