Vax Platinum SmartWash Pet Design review: A classic Vax carpet cleaner with an extra pre-treatment function for pet mess

Although the Vax Platinum SmartWash Pet Design carpet cleaner seems to have been targeted exclusively at pet owners, don’t let that put you off if you don’t happen to have one. Sure, pets may be particularly prone to depositing gifts and scooting their back ends across your carpet, but some humans can leave as much mess.

I’d go as far to predict that, no matter how many creatures you live with and how many times a week you vacuum the floor, the first time you push a carpet cleaner like this across, it will leave you gobsmacked at how much grime is lifted out.

The main difference between this Pet Design and the standard Platinum SmartWash is the addition of a pre-treatment wand, which comes with its own special solution that might make the clean-up of particularly unpleasant messes that bit easier. We’ve probably all been in situations where that might be useful, whether we have pets or not.

Vax Platinum SmartWash Pet Design review: What do you get for the money?

The Vax Platinum SmartWash Pet Design is at the upper end of what I’d expect to pay for an upright domestic carpet cleaner, but it certainly has all the bells and whistles. It’s essentially a very similar design to the cheaper Platinum SmartWash. That means it has three tanks to hold dirty water, clean water and cleaning solution, which is mixed in automatically to reduce waste, as well as a pair of powerful brush rollers in the floor head to agitate the carpet.

It also comes with a hose attachment and a selection of hand tools for performing spot washes. These include a funnel attachment with a pair of detachable brushes, one with bristles, the other with stiff rubbery teeth. These can spray an area, scrub and then suck up moisture. There’s also a motorised version with a rotating brush head that really cuts down on the amount of elbow grease needed to scrub a stubborn spot.

Where it differs from the base model is in the pre-treatment wand, which is built into the handle. You remove the whole thing from the main unit and use it to spray the area with a secondary cleaning solution from another reservoir. This “Pet Stain & Odour Remover” is safe for use on carpet and upholstery, and says on the bottle that it’s specially formulated for urine, faeces, vomit and food. Nice. Leave it to soak in for five minutes before cleaning it up as normal.

Vax Platinum SmartWash Pet Design review: What’s it like to use?

The first thing you’ll notice when using the Vax Platinum SmartWash Pet Design is how large and heavy it is. It weighs 8kg and has one of the largest floor heads that I’ve seen on any cleaning device. This translates into a certain bulkiness when pushing around.

The whole thing is fairly clunky, too. It needs to be plugged into a wall socket and, usefully, it comes with a long 9m cord. To engage the water you have to push down on a floor pedal and pull the handle back away from the floor head. Some of the fluid tanks are released with a clip, while others just lift off.

It’s switched on and off with a foot pedal on the other side, which feels decidedly old fashioned. However, it does negate the need for any buttons at the top of the device to control it. In action, it cleverly expels a mix of water and cleaning solution when you push the device away, and sucks dirty water back in when you pull it back. In between that, it rotates two brush bars inside the floor head in opposite directions to agitate the carpet and lift out the dirt.

When you’re done, there’s a button you can press that cuts off the liquids but continues to lift residual moisture from the carpet. This way Vax suggests it can leave your carpets dry in an hour. Slightly optimistic, but it wasn’t too far off the mark during my test cleans. I found the post wash cleanup to be a little unpleasant. The dirty water is relatively easy to remove and tip away but the brushes and underside of the unit were covered in dirty damp fluff that’s lifted out of anything it cleans. You should definitely run the vacuum cleaner over before even attempting to use the Vax.

Vax Platinum SmartWash Pet Design review: How well does it clean?

I tested the Vax Platinum SmartWash Pet Design by spilling ketchup, coffee, blackcurrant squash and mud onto a piece of test carpet, similar to our test for robot mops. I let it all dry for 24 hours then used the main unit to clean it up.

I also used the device to clean an entire rug that gets a lot of footfall, including from my dog, and on a suspicious dark stain I found when rearranging furniture in a room. Most likely an ancient coffee spillage.

The main unit worked like a dream on everything. It merrily lifted all the stains out of my test carpet, leaving it impossible to see where I’d deposited the test splodges. It also removed the long-term stain that had been hidden by furniture. It cleaned and refreshed the rug in my living area, too.

I didn’t have to resort to the handheld tools for any of those cleans, so I found some more dirty items to use these on, having a good go at a small mat that the dog often sits on. The rotating brush was particularly good here, taking all the effort out of getting the bristles well into the pile. It came out looking great. Everything dried reasonably quickly. The rug is quite a deep pile and still felt damp underfoot beyond an hour after cleaning, but it was starting to feel much drier soon after that.

Vax Platinum SmartWash Pet Design review: Should you buy it?

The Vax Platinum SmartWash Pet Design is basically the same as the basic Vax Platinum SmartWash, except that it comes with the pre-treatment wand. Whether you need this probably comes down to how big and old your messes usually are, but it’s nice to have if you regularly have to clean up after untrained pets or equally messy humans.

Either model will do an excellent job of lifting everyday stains out of carpets and the spot washing attachments are useful and good at their jobs. The main downside is the size of the device, which is significant and will need a fair bit of space to store, though you could always detach the pre-treatment wand to make it a bit shorter.