Slow and weak
If you have to scrub a large area that won't be too hard to clean, this is fine. If it's going to take some elbow grease, this just isn't up to the job. It's slow, lacks power, so you can't exert enough force to get off tough messes. Certainly useless for something like a grill. Fine for soap scum.

Dissapointing
This product is great in theory, but isn't strong enough. You still have to exert a lot of pressure, which kind of defeats the purpose of this product. I have a problem with my muscles, so I bought it hoping to lighten my load, but it really hasn't come through for me. I no longer even bother with it.

Don't waste your money on it.

Black and Decker S600 Cordless Power Scrubber
I recently purchased this product and it looked great however it took at least ten (10) minutes to get the plastic cut off from around the scrubber. I followed the instructions for charging the batteries (about 16 hours) which seems like a very long time. I put the scrubbing pad on it and in about ten (10) minutes of use the batteries were dead. I am very disappointed with this product.

Disappointed!
I bought the original scumbuster years ago. It worked so well, I told everyone about it. I couldn't stop spreading my excitement over this powerful tool. Well, guess B&D just can't make them like they used to. Every scumbuster after my original, including this model, has been a big disappointment. Not powerful enough. If I apply alittle pressure, the machine nearly stops. Way to weak and SLOW!

It works fine. Possibly useful in limited situations.
I have an older Scumbuster model but my comments mostly concern the usefulness of Scumbusters in general.

Overall, I don't think it's worth the space it takes up, but it does work.

Power: good. The power is fine and I was able to exert enough pressure with no problem to feel like I was doing something.

Battery Life: Excellent. I was favorably impressed with the battery life, it lasted much longer than I expected. However, with any cordless appliance you need two batteries so that you can charge one while you are using the other. Also, rechargeable batteries work best in appliances that are in daily use, like a cordless phone or a drill you use daily in your construction job. Otherwise you never have a charged battery when you need it and keeping them always on the charger shortens their life.

Speed of rotation: slow. It turns too slowly to clean quickly. However, I can see if it turned faster it might sling soap around the room, it might be dangerous, and it might be hard to control.

Cleaning carpet: Lousy. The circular motion scrubs only one way, not in all directions like I like. I went back to a manual scrubber. Manual is just as fast, better, and only a little more effort.

Cleaning the bathtub: Lousy. The tiny little pad and slow rotation combine to make the tool too slow. I went back to a manual scrubber and do it faster and much better, albeit with more effort.

Cleaning tile grout: Possibly useful. Since grout is soo difficult to scrub, and a toothbrush seems to be the tool of choice, a power tool like this would be a revolution (hahaha). My set came with a cone shaped bristle brush and if you hold the brush sideways to the wall the bristles are able to get into the grout groove. That makes it possibly useful but my scrubbing session did not yield success. I think that may be because grout mildew, like calcium, is impervious to scrubbing. The chemical action of the chlorine bleach in Tilex is the only thing that works.

Cleaning the shower tile: too slow. Same problem as with the tub. Hint: To get shower tile truly clean, try this. First, scrape each and every tile with a razor blade until it feels smooth and you aren't scraping off any more calcium. Then scrub each tile carefully with Ajax or Zud Heavy Duty. The Scumbuster could help in this task. For the final step, go over the tile carefully with Meguiar's Gold Class car wax. This stuff is amazing and the only product that I have found to really clean off that incredibly stubborn calcium, and I have tried them all. Also it smells great. Buff to a shine and your tile will look just like the pictures on the bottles of all those products that are supposed to clean tile but don't. This procedure takes me about 4 hours per shower stall. The scumbuster is not up to this job because it's too tiny. It would take something bigger like a car polisher that you can plug in.

Cleaning the tile at the water line of the pool: Good. The small area of tile, having to work in the water, having some of the tile under water, and the length of the tile to be cleaned make the Scumbuster useful for this task.

