Bissell Little Green Pro Portable Carpet Cleaner Review

Whether you like it or not, your carpets—either your wall-to-wall, rugs, or the fabric in your car—are going to get dirty.

While you can rent a carpet cleaning machine or hire a professional, one alternative is a small, semi-portable carpet cleaner like the Bissell Little Green Pro Portable Carpet Cleaner (available at Amazon for $119.99) . Designed for pets but ideal for any kind of tight area (including your car), the Bissell Little Green Pro is an excellent cleaning machine that can lift up even years-old stains.

It’s ideal for anyone that has carpets that get a lot of traffic. I took it to my 14-year-old car, which has seen years of dirt, mud, salt, grime, and sap since it last got a thorough cleaning.

Could it actually lift out all those old stains? I put it through the ringer to find out.

Here’s how the Bissell Little Green Pro works

Whether it’s in your home or your car, cleaning carpets is pretty simple: you need good quality soap, a persistent and thorough agitation to get dirt and other stubborn stains to release from the fibers, and the ability to rinse the area clean with water.

The Bissell Little Green Pro works through all three phases in one fell swoop and permanently removes tough stains.

It starts with a tank of clean, warm water that you can add soap to. Hit the trigger on the brush head and you can apply the added soap and water to the carpet, and use the bristles to work it into the carpet’s fibers.

To finish it up, just drag the top of the brush head across the fibers. This part works like a wet vacuum, sucking up the dirty water, grime, and debris, and depositing it all into a second tank of dirty water.

What we like

It offers an excellent cleaning performance

First and foremost, the Bissell Little Green Pro cleans like a champ. As a solo act, it was able to pretty effectively clean my car carpets so most of the surface dirt and stains were gone. It definitely takes a couple of passes to get all the dirty water out, but it’s worth it.

If you’ve got a simple, fresh stain this cleaner should handle it without an issue.

Of course, it removes tough stains and embedded dirt much, much better if you supplement it with other tough stain tools. In particular, you’ll want to apply carpet cleaner to the carpet separately so it can soak in and bind to stains and grime.

The Bissell Little Green Pro can only apply cleaner as part of a mixture with clean water.

And while the Bissell Little Green Pro has bristles on the brush head to agitate dirt, it’s best as a final step to move fibers around while it’s sucking dirty water out.

For agitation, I had a lot more success on tough stains with a set of nylon drill brushes and a cordless drill.

It’s lightweight and easy to set up

From a convenience standpoint, the Bissell Little Green Pro is tough to beat. The only prep you really need to do is fill its water reservoir with hot tap water and plug it in. Though you will likely want to pre-treat tough stains before you turn it on, you can be up and running in less than 5 minutes.

Moving the Bissell Little Green Pro around is also quite easy. When empty, it doesn’t weigh much, and both the water reservoir and the unit itself come with plastic handles to carry around.

When its tank capacity is full to the brim it can weigh quite a bit, but if you have limited mobility or grip strength the machine can still be moved up and down stairs, which is impossible with larger carpet cleaners.

It cleans in tight spaces

The major benefit of Bissell’s Bissell Little Green Pro over a larger carpet cleaner is that it cleans with a small brush head. It takes longer to clean a large carpet, but for cars, stairs, wall-to-wall corners, and other upholstery this is a must-have—even if you were going to rent a larger carpet cleaner for very large areas.

The brush head doesn’t clean in very tight spaces—I couldn’t really clean under my car seats without removing them, for example—but it was able to handle 95% of the job with ease.

It also does a great job removing most of the water in these spaces, so you’re not left with a sopping wet mess when you’re done.

What we don't like

It can’t handle large area rugs—unless you’re patient

The brush head on the Bissell Little Green Pro can clean a few square inches at a time, and most areas you’ll want to hit at least twice. So, if you’re trying to deep clean even a moderate area rug that is more than 5 feet in either direction, you’re going to be at it awhile.

Compare that to a larger professional carpet cleaner, which would clean the entire thing in a half hour. It’s not a huge negative, but just make sure you’re picking the right tool for the job.

Tougher stains require extra tools

I mentioned this above, but for really set-in spots and stains the Bissell Little Green Pro’s brush head and the small amount of detergent it can spit out is not going to cut it. It may eventually work out that years-old stain, but it’ll take a lot of tries.

At least in this case the tools you would need aren’t expensive or hard to come by. Try a more potent carpet cleaning solution, some extra time, and a set of drill brushes to get the job done.

The big missing link here is a vacuum. Using a traditional vacuum, you’ll need to vacuum up as much as possible before you start cleaning with the Bissell Little Green Pro. The Bissell obviously has a vacuum function built into it, but this is meant for extracting dirty water and not much else.

If you don’t pre-vacuum your carpets to remove anything larger than stray hairs and dust, you could easily clog the Bissell Little Green Pro.

Should you buy the Bissell Little Green Pro Portable Carpet Cleaner?

Absolutely—if you have a car, small rugs, pets, or kids, this will pay for itself.

The Bissell Little Green Pro will set you back less than $200, which is about how much it’ll cost for even a basic detailing of your car or to rent a professional carpet cleaner. If your car is a disaster (like mine was), then you’ll likely have to spend $300 or more just to get it clean one time.

For that same cost, you can get the Bissell Little Green Pro (available at Amazon for $119.99) and just always have a carpet cleaner at hand when you need it. This is obviously useful if you have a big stain—a kid losing their lunch, spilled drinks, a pet struggling with house training, etc.—but it’s also just great to refresh your carpets now and again.

Additionally, purchasing the Green Pro supports the Bissell Pet Foundation, and its mission to help save homeless pets.

You’d be shocked how much dirt and grime and dust gets into your carpet through regular life. Sure, the Bissell Little Green Pro isn’t great at tackling huge wide-open areas, but it isn’t meant to be. It’s great for stairs, auto interiors, and small areas that may see extra foot traffic.

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Prices were accurate at the time this article was published but may change over time.