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|| Product Brand : Bissell || || Model : 5200 ||
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Customer Review :
Has serious drawbacks : BISSELL Flip-!t Bare Floor Cleaner, 5200
Purchased the Flip-It a couple of days ago, so my review is based on only one cleaning of kitchen tile floor. But it was enough to reveal serious flaws in the design and manufacturing of this device. Overall, I'm not satisfied with this unit, mainly for three reasons: (1) due to the very poor dry pick-up due to the design flaw of air blowing down and dispersing the dirt you are supposed to pick-up, (2) the fact that you need to use a rag or mop to dry after the last square foot of floor space cleaned, (3) using this unit in a relatively small area is actually more difficult and considerably slower than using a mop, unless you leave the floor wet, which defeats the purpose of the drying function.
The idea to have separate dedicated dry vacuum side and wet pick-up side was what initially sold me on this unit. I was comparing to the Hoover Floor Mate models about which I read that dry pick-up is not very good, plus they are 60%-70% more expensive than the Bissell.
The unit indeed is very easy to assemble and was ready to use in less than 5 minutes after attaching the handle with one screw. The handle was a bit squeaky due to all screws being rather loose, so I tightened them about a 1/4 turn of the screwdriver to remedy this. The build quality seems fine and the motor noise acceptable (at least compared to the overly noisy full-size Hoover SteamVac I got for carpets, which by the way cleans carpets very well).
I noticed that the amperage rating of this unit is only 3 amps. Compare this to the 10-12 amps of most regular vacuums or carpet cleaners (or the 5 or more amps on wet/dry vacs you might use in your garage) and you will get an idea of the suction power. It turned later that indeed it is not very strong (but it would have been adequate if not for the serious design problem which rendered the unit useless for dry pick-up)
After filling in the solution tank with the supplied hard floor cleaning solution and warm tap water, I was ready to try it.
First I tried the dry vacuum function. Immediately, I noticed that as soon as I approach a piece of lint, dust or any light particle on the floor within a few inches in front or to the side of the cleaning head, the exhaust air stream would blow it AWAY from the cleaning path. This makes it impossible to even go near the things you want to suck-in, unless they are heavy enough to not be moved by the exhaust air stream. Once over them, the suction is OK to retrieve them in the dirty tank.
I thought I perhaps assembled the unit incorrectly, which would be hard if not impossible to do. Still, I reassembled it more carefully, taking care that all openings fit where they should snugly. Same problem! Then I removed the dirty tank to look at what's going on (exhaust air was escaping at a great force down from around the elliptical opening on the back of the dirty tank - this is on the top/front side when you vacuum and on the back/bottom when you wet pick-up). There are two plastic ducts on the inside of the machine, which blow air down for some reason. The actual exhaust port is pointed sideways as it should, and is blowing air out too. But it looks too small, so most of the exhaust air actually comes out through these two openings. The dirty tank is supposed to block the air from escaping down to the floor, or at least to the front in dry pick-up mode. It has some insulation on the inside of the machine, but it is not adequate, so air escapes around the dirty tank and out down through the opening and towards the floor. In effect, the exhaust air blows down pushing away any light debris that you try to approach...
So much for dry pick-up - not good and definitely not usable for anything but stuff like cheerios, heavy crumbs or seeds (hair and light stuff moves away due to the exhaust blowing down).
Second, I tried the wet pick-up with the supplied brush installed. This works OK - cleans dirty step marks fine and dries the water. BUT ONLY if you go backwards - moving forward, after the brush has been already saturated with water/solution, leaves a wet streak even if you no longer push the spray trigger. So you need to move backwards to leave the floor dry in front of the machine...
It does a fair enough job of drying the tiles and the water in the dirty tank was quite dirty. The kitchen floor was cleaned well enough, although sticky stuff had to be scraped-out by hand (a steamer would have loosened and cleaned these out).
Although it does not look to be the case, I hope I have a defective unit - after all I'm probably one of the first customers to buy this at Sears the day they received it in the store... It would be a pity if this relatively moderately priced device with good potential fails miserably due to poor design or execution...
I'd be curious if other reviewers experience the same problem.
--- Update 10-7-2004 --- While returning the cleaner to Sears, I tested the floor model. It has the same problem blowing air down from the same place mine did. I'm starting to think that if the engineers flipped (!) the cleaning head 180 degrees so that only the wet pick-up is affected by the downdraft, it will actually help dry the floor, and it won't interfere with the dry pick-up, as it will be blowing now behind the cleaning head in dry mode instead of in front of it... Getting a less restrictive exhaust port would help too. The only other change needed might be to put the outlet on the clean water tank on the opposite side when they rotate the head to allow all solution to drain to the bottom. I'd try this if I had my unit still with me, but now it's too late :(. My only hope now, besides finding something affordable that works, is when Flip-It 5200 "Plus" (a.k.a. revision 2 with all bugs fixed) comes out with these changes implemented, I'd get a dollar for each one sold, or at least a free one :)
One other thing I forgot to mention was that the capacity of the water tank was sufficient to clean my kitchen of about 15'x8' with a 6'x3' counter in the middle. So for larger rooms you will need to refill halfway through.
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