Cleaning the calcium off the sink faucet: lousy. First off, the Scumbuster pad can not fit in the narrow spaces required. Second off, the calcium can not be removed by scrubbing. Again, scraping with a razor blade is required. Simply scrape the calcium off, then follow with the Megauir's wax mentioned and you will get a better than brand new sparkle. Remove the faucet handles so that you can get all of the calcium. Keep a washcloth on the towel rack handy and wipe down the faucet after each use (5 seconds) to keep it sparkling like new.

Scrubbing the sink: Acceptable. The small area to be cleaned allow the Scumbuster's speed to be acceptable here. However, I still went back to manual.

UPDATE: This review (minus a few recent edits) was originally written in 2003. Since then my Scumbuster has been sitting unused under the sink. Recently I was doing a reorg and I dug it out and determined to either use it or trash it. I never expected the battery to hold a charge after that time. To my great surprise, the battery charged overnight and the Scumbuster worked fine! I reiterate my original opinion...this thing has a good battery.

Poor design is what makes this worthless
Looks like a good product but as others have mentioned, the solution cap doesn't fit well. No biggie you think until you realize that after filling the solution, it mounts upside down with the cap pointed downwards. If the cap isn't mounted tight, the solution will leak all over the floor in a matter of minutes. I stripped out the first solution tank within a month of purchasing it. New ones aren't cheap either even though there isn't much to them. I have been very careful with the second one, but have to mess with it for a good 5 to 10 minutes before I can get it to fit without leaking (it has an O ring that will leak if is a little off kilter).

Been a while since purchasing it and I have had it. Posting it on craigslist and getting rig of this piece 'o garbage.

Below Average
Pros -
- It delivers a lot of water/cleaner
- It has a built-in cleaning tool
- Has a large storage tank
Cons -
- Terrible suction. Carpet is always left soaking wet
- Terrible suction. Water collects in the hose when using the tool further reducing the suction.
- Terrible suction. The suction is, simply put, terrible.
- storage tank is difficult to clean.

Recall Item
I have hade the same problems as eveyone else, heater plugged up.I finally got to fixing it and will see how it does. Funny how its a discontinued model but they still on the shelf at walmart.

Cleans great . . . but quits spraying on third use
This machine worked very nice the first two times I used it. Then, like so many other customers, my unit quit spaying. Sure enough, I took mine apart like those before me, and the heater was plugged up with lime and calcium. Terrible design flaw. Rather than attempting to fix it, I bypassed the heater with a piece of my own tubing. It works great now, minus the "extra-hot" water. If you buy this, use ONLY distilled water in the one gallon tank. The manufacturer should have thought of this. One nice thing I will say about the 1699. . . it IS powerful and picks up a lot of deep down dirt.

Bissell 1699-C Steam Cleaner No Spray
As a few others have mentioned, when this unit is working, it works well. We have had this unit for about 2 years now. Have used it twice. No problems until the other day - no spray from the nozzles at the floor level when pulling the trigger - but the hand tool spray was working. The heater (located behind the on/off switch - 4 screws & 2 bolts/nuts) was plugged. I dug out the crap at the inlet port with a small nail & blew air until it flowed out the outlet port. Hooked it back up & now it's working well. I'm hesitant to use the heater though for fear of it clogging again, but at least I know what to do.

Best of the best
This machine is superior to even my own expectations. This machine has literally saved my carpet and my wallet. The small price tag for this machine compared to new carpet is well worth every penny. I haven't put it away since the day I got it. It has become a fixture throughout the house! Great machine, excellent scrubbing and suction. Carpet is practically dry after last pass with the machine. I only wish I has this machine 3 years ago.

