Swan Dirtmaster Pro Spot Cleaner Review – Is It Any Good?
There is something about having carpets that seems like a good idea until you actually live with them.
When they’re freshly cleaned, they look lovely. Then someone walks through the house with their shoes on. Something gets spilt. A mysterious mark appears that apparently nobody in the house has ever seen before, let alone caused. Before long, you’re staring at the carpet wondering how on earth it got so grubby.
Please tell me this isn’t just my house?
I’ve used full-sized carpet cleaners before, and they’re brilliant when you’re in the mood to properly clean a whole room. The problem is that I’m very rarely enthusiastic enough about one muddy patch to drag a massive carpet cleaner out of the cupboard!
So, when I was sent the Swan Dirtmaster Pro Spot Cleaner to try, I was interested to see whether it would be the sort of thing I’d actually get out and use when I spotted a mark.
There was another feature that particularly interested me too: steam.
Rather than automatically needing carpet shampoo or stain remover, the Dirtmaster Pro can use steam to help loosen dirt. I really wanted to know how much difference that would make on actual dirt in my house rather than one of those perfectly placed fresh stains you sometimes see in demonstrations.
Luckily – or perhaps unluckily for my carpets – I had plenty to test it on.
There were muddy shoe marks and, rather randomly, some horrible rusty-coloured marks caused by water dripping from a radiator.
So, armed with my grubby carpets, I put it to work.
What is the Swan Dirtmaster Pro Spot Cleaner?
The Swan Dirtmaster Pro Spot Cleaner is basically designed for all those smaller cleaning jobs where getting a full-sized carpet washer out feels like overkill.
You can use it on carpets and upholstery as well as car interiors, which immediately makes it more useful to me than something I would only use on the living room carpet.
It has steam, hot water and cold water settings, along with suction, so you can approach different marks in different ways rather than treating everything exactly the same.
There is a 1.6-litre clean water tank and a separate 950ml dirty water tank, plus a 1.8m hose and a 6m power cable.
You also get a standard brush, a wider brush for larger areas and a self-cleaning attachment, which helps flush everything through when you’ve finished.
All useful features, but what I really wanted to know was whether I’d actually bother using it.
My first impressions of the Dirtmaster Pro
The first thing I noticed was the size.
I’ve had full-sized carpet cleaners before and, while they’re useful, they tend to be one of those appliances that needs a permanent home somewhere. If you’ve already got a vacuum cleaner, mop, ironing board and all the other random household things fighting for cupboard space, that’s not always ideal.
The Dirtmaster Pro is much smaller.
The hose wraps around the machine too, which sounds like such an insignificant thing until you’ve owned an appliance with a hose that spends its entire life trying to escape from wherever you’ve stored it.
It immediately felt more like something I could grab when I noticed a dirty patch rather than something I’d only get out when I’d mentally prepared myself for a full afternoon of carpet cleaning.
And, realistically, that’s what I wanted from it.
Using the Swan Dirtmaster Pro with steam
Steam was the feature I was most curious about.
I’m not against cleaning products at all, but if something can be cleaned effectively with water and steam, I’d rather start there than automatically start adding products.
I wasn’t entirely sure how much it would actually achieve though.
As it turns out, quite a lot.
There is something weirdly satisfying about going over a patch of carpet that doesn’t look that dirty and then watching decidedly unpleasant-looking water appear in the dirty water tank.
Clearly, my carpet and I have very different definitions of clean.
For general grime and lighter marks, I found that the combination of steam, brushing and suction worked really well. It loosened the dirt and lifted considerably more than I expected without me needing to add carpet shampoo.
That’s probably how I’ll use it most often: steam first and see what happens.
If the mark disappears, great. If it doesn’t, I haven’t lost anything and can then move on to a suitable cleaning product.
How did it cope with muddy shoe marks?
If you want to test a carpet cleaner properly, apparently you just need people in your house who don’t always remember to take their shoes off.
