Bissell CleanView Swivel Pet Review

If you are only looking to clean up pet hair and are hoping for an inexpensive upright to do it with, then the CleanView Swivel might be a decent choice. However, this isn't the use 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 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 poor results, struggling with fine messes and leaving plenty of flour on low-pile and medium-pile carpets, even after multiple cleaning passes. It did a little better with medium-sized debris, but not too much. It still left plenty of oats on both types of carpets and struggled to pull the fragments and dust from the carpet fibers. It also struggled with rice on both low and higher-pile carpets.

This vacuum also didn't do particularly well with larger types of debris either, struggling to pick up items like Cheerios. We found that it was hard to set the vacuum height to effectively pick up larger and smaller types of messes on the carpet. Cereal tended to get pushed and displaced 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 assessed the noise level.

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 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 too tall to reach very far under furniture. It can only reach about 6 inches under couches and chairs, which is 2 inches shorter than the test group average. It also doesn't have the longest cord, limiting the reach and general user-friendliness.

Handling

Our next set of tests focused on agility and maneuverability. The CleanView has swivel steering, so it's easy to maneuver around even semi-cluttered furniture layouts, but it didn't have as tight of a turning radius as other models. It's fairly easy to push or pull across most surfaces, but it can drag a bit on fluffier carpet.

When it comes to cleaning stairs, this model could have been better. The hose on this vacuum can only reach 5 feet, and at 14 pounds, it isn't incredibly heavy, but it isn't the lightest. More frequent carrying up and down the stairs and an average weight hurt this model's overall handling score.

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 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 — picking up 99% of the hair we laid out. It also did a great job of getting the hair to the collection bin rather than getting tangled up in the brush roll.

Should You Buy the Bissel CleanView Swivel?

The CleanView Swivel is an inexpensive vacuum and an okay option for cleaning pet hair. However, if you are looking for a more general-purpose cleaning tool, you're better off looking elsewhere.

What Other Upright Vacuums Should You Consider?