It Cleans great !!!
I am on my #3 carpet cleaner purchase over a 15yr. period......I have a Bissel that just was not working well after major attempts to correct problems with it and money spent to repair it!! I gave up and began, checking comments, reviews by magazines and prices of course. I decided to try the Hoover and ...WOW!! I have been using it this morning on my very light colored burbur carpet, it really is wonderful, I'm very happy with it!! I opted to remove the tool caddy(removable by design) to lighten up the machine abit, although, it is a comparably lighter wt. cleaner to begin with( bad back problems)!! The price was very good too!!!Hoover SteamVac Dual V Widepath Carpet Cleaner with Powered Handheld Tool, Black, F7412-900

SteamVac Dual V
I had an older model of the Dual V cleaner for about 4 years. It worked great, easy to use. The water only rinse function quit working so I bought this replacement (probably a bad switch). The new model has a few changes (ie water/soap tank is now a single molded piece vs the two piece older model). Overall it works as well as the older model. Highly recommended. I thought enough about it to be a return customer. Make sure you clean the brushes and Dual V path after each cleaning, tend to capture and hold pet hair. Difficult to clean later if it drys.

Great cleaning machine!!!
I owned two Bissell carpet cleaners before buying the Hoover. The Bissell machines did a good job cleaning my carpets but they only lasted for a few cleanings. One would no longer pick up the water and the other would not dispense water. The Hoover does a better job of scrubbing the carpet and removing the water from the carpet. I really love this machine and hope that it lasts longer than my previous carpet cleaners.

Won't work miracles, but it does work magic...
With a 6 year old son around, floors get dirty. I'm on my second Dyson vac, and floors are usually pretty clean, but he has had a few spills. Up to this point I've been spot treating things as they happen, but some haven't come out very well. And I finally got to the point where I wanted to get the carpets cleaned. So I thought i'd try this myself first before having some company come in and do something.

Assembly was simple, two screws for the handle. Everything else just snaps into place.

In my last house I had a Bissel or whatever, and it was about the worst carpet cleaner that could've been designed. I used it once, was more hassle than it was worth.

This one is the opposite. Well designed, simple, and mess free.

Filling the water tank is a snap, and filling the detergent part is also easy, even with the large bottle of solution I purchased.

Definitely buy extra since the small bottle that comes with the unit will last for about a small bedroom and part of a hallway...

One thing I didn't like at first was the lack of anything solid when it came to snapping the water tanks into place. It all just felt LOOSE, like nothing was really there. I kept popping things off and on a couple times the first few refills/empties because it just didn't seem like things were really secured, but they are. The clean water tank goes right in and out, very easily, very quickly, with no mess or dripping, other than a little bit of liquid right on the bottom of the shelf where it sits, which is normal.

The dirty reservoir looks like it's not really all the way connected almost, since you can see the edge of the seal from the nozzle coming up the front, but it is. Two locking levers on each side and it's secured.

The unit rolls easily, and there was no water or soap anywhere it shouldn't be. Nothing oversprayed, it all went right where it was supposed to go. Little noisy, but that was expected since this thing needs to have good suction to pull the water back up out of the carpet.

I've uploaded pictures of the water I pulled out, which was amazing as this gets regularly vacuumed, and I had not expected it to be QUITE so dirty... I'm waiting for daylight now so I can see the results better than just with CF lighting...

A couple of spots that were old stains got a little cleaner, less noticeable, not gone, but better than I've ever been able to get it. What surprised me was that some of the other stains I had given up on DID come out.

They recommend to remove the clean water tank before dropping the handle to the floor to get at the dirty water tank when it needs emptying, but I found it much easier to just tilt the handle back a bit, not even as much as you do when it's in use, then pop the dirty tank out, and lock the handle upright again while you empty it.

The shape of the dirty tank doesn't give you any real good pouring location, so I just used the rear corner of it. Dumped it in the toilet, then I found to get some of the residue still in there from cleaned out (small fibers from carpet, grainy stuff like dirt/sand), I just used a small dixie cup with some water, poured it in, and dumped it right away, easy to do after there's not a lot of water in there again.

I did a great room, dining room, my son's bedroom, and the entire hallway in a little over an hour and a half, taking my time. Not any strain on the arms using the unit either.

