A Trusted Friend in a Complicated World
Skip the professional cleaners and add a Dirt Devil carpet cleaner to your cart. It's lightweight and easy to use, and it cleans tough messes.
Our editors and experts handpick every product we feature. We may earn a commission from your purchases.Learn more.
If you share your home with four-legged friends, odds are there will be some sort of accident or accumulation of muddy paw prints over time. Calling in a professional cleaning company can set you back hundreds of dollars. Luckily, there are some amazing carpet cleaners on the market. The best carpet cleaners for pets will quickly rid your carpets and upholstery of smelly pet messes, leaving your home as good as new. We know how effective they are because we tested 11 portable carpet cleaners. When it comes to the best of the best, the Dirt Devil Carpet Cleaner is one of the most user-friendly and affordable machines on our list.
This lightweight carpet and upholstery cleaner costs around $100 and is incredibly easy to use. In order to determine if it’s truly effective at cleaning up household and pet messes, our expert product testers took it into our Testing Lab for close inspection. When they were finished, they sent it home with a tester to see how it holds up to real-life messes over time. Here’s everything you need to know about the Dirt Devil carpet cleaner.
This portable carpet cleaner is affordable, lightweight and easy to use.
The Dirt Devil Portable Carpet & Upholstery Spot Cleaner is a lightweight spot cleaner that’s designed for use on carpets and upholstery. It has a 19-ounce water tank, a 4.5-foot hose and a 15-foot cord that makes it easy to move from room to room. This machine comes with a two-in-one pet tool, a 4-inch stain tool and a 6-ounce bottle of concentrated Dirt Devil cleaning solution.
Cleaning the machine itself is also fairly simple. The water tanks are removable and easy to empty, rinse and refill as needed. Our testers especially loved the self-cleaning hose tool, which effectively removed dirt and debris left behind.
Before she got to work in the Testing Lab, associate product reviews editor, Sheri Kaz, led the Product Testing Team in assembling, measuring and weighing the Dirt Devil carpet cleaner. Our testers were impressed by the cord and hose management, as well as the overall intuitiveness of the machine. They noted that the max fill lines on the tank made filling the tank especially easy. Speaking of a full tank, this machine weighed in at just 9 pounds after being filled to the max line, making it one of the lightest machines we tested.
Our team put this machine up against red wine stains, mud and yellow-dyed ammonia. Our testers found that it took two to three rounds of cleaning to remove all stains and odors. After testing was complete, our team emptied and rinsed the water tanks before sending it home with editorial coordinator, Sydney Manning, to see how it fared in a real home.
Manning was instantly impressed by this handy little machine. “This seems pretty durable and well made,” she says. “I like that it’s lightweight and also corded, so I don’t have to worry about it running out of battery.”
She proceeded to test the Dirt Devil carpet cleaner on some soy sauce stains that had set into her upholstered kitchen chairs. Similar to the Product Testing Team, it took Manning a few rounds of cleaning to get the stains up. “I diluted the solution because I was worried about a residue being left behind if I used a concentrated solution,” she explains. “After the three passes, it was fairly damp and looked like the spots were gone. When I checked in the morning, the spots still seemed to be there. I think I’ll have to do this in a few batches to get the spots up completely.” Manning added that the spots were indeed lighter after one round of cleaning.
Although we were pleased by the Dirt Devil’s performance, we can’t help but mention the TikTok-viral Bissell Little Green carpet cleaner, which received our pick for the best carpet cleaner. While it’s a little pricier than the Dirt Devil (it’s around $190), we found that it effortlessly cleaned a variety of carpet, upholstery and hard surfaces, including tile and grout.
“The carpet cleaner did a great job tacking pet messes and other stains,” Mariah Thomas, associate editor, said. “My rug has some stains and odors from my Shih Tzu Poodle’s accidents, but after scrubbing and staining, the smell and any traces of the dog were completely gone.”
The Bissell has three cleaning modes as opposed to the Dirt Devil’s one, which includes SteamWash, Steam and Wash. However, at 13 pounds with a 64-ounce capacity, it’s definitely bigger (and heavier) than the Dirt Devil, which weighs in at 8 pounds with a 19-ounce tank.
This portable carpet cleaner is affordable, lightweight and easy to use.
In our experience, we found that the Dirt Devil carpet cleaner did a pretty decent job of cleaning up pesky stains. While it didn’t immediately remove them (it required a few passes with the concentrated solution, and our tester eventually diluted the solution because of leftover residue), it generally got the job done, especially considering its budget-friendly price.
You can use this Dirt Devil on a carpet, but not all Dirt Devil cleaners are suitable for carpet cleaning.
This Dirt Devil carpet cleaner is super easy to use: just fill up the tank and use the included suction or brush tool to get to work. When you’re done, you can flush the hose, empty the tank and store it for the next use.
There are a ton of highly rated carpet cleaners out there, with our number one pick being the Bissell Little Green HydroSteam Pet Portable Carpet Cleaner.
Our shopping editors and product testing experts on the Product Testing Team have years of experience testing and evaluating every type of vacuum cleaner, mop and carpet cleaner on the market. We’ve tested everything from vacuums for pet hair to vacuum-mop combos. Hundreds of hours and dozens of products later, we’re confident in our recommendations for the best machines in each category. We strive to recommend the very best products using honest and fair testing practices regardless of a product’s price point or popularity.
For this story, our product-testing experts on the Product Testing Team spent over 40 hours conducting firsthand research in our Testing Lab on 11 different portable carpet cleaners, including the Dirt Devil carpet cleaner. We also sent this machine home with a tester for long-term use to see how it held up against everyday messes in a real home. We compiled all of their findings into this comprehensive Dirt Devil carpet cleaner review so you can shop with confidence.
This article was written by Marisa Hillman, a travel and retail expert. She’s written for publications including WE TV, PopSugar, U.S. News & World Report and Gourmet Insider. Additional reporting was contributed by Melissa Lee, Content Updates Editor.