No names mentioned, obviously.
Muddy marks are quite a regular occurrence here, so this was probably the most realistic test I could give the Dirtmaster Pro.
This is also where I really saw the benefit of having a spot cleaner rather than a full-sized machine.
I could concentrate the steam and brush directly onto the grubby patches, work over them and then suck the dirty water back up. I wasn’t filling a huge carpet cleaner or washing the rest of the room just because one area looked awful.
The muddy marks came up well and I was genuinely pleased with the result.
Obviously, every carpet and every stain is different. Fresh mud is going to behave differently from something that’s been trodden in and ignored for six months, and I’d always be sensible about checking what is suitable for your particular carpet.
For the ordinary muddy shoe marks I tested it on, though, it did exactly what I’d hoped.
More importantly, it was quick enough that I could imagine actually dealing with muddy footprints when I noticed them instead of thinking, I’ll do that when I clean the carpets.
Which usually means sometime around 2047.
Then I gave it something much harder – rust stains from a radiator
The muddy footprints were one thing, but I also had a much more stubborn mark I wanted to try.
We’d had water dripping from a radiator which had left horrible rusty-coloured marks on the carpet underneath it. I wasn’t particularly optimistic about this one.
This wasn’t simply a bit of dirt sitting on the carpet fibres waiting to be sucked up. Rust staining is a completely different challenge, and I didn’t seriously expect steam and water to magically make it disappear.
It did improve it.
You could definitely see a difference after I’d worked on the area, but this was also the point where I felt steam had done as much as it was going to do.
For something like this, I’d use an appropriate carpet stain-removal product alongside the machine rather than continuing to attack it with steam and hoping for a miracle.
I don’t think that’s really a negative against the Dirtmaster Pro either.
I’d be far more suspicious if I told you I’d pointed a steam cleaner at an old rust stain for thirty seconds and it miraculously vanished!
Some stains need the right cleaning product.
What the test did show me was that steam makes a really useful first step. I can try the least complicated option first and only bring out stain removers when I actually need them.
The dirty water tank is strangely satisfying
I don’t know what this says about me, but I quite enjoy seeing the dirty water afterwards.
Please tell me other people do this too?
You clean an area that didn’t look particularly bad, look at what’s collected in the tank and suddenly start questioning when your carpet was last genuinely clean.
The Dirtmaster Pro has separate clean and dirty water tanks, so everything you’re sucking out of the carpet collects separately.
The tanks are a good size for what I’d use the machine for too. They’re big enough that I wasn’t constantly stopping what I was doing, but the whole machine remains compact.
I think Swan has got the balance about right here.
Could you clean a whole carpet with it?
Technically, you could clean a much larger area with the Dirtmaster Pro, especially using the wider attachment.
Would I buy it specifically to clean every carpet in my house from wall to wall?
Probably not.
If that’s what you want to do regularly, I’d choose a proper full-sized upright carpet washer because it will make the job much quicker.
I think the Dirtmaster Pro makes far more sense for the jobs that don’t justify getting one of those machines out.
A drink gets spilt. Someone walks mud through the hallway. There’s a grubby patch on the sofa. The stairs need attention. The car seats have somehow become disgusting despite nobody admitting to eating anything in the car.
That’s where I’d reach for this.
The hose also makes far more sense for stairs and upholstery than trying to wrestle a large carpet washer around awkward spaces.
Is the Swan Dirtmaster Pro easy to store?
This probably isn’t the most exciting thing to talk about in a product review, but it’s something that genuinely matters to me.
Where am I going to put it?
There are loads of household gadgets I’d happily own if my house also came with a massive utility room and endless cupboards. Sadly, it doesn’t, so anything new needs to earn the space it takes up.
The Dirtmaster Pro is compact enough that I don’t begrudge it some cupboard space.
The hose wraps around the body of the machine, and although it isn’t tiny, it’s nowhere near as cumbersome as a traditional upright carpet washer.
