Bissell CleanView Swivel Pet Review

If you are only looking to clean up pet hair and hoping for an inexpensive upright to do it with, then the CleanView Swivel might be a decent choice. However, this isn't the case for most people, and this vacuum's mediocre hard floor and carpet cleaning performance makes us reticent to recommend it.

Performance Comparison

Carpet Cleaning

We started off our testing process by comparing and assessing how well each vacuum cleaned up different sorts of messes from both low-pile and medium-pile carpets. The CleanView Swivel Pet delivered only so-so results, struggling with fine messes and leaving behind plenty of flour on both low-pile and medium-pile carpets — even after multiple cleaning passes. It did a little better with medium messes, but not by too much, still leaving behind plenty of oats on both types of carpets and struggling to pull the fragments and dust from the carpet fibers. It also struggled with rice on a fluffier carpet, though it delivered acceptable results on flatter carpet.

This vacuum also didn't do particularly well with larger types of debris, struggling to pick up items like Cheerios. We found that it was hard to set the vacuum height so that it would effectively pick up larger and smaller types of messes on the carpet, with cereal tending to get pushed around rather than collected.

Ease of Use

Our next set of tests rated and scored how the CleanView performed regarding overall convenience and ease of operating. We looked at how easy it was to clean different areas and surfaces and also assessed the noise level. The CleanView did better in this regard, receiving a score just above average.

This vacuum has a few different options for flooring types, with a knob on the front of the brush roll to manually switch between them. It isn't super clear what the numerals correspond to without consulting the manual, and there isn't an option to turn the rolling brush off. Still, this vacuum isn't overly loud and does well at cleaning edges and corners, though it is a little tall to reach too far under furniture. It can only reach about 6 inches under couches and chairs and doesn't have the longest cord.

Handling

Our next set of tests focused on agility and maneuverability. A key way we test this is by cleaning a set of stairs. The CleanView has swivel steering, so it's easy to maneuver around even semi-cluttered furniture layouts. It's easy to push or pull across most surfaces, but it can drag a bit on fluffier carpet.

When it comes to cleaning stairs, the hose on this vacuum can reach about six steps, making this a fairly painless task as well. It is also light enough at 13.1 pounds that it isn't too much trouble to carry up or down the stairs if needed.

Hard Surface Cleaning

Our next metric assessed cleaning up various messes from hard floors, with a section of laminate serving as our test surface. Unfortunately, the performance of this product dropped a bit here. It struggled with medium-sized debris, delivering very lackluster results when cleaning rice or oats. It did a little better with fine or larger items, successfully cleaning more of the Cheerios and the flour we tasked it with, but it was still far from the top-tier vacuums when it comes to cleaning power.

Pet Hair

We pushed these products to their limits with our final metric, tasking them with cleaning up pet hair from a local groomer pressed into a section of carpet. The CleanView Pet did very well in this regard — as the name would suggest — earning a top score after picking up over 98% of the hair we laid out, with only a few strands eluding it. It also did a great job of getting the hair all the way to the collection bin rather than getting tangled up in the brush roll.

Value

This inexpensive vacuum is a good value if you are primarily concerned about pet hair but not necessarily if you are looking for a more general-purpose cleaning tool.

Conclusion

Overall, we were impressed with how well the Bissell CleanView Swivel Pet did at cleaning up pet hair, holding its own against models that cost quite a bit more. It also is decently easy to use and maneuver. Unfortunately, this vacuum didn't do the best with most messes on hard or soft floors. It could be a good option if you only need it for pet hair and light-duty cleanup but isn't ideal for handling heavier cleaning challenges.