I was very enthused to try the Bissell 7350 out. I have always adored carpet cleaners and greatly treasure their usefulness. We have between 2-4 cats and we both work from our home, so the quality of our air is very important to us. We have tried out many carpet cleaners over the years, from several manufacturers, with varying levels of success.
The one we use currently is the Bissell ProHeat Select 9400M, so a similar shaped model but with actual brushes on the front instead of this "paint roller" gadget. I was curious to see how this 7350 compared with our ProHeat. We assembled the 7350 very quickly and set it up to give it a try. First we thoroughly vacuumed the carpet - a nice, low berber carpet, ideal (one would think) for use with this non-scrubby system. After the vacuuming we thoroughly went over the carpet with the 7350. The water that came up was only the mildest color. There was pretty much no "dirt" or such in the resulting liquid. Stains on the carpet seemed completely untouched.
Then I waited a day so that the carpet could dry thoroughly - and I went over the exact same carpet with our regular Bissell ProHeat. The water came up VERY dark with a lot of dirt in it. It was clear that the 7350 had done nothing at all on the carpet. Even the second pass with the ProHeat - with water only - brought up a darker color water than the Bissell 7350 had done on its very first pass.
Remember, this was on a low carpet. The "paint roller" front couldn't get into that low carpet to get the dirt out. If someone was using this on a thicker carpet, I doubt it would do much of anything at all.
We then tried the 7350 on our linoleum kitchen floor. The thought being that the floor was nice and flat and the paint roller front might have at least half a chance cleaning that surface. The 7350 did actually do reasonably well on the floor, taking up some light mud but failing if the mud was anything clingy. Also, because it is so "high" as a unit it doesn't fit underneath the standard overhang of the cabinet bottoms, so you would have to do all of those lower areas by hand. These are areas our Scooba fits into very nicely without any issue.
As bad as this all was, it really wasn't the worst part. The worst part was by far the noise. We have a Scooba and Roomba which we love, and those are about 80db. Our BissellProHeat is louder, at about 90db. However, this Bissell 7350 is not only an ear-shattering 110db but has a high pitched shriek to it which is nasty. Anyone who uses this in their home should not only be wearing ear protection but ensure that any young kids or pets are far away. Their ears are far more sensitive to damage than adults' ears are.
There's also a leakage problem with the tank, but really in the end that is the least of your worries. And while it has a "power wheel driver" which is supposed to make it easier to push, Instead, it yanks the unit out of your hand at too quick a pace, meaning you actually have to "pull back" on the 7350 so that it goes at a good, slow pace to clean the carpet. It makes it hard to control what you are doing.
In fact, in playing with the unit it doesn't seem like it even actually "vacuums" the carpet. What it seems to do is spray water onto the roller - then roll the soft, wet paint roller over the carpet to "mop at it" like you might do with a wet towel. Then it vacuums the *paint roller* to get the water or dirt off the roller that might have gotten picked up on its pass. Which pretty much explains why it can't get in-deep dirt or do much at all.
Add onto all of this that you are supposed to replace the roller every six months - probably having to buy a special item directly from them. So if they stop making that roller, you're out of luck. Also, because you pre-mix the solution into the water from the beginning, you can't do a "rinse pass" as you do with other units. You can only do a soapy pass and then hope you've gotten it all up.
I would definitely NOT recommend buying this unit. I would recommend their ProHeat 9400M as being awesome, and it is really odd to me that the same manufacturer came out with two such different ends of the spectrum. I can't even think of who I would give this to, between it working so poorly and its eardrum-damaging noise.
