There are carpet cleaners that clean carpet.
And then there are carpet cleaners that get the shit out of the carpet.
Having dogs has given us more experience with this distinction than we ever particularly wanted.
We’ve used carpet cleaners that technically picked something up, judging by the horrifying color of the water in the tank, but left the carpet looking like the original stain had simply been negotiated into a larger territory.
You know the look.
The poop, pee, mud, dog grime, or unidentified household substance is technically less concentrated than it was before. Unfortunately, it now occupies four square feet instead of six square inches.
The BISSELL ProHeat 2X Revolution Pet Pro, Model 3587, does not do that.
This thing actually cleans.
When we’re finished, the carpet doesn’t merely look better. It looks like somebody professionally cleaned it. Traffic areas brighten up. Pet messes disappear instead of becoming vague brown historical markers. The carpet fibers look refreshed rather than wet, defeated, and vaguely ashamed of themselves.
For a house with dogs, that’s enough to earn this machine a place in our Crap Worth Buying category.
Excellent crap for cleaning up other crap.
What Exactly Is the BISSELL 3587?
First, a little clarification because BISSELL apparently decided carpet-cleaner model numbers should require the same research skills necessary to identify Cold War submarines.
Our machine is U.S. Model 3587, which BISSELL currently identifies as the ProHeat 2X Revolution Pet Pro Carpet Cleaner Exclusive Bundle. It’s a full-size upright carpet extractor designed for carpets, rugs, stairs, upholstery, pet beds, stains, and high-traffic areas. [bissell.com]
The machine weighs 17.5 pounds dry, has an 11-inch cleaning path, a one-gallon clean-water tank, a 25-foot power cord and, on this exact U.S. model, a 10-foot hose. [bissell.com]
Its main business end consists of 12 rows of Dual DirtLifter PowerBrushes. [bissell.com]
And those brushes are a big part of why we like this thing.
This Thing Actually Scrubs the Carpet
What separates a genuinely good carpet cleaner from a mediocre one isn’t whether it can make carpet wet.
A garden hose can make carpet wet.
The trick is breaking dirt and contamination loose from the fibers and then getting as much of that filthy mixture back out again.
That’s where we’ve been impressed with the 3587.
The dual rotating brush system actually works the carpet instead of simply spraying cleaning solution into it and hoping everyone involved learned something from the experience.
Then you make extraction passes and get to witness one of life’s strangely satisfying sights: that disgusting dark water traveling through the clear nozzle and leaving your carpet.
Every pass is basically visual confirmation that your house was considerably nastier than you believed fifteen minutes earlier.
The Difference Shows When It Dries
This is probably the biggest compliment we can give the BISSELL.
Our carpet looks professionally cleaned when we’re finished.
Not professionally cleaned in the marketing sense.
I mean that when it dries, the fibers look genuinely clean and refreshed. We’ve had other machines where a stain disappeared while everything was wet, only to reappear once the carpet dried like some kind of shitty household ghost.
Or worse, the cleaner simply transformed one obvious stain into a larger, lighter stain.
Technically an improvement.
Technically.
With the 3587, we’ve gotten the kind of finished result we used to associate with having the carpets professionally cleaned.
And apparently we’re not the only ones impressed with its cleaning performance. BISSELL makes a specific manufacturer claim that MAX Clean Mode, when used under its prescribed ASTM test conditions and formula, out-cleaned a Rug Doctor Mighty Pro X3 using that rental machine’s top-selling formula. That’s a controlled manufacturer comparison rather than proof it’ll beat every rental machine under every circumstance, but it’s notable. [bissell.com]
Our considerably less controlled laboratory consists of dogs, carpet, and whatever the hell happened in the living room.
We’re impressed.
Pet Owners Will Understand Why This Thing Exists
Owning dogs eventually changes what you look for in household appliances.
People without pets might look at a carpet cleaner and think:
“That would be nice for spring cleaning.”
Dog owners look at one and think:
“How fast can I get that machine over here?”
Mud happens.
Puke happens.
Pee happens.
And, despite everyone’s best intentions, shit occasionally happens in the most literal interpretation of the phrase.
That’s where owning a genuinely capable carpet extractor stops feeling like an unnecessary appliance and starts feeling like emergency equipment.
The 3587 also isn’t limited to the main floor head. BISSELL sells this configuration with tools for upholstery, stains and harder-to-reach areas, and that 10-foot hose makes the machine substantially more useful when the mess isn’t conveniently located in the middle of the living-room carpet. [bissell.com]
Because, naturally, it never is.
CleanShot Is Actually a Useful Idea
The machine also includes BISSELL’s CleanShot pretreatment system for attacking concentrated stains before running the machine over them. BISSELL describes it as a way to target set-in spots and stains before extraction. [bissell.com]
That’s exactly the kind of feature that makes sense on a pet-oriented carpet cleaner.
Most disasters aren’t evenly distributed.
The dog doesn’t carefully contaminate the carpet in overlapping straight lines while maintaining proper cleaning-pass spacing.
The dog chooses one spot and commits.
CleanShot lets you direct extra attention toward that particular unfortunate location before attacking the whole area with the brushes.
“ProHeat” Doesn’t Mean There’s a Tiny Water Heater in There
Here’s one bit of marketing terminology worth clearing up.
Despite the ProHeat name, this isn’t a steam cleaner and it isn’t sitting there boiling cold water into carpet-cleaning lava.