Once I was all finished, I was pleased at how easy it was to clean the unit. No cleaning needed for the clean water tank obviously, other than I did rinse out the detergent part of the tank. Dirty tank is easy, one piece inside removes and I didn't have to do anything but put some water in there and woosh it around and dump it. The cover, however, is a little trickier, as it's "hollow". There's the bottom and top piece, and between them is the airflow for the water pulled from the carpet. So fibers and such get stuck in there, and there's not much access to get between them. I found that putting some water from a dixie up in there was enough to get most of the gunk out. About the only little bit of minute debris left is right at the edge around the circumference where the top and bottom join, that little tight space will probably keep the junk in there forever.

The nozzle on the front, the "V" where it gets pulled up, snaps right off, but again, it's hollow, no good way to get inside for almost any of it. Fortunately, the only place things really accumulated was the very bottom where it meets the carpet (easy to get at with a tweezers) and the small circular port where you can attach the hose (also easy to get with said tweezers).

Brushes pull right off, and the whole unit disassembles easily by popping three tabs on each side (see my uploaded photo for pics of the tabs). The housing for the brushes cleaned easily, some paper towel to wipe the fibers and such off, and rinsed in water. The brushes, on the other hand, were far tougher. They started out bright green, but they were black by the time I was done. And it wasn't just that they got discolored with dirt, the black was carpet fiber that got up in the bristles. So there was no easy way to just pull it out, but what I found was by using those tweezers again (handiest cleaning tool for this I've found), I could kind of start at the top where the bristles were secured to the circular brush, and work the "invading" fibers out as if I was brushing hair. Took a couple minutes per brush to get all the bristles cleaned, but by the time I was done, they looked just about new again.

Wiped the bottom of the vac where it also picked up dirt and fibers just from rubbing along the floor, and that was about it. No tools needed to disassemble for cleaning, all the parts just come off by hand. Except if you want to get as far as I did cleaning the brushes, then those tweezers again came in handy, were perfect for sliding in to release those tabs to pull apart the housing that holds the spinning brushes.

Easy to operate, easy to clean, and results that were far better than I had hoped. Granted, I would've loved the miracle if it got a couple of the spots that will never be removed, but I'm more than satisfied with the minor magic it worked on the rest of the dirty spots I had. Carpet hasn't looked this clean since I had the house built 5 years ago (Yes, this if the first time it was shampooed and wet vacuumed).

Biggest pain is, as always, moving everything out of the room, and having to move it back in again. My fan is going on the last spot, everything is dry already, saving the replacement until tomorrow through just to make absolutely sure there's no moisture I can't feel that will leave spots when I put things back and the wood and metal contacts it.

Far cheaper than the professionals would have been, and gives me more than just the one cleaning. Can't beat that.

Bissell Perfect Sweep Turbo Powered Triple Brush Sweeper, 2880B
This a great little helper when it comes to getting stuff up off my carpets or hard wood floors,its light weight but has a lot of pick up force and I love the side bristles that gets the dirt and stuff up close to walls and corners,I recommend this to anyone who hates lugging a bulky vacuum around.

Almost perfect sweeper
This is my third unit. It works great for every sweeping. Light wight and very effective in picking up a lot of things from carpet floors are any floor.

It has some problems though. It dosn't have long life. It develops problems mainly with the rubber belts. When it works, it is great. If not for the relatively shorter life, I would have given 5 stars.

Really great!!
I have COPD so this is really great for me, as a regular vacuum with a beater bar stirs up too much dust, and it is hard for me to drag it out of the closet. This is lightweight and if I use it often on the carpet it works just fine. It is also great on my hardwood floors! I have only had it about a month, but if it continues to work this well I am totally satisfied!!!

Great Substitute For A Vaccuum!
I wasn't sure what to expect. I didn't think it could clean as well as my heavy duty vaccuum cleaner. It cleans as well or better as my vaccuum (which I gave to a neighbor). It works so well that it picked up a pen that I hadn't realized had fallen on the floor until I found it in the cup. The only thing that I dislike is the cup opening is so narrow that it takes some shaking to get all the debris out.

multipuspose and long lasting
tried many floor cleaners, so far this is the best, used for floor and carpet also. this one lasted me for 2 years before it died, i am going to buy one more to replace my existing one.