I also appreciated the 6m cable more than I expected.
It means you’re not constantly unplugging it and hunting for another socket, particularly if you’re doing the stairs or using it outside to clean the car.
Little things like that often make the difference between an appliance being convenient and being annoying.
What did I like most?
The steam function is easily my favourite part of the Dirtmaster Pro.
I like being able to see what I can remove with steam and water before automatically reaching for another product.
On the everyday dirt and muddy marks I tested, it worked better than I expected.
I also like having the different water settings because stains and spills aren’t all the same. Having steam, hot water and cold water available gives you a bit more flexibility depending on what you’re trying to clean.
The attachments are useful, the separate water tanks make sense and the hose and cable are long enough to make it practical.
But actually, the biggest positive for me is probably much simpler than any of that.
I can see myself bothering to get it out.
That sounds like I’m damning it with faint praise, but I’m really not!
You can have the most powerful cleaning appliance in the world, but if it’s hidden at the back of a cupboard because it’s huge, heavy and takes twenty minutes to set up, you’re probably not getting it out because someone walked through the hall in muddy trainers.
This feels much more like a deal with it now appliance.
Is there anything I didn’t like?
If you’re considering buying the Dirtmaster Pro specifically because of the steam function, I think it’s important to have realistic expectations.
Steam isn’t magic.
It did a great job on everyday dirt and mud in my tests, but it didn’t completely remove the rust staining from the radiator.
I didn’t expect it to.
For stubborn stains like that, I think you’ll still need the correct cleaning product rather than expecting water and steam to solve absolutely everything.
I’d also remember that you’re buying a spot cleaner, not a replacement for a full-sized carpet washer.
If your main goal is regularly deep-cleaning several large carpeted rooms, this wouldn’t be my first choice.
For smaller areas, stairs, sofas, car interiors, muddy footprints and random spills, however, that’s a completely different story.
Who would I recommend it for?
I can see the Swan Dirtmaster Pro being particularly handy in a busy family home.
If you’ve got children, pets, people who forget that shoes can actually be removed at the front door, or simply a household where things occasionally get spilt, you’ll probably find plenty of reasons to use it.
Pet owners could get a lot of use from it around doors and other areas where muddy paws appear, while the hose and attachments make it useful for car upholstery too.
I also think it makes sense if you don’t actually have huge amounts of carpet.
If your home is mostly hard flooring but you’ve got carpeted stairs, rugs, fabric sofas or car seats you want to clean occasionally, storing a massive upright carpet washer might feel ridiculous.
Something like this is much easier to justify.
My overall Swan Dirtmaster Pro review
After using the Swan Dirtmaster Pro Spot Cleaner around my house, I think its biggest strength is that it’s practical.
The steam function impressed me more than I expected. It dealt really well with the muddy marks I tested it on and lifted a surprising amount of dirt without me needing to immediately reach for carpet shampoo.
The radiator rust stain was a different matter. The Dirtmaster Pro improved it, but it didn’t completely remove it with steam alone and I’d use an appropriate stain-removal product to tackle something like that properly.
I’d rather tell you that than pretend every stain in my house disappeared instantly!
For me, though, this isn’t a machine I’d buy because I wanted to spend Sunday afternoon deep-cleaning every carpet in the house. I’d buy it for everything that happens between those big cleans. The muddy footprints, spilt drink, grubby bit of sofa and the stairs. It would also be pretty good on things like a car seat, I think.
Not to mention that random mark you spot one morning and have absolutely no idea where it came from.
It’s compact enough to store without taking over a cupboard and convenient enough that getting it out doesn’t feel like starting an enormous cleaning job. And perhaps the best compliment I can give any cleaning appliance is still this: I can actually see myself bothering to get it out and use it.
For me, that’s what makes the Swan Dirtmaster Pro useful rather than just another cleaning gadget that ends up living at the back of a cupboard.
