Hoover Power Scrub Deluxe Carpet Cleaner w/ Storage Mat + 128-Oz Carpet Shampoo Expired

Also if you are wondering how I do my own carpets since I no longer have access to commercial equipment…

I get carpet pre clean which of sprayed on using a pump sprayer (regular spray bottle could work, it just will be annoying). Get that all over the carpet, use my push broom to agitate it. Then I use the machine from Lowe's with about half the recommended soap in it and go over it. My rule of thumb is no more than 2 passes adding water and for every pass with water I do 3 off suction. I also try to do it on a very low humidity dry day and ruin my hvac and fans to dry it as quickly as possible to do as little damage to the carpet's glue as possible.

Ymmv, but this gives me similar results to the commercial equipment.

Also I did try a cheap consumer one. I would say it left the carpet far wetter than I liked. And if it isn't pulling up the water it means it isn't pulling up the dirt that water loosens. That said visually the difference was minimal likely because the top layer is what you see which the consumer machines are capable of cleaning.

Apologies for any typos or incorrect words. I'm writing this on my phone.

I have both products, the shop vac doesn't have brushes to agitate the stains so it falls short. When I use the Hoover it seems to suck out more water in one pass and covers 2 or 3 times the mouth of the shop vac extractor. It's really cool to watch the hairballs and dirty water from the carpet that you didn't know was there shoot to the ceiling of the catch container of the Hoover. I had a professional steam carpet cleaner guy come in to clean my carpets before I bought this and again the steam machine doesn't agitate the carpet so the same stains came back. For the same price I bought this and the stains are all gone. I didn't even use the soap that it came with I used some peroxide and water 50-50 mix. Quite happy with it, saved me from having to install new carpets because of my roommates.

I bought this deal for the Thanksgiving sale, almost same price.

Edit: I made my own carpet solution with one "load" of tide in the orange bottle and the rest peroxide, not 50-50 water peroxide.

When I was young I worked for a carpet cleaning company that did hot water extraction/steam cleaning.

in order of power:

consumer stuff like this (1 weak motor)

a shop vac (1 somewhat stronger motor)

consumer rental equipment e.g what Lowe's has. (1 powerful motor).

commercial portable machine (2 powerful motors)

commercial van machine (very powerful motor, but do keep the suction lowers as they need more hose length to reach so ymmv on if this out the portable machine wins).

As for agitation… ymmv, shag roofs will benefit from it the most, burber and similar the least. Using a push style broom will give as much agitation you get from a consumer machine. There are brooms specifically meant for it that will work somewhat better though I'd say their main advantage is ease of use.

It doesn't matter how powerful the machine is, cleaning a second time the water will still look dirty. The fact is no cleaner works perfectly. I will say if the water is actually dirtier using a consumer machine than professional something was very wrong. I suspect though it wasn't actually cleaner. I would put a commercial machine with no built in agitation and no manual against one of these machines any day.

The other advantage commercial when done properly is the suction. Water damages the glue of the carpet. The more your get the water out the less damage it does to the carpet. Carpet damaged by water degrades faster. Ymmv, a lot of commercial companies do poor training and if their employees use too much water it will negate the additional suction.

In general… cleaning carpets may make them look better, but you are deluding yourself if you think they are truly clean. And the more you clean them the faster they will degrade.

That said I like carpet. Absent it getting moldy or rare allergies the non-visible dirt and honestly even visible dirt is not gonna harm you. If you don't like that idea I suggest getting hardwood and only using rugs that can be cleaned in a washer.