BISSELL says you fill the machine with warm tap water and its HeatWave Technology helps maintain the water temperature during cleaning. [shop.bissell.com]
That’s useful.
It’s just considerably less exciting than the name “ProHeat” initially suggests.
MAX Clean vs. Express Clean
The machine gives you different cleaning approaches depending on whether you’re declaring total war on the carpet or just trying to freshen things up.
We tend to care most about the deeper cleaning capability because when we’re dragging out a full-size carpet machine, we’re generally not there to negotiate.
We’re there because something has happened.
For lighter jobs, BISSELL also advertises approximately 30-minute drying in Express Clean Mode, under its specified test conditions. [shop.bissell.com]
That’s an important distinction.
It does not mean you can absolutely soak the carpet during a maximum-effort cleaning session and expect it to be bone dry before the next episode of Jeopardy!.
Different cleaning modes put different amounts of water into the carpet.
And regardless of mode, we’re big believers in making additional passes without dispensing solution. If dirty water is still visibly coming through the nozzle, we’d rather have it in the tank than remaining underneath our feet.
There Is a Price for All This Cleaning
Here’s where our glowing review develops a few skid marks.
You have to clean the cleaner.
There’s really no way around it.
A machine capable of extracting dog hair, carpet fibers, dirt, cleaning solution and substances we’d prefer not to identify is eventually going to contain dog hair, carpet fibers, dirt, cleaning solution and unidentified substances.
The clear nozzle and brush area need attention.
The dirty-water tank needs rinsing.
Hair needs to be removed.
Anything you allow to dry inside a wet carpet cleaner is eventually going to evolve from “residue” into“What the hell is that smell?”
The good news is that BISSELL designed several of the routinely disgusting areas to be accessible for cleaning, and the company sells replacement parts including brush-roll and belt components for the 3587. [bissell.com]
But this isn’t a machine I’d use, roll dripping wet into a closet, and expect to remain pleasant indefinitely.
Your carpet cleaner cleans the carpet.
You clean the carpet cleaner.
That’s the deal.
And Yes, There Are a Lot of Tank Stops
One annoyance deserves mention because it’s simply part of owning a consumer-size extractor.
You’re going to make trips to the sink.
The clean tank holds one gallon. [bissell.com]
That’s enough to keep the machine reasonably manageable, but when you’re deep-cleaning a significant amount of carpet, filling and emptying tanks becomes part of the ceremony.
Clean.
Stop.
Empty disgusting water.
Question your housekeeping.
Refill.
Continue.
Discover another tank full of water that appears to have been pumped directly from a nineteenth-century sewer.
Repeat.
For occasional household deep cleaning, we’re perfectly willing to accept that compromise. If we were cleaning thousands of square feet every day, we’d want commercial equipment.
But we aren’t running Joseph’s House of Questionable Carpeting and Biological Remediation.
We’re cleaning our house.
Why We Like Owning One Instead of Renting
This is where the 3587 makes a particularly strong argument for a household with multiple dogs.
A pet mess doesn’t schedule an appointment.
Nobody’s dog wakes them at 2:17 in the morning and says:
“Just a courtesy notice, I’ve arranged a gastrointestinal incident for Thursday afternoon. You may wish to reserve a carpet cleaner.”
No.
You find the mess.
And when you already own a capable carpet cleaner, the machine is sitting there waiting for you.
There’s also something nice about knowing exactly what has passed through your carpet cleaner.
Yes, our machine has undoubtedly experienced some terrible things.
But they’re our terrible things.
That’s somehow better.
The Complaints Are Real, but We Can Live With Them
The 3587 isn’t perfect.
The tanks require attention during larger cleaning jobs. The machine itself has to be thoroughly cleaned after doing particularly nasty work. Hair collects where you’d expect hair to collect. And once filled with water, something that weighs 17.5 pounds dry obviously isn’t going to feel like 17.5 pounds anymore. [bissell.com]
But notice what’s not on our complaint list:
It doesn’t clean very well.
Because it does.
That’s the part we’re unwilling to compromise on.
I’ll rinse a nozzle.
I’ll pull dog hair out of a brush.
I’ll dump dirty water six times.
What I don’t want to do is spend an afternoon cleaning carpet only to stand back afterward and think:
Well, I’ve successfully moved the shit around.
So, Should You Buy This Crap?
For us?
Absolutely.
If you have dogs, kids, heavily trafficked carpet, occasional disasters, or simply want the ability to deep-clean your own carpet without calling somebody every time life gets ground into the flooring, the BISSELL ProHeat 2X Revolution Pet Pro 3587 has proven to be excellent crap.
The feature list is nice.
The dual brushes are nice.
The hose and tools are nice.
The different cleaning modes are nice.
But none of that earns the recommendation.
The carpet does.
We’ve run this machine over carpet that looked dirty and gotten carpet back that looked professionally cleaned.
That’s the test that matters.
Not “slightly less filthy.”
Not “the stain has been successfully expanded until it’s harder to notice.”
Not “perhaps nobody will look directly at that section of the room.”
Clean.
And in a house with dogs, a machine that can reliably turn What the hell happened here? back into carpet is doing God’s work.
💩 Our Rating: 1/4 Poops
Excellent crap for cleaning up other crap.
The BISSELL 3587 requires cleanup, involves some tank hauling, and will periodically show you water so disgusting that you’ll reconsider your entire relationship with carpeting.
Then you look at the floor.
And that’s why we keep it.
It doesn’t just spread the shit around. It gets the shit out.
