Is Bissell's Little Green HydroSteam Its Best Deep Cleaner Yet? I Put it to the Test

Beyond the price difference ($130 for the Little Green vs. $240 for the Little Green HydroSteam), the HydroSteam can tackle a wider variety of surfaces, including grout, tile and other hard surfaces, whereas the classic Little Green is designed primarily for carpets and upholstery.

The HydroSteam also has a heating element that allows you to toggle between washing with a mix of water and its cleaning solutions (best for carpets and area rugs), steam cleaning (good for tile/grout, upholstery and areas that require a gentler clean, like curtains), and SteamWash, which combines the two for a deeper clean that tackles oily and sticky messes. It also comes with three attachments, a 3-inch tool, a 5-inch one for cleaning larger messes and a multi-surface tool, which features an angled head that can get into narrow, awkward spaces and corners.

Over the course of a week, I used it to deep clean carpet, tile, grout, rugs, sealed wood and upholstery, the core surfaces it's designed to scrub. I specifically targeted glommed-on spaghetti sauce stains, toothpaste stains, scuffs on flooring and ground-in Silly Putty on a carpet. Here's how it fared.

All in all, the Little Green HydroSteam is a solid cleaner. At 13 pounds, it's a bit heavy, but that's on par with other deep cleaners I've tested and isn't unmanageable. While cleaning the grout required some elbow grease, it made quick work of the other stains, and all surfaces dried fairly quickly, so I didn't have to dodge damp floors or chairs for more than 5 to 20 minutes, depending on the extent of the scrub and the surface.

My favorite feature, honestly, was the Multi-Surface tool. I have hired three cleaning services over the years, and I've scrubbed my kitchen floors myself, but the grout has always remained roughly the shade I inherited it in: charcoal. (Despite the fact that the spare grout in my basement deems it "sand.") The little tool got into the grooves of the grout better than a toothbrush—thanks to the addition of hot steam to loosen things up as I went—and what started as a one-foot test soon turned into me scrubbing half the kitchen. It was just so satisfying to see years of hard-to-reach grime lift away.

The Multi-Surface Tool was also great for tight areas my vacuum can't reach, like the toe-kicks under the cabinets, or a two-inch nook between my wall and the oven, where grease and crumbs like to gather.

Similarly, spaghetti and jam stains lifted from the tile easily, something my Roomba's mopping feature missed, and so did toothpaste smears on the sofa. I worried I'd need to scrub the whole cushion to avoid any discoloration or watermarks—the telltale "you spot-cleaned this area, didn't you?" mark—but once everything dried, you couldn't tell where I spot-treated stains at all. It even pulled up the silver Silly Putty I'd lost all hope in ever getting out of my rug.

I also appreciated its suction power and the power cord length. At 15 feet long, I could plug it in at the top of my staircase and work my way down without having to stop and find a new outlet halfway through. (It's also just small enough to fit on a stair without wobbling.)

The suction, though! I had to stop and clean the attachment head—another nice feature, since it easily pops apart—because it did such a thorough job really sucking up ground-in hair and dust that my hand vac hadn't caught. In high-traffic areas, such as the stairs, it actually helped lift and fluff up the carpet a bit, making it more comfortable to tread across.

On the downside, there is the price point. While it can do so much more than the Bissell Little Green, it's more of an investment. And, compared to the Shark StainStriker, another portable Deep Cleaner, it's about $100 more and weighs about 4 pounds more, making it a bit heftier to maneuver. However, it offers the steam-cleaning component, which the StainStriker lacks, and in my experience, eliminated stains with less effort than the StainStriker.

If you're in your "This is why we can't have nice things" era due to pets, kids or perhaps the universe conspiring against you, the Bissell Little Green HydroSteam is a solid investment. It will let you deep clean just about every surface of your home without having to call in the pros—and do so quickly, easily and efficiently. And it may just convince you to finally return that grout to its off-white or "sandy" state.