Recently I had the privilege to review the Vax Dual V Advance Reach W87-DV-R Wet and Dry Vacuum - White / Purple courtesy of ao.com.
I rate it:
5 / 5 for Cleaning Ability and performance
5 / 5 for Ease of Use and build quality
Pros: Value for money, Easy to use, Good build quality, superb cleaning power
Cons: Noisy
"The Vax W87-DV-R arrived well packaged in a very large box. I was a bit surprized at the size of it as for some reason I didn’t expect it to be quite a large as it was! It required a very small amount of assembly, just to attach the handle and the racks that rest the hose at the back. The handle was easy, but I struggled slightly with one of the racks as it was hard to get the clip to turn and lock in place, the other one was fine so I assume it was a bit of a fluke. Everything else was very straight forward to assemble and very logical. The instruction booklet was also very clear with lots of good diagrams to help. It also comes with a small bottle of VAX cleaning fluid which is very helpful so that you can get cleaning straight away.
My initial first impressions were that it looked very well made and sturdy and it also felt quite heavy. I wasn’t sure about it being purple, white and blue, but on the other hand it’s functional and performance is much more important than what it looks like!
I found it very well designed, very easy to see what was what and very easy to take parts on and off the machine. The waste water tank just lifted on and off the base very easily, being see-through it was obvious to tell when it was full and you could also see from the shade of the water coming off, how much dirt was coming out of the carpets. Emptying it was very easy, it unclipped with minimum effort and you could pour it straight down the WC. I also like the feature that when you rinse out the waste water tank, you can turn it upside down and wash any dirt straight off the filter mesh with the tap as it flows straight down the hole over the mesh – it made cleaning it very easy.
The The Vax W87-DV-R automatically mixes the cleaning detergent and the water itself so it has a split tank unit that holds water on one side and the detergent in the other, smaller part. This also is see-through so again it’s really easy to see at a glance how much water and cleaning fluid is left in the tank before you need to refill it. One caution, make sure you tighten the top of the tanks fully as I made a mistake one of the times I refilled and when I turned it on, water started flooding out the side of the machine (user error!) the filling cap wasn’t quite shut properly, not sure how I managed that, but it was fine once the cap was fully in place. The tank clips on and off the front of the VAX very easily.
The only 2 minor issues I had were that I couldn’t find any info about how much detergent to put into the tank. I wasn’t sure whether to tip the whole bottle in, the instruction booklet just showed detergent being poured in the smaller part of the tank and the instructions on the detergent bottle appeared to relate to machines which require you to add both the detergent and water in together. Also the detergent bottle says that the water temperature shouldn’t exceed 50C but the machine itself says not to exceed 40C so a slight discrepancy there! I chose less than 40C to be on the safe side! I poured some of the detergent bottle into the tank and kept some back which was a good move as I think I would have run out too quickly if I had put it all in. The amount I added seemed to work very well, but I will call VAX and ask for further clarification on this when I next do the carpets!
Once all set up, the controls are very simple. The handle trigger releases the cleaning solution onto the carpet and there is a wash, rinse and max extract toggle switch and you can shift between them very easily to wash with detergent, rinse with plain water (optional but gives a better finish result) and Max extract for maximum suction and water removal to dry the carpet quickly. There is also a Max Extract pedal to stop the spin scrub brushes spinning and put more effort into extracting water from the carpet.
I like the feature of the spin scrub brushes to gently agitate the dirt from the carpet and they seem to help do a much better job of cleaning than machines I have used in the past that have not had them.
The power cable was very long which is a bonus as you don’t need to unplug it even when cleaning a flight of stairs or going from room to room.
The upholstery / stairs attachment was really easy to attach as you just need to lift up the front flap and plug in the hose and the small clear pipe into the holes and turn them to lock them on. The spin scrub hand tool snaps onto the pipe very easily, but later on I had a lot of difficulty removing it again. I used this tool for the stairs and I found it very impressive that the VAX could sit at the bottom of the flight of the stairs and the hose and spin scrub brush easily stretched out enough to reach right up the whole flight of 10 steps without being overstretched, this was good because the machine is very heavy and you would not want to hold it while trying to clean. It was very easy to use on the stairs.
I also tested the machine out on the children’s bedroom carpets – one carpet had a few spills and the other had a lot of deep stains and marks on it. The carpet with mild spills came up looking as new (the carpet is 5 years old) and the second carpet despite having a lot of stains on it from things the kids had done with ink and paint, the carpet came up amazingly well. It couldn’t remove the permanent stains and I didn’t expect it to, but I was shocked how well all the other deep marks came out. It came up a lot better than I expected. The stairs and landings came up really well too.
The only downside with this machine is that it is a little bit noisy and it is fairly heavy, but having said that, I think it is just part of the better build quality as I once owned a lightweight carpet cleaner in the past and this machine does a far better job of cleaning than the lightweight version did. It is definitely worth bearing with the extra weight and spending a little bit more money to get a far superior cleaning result. I am very impressed with how clean my carpets are and how easy it is to use. Before I used it on the stairs and landings, I thought that we might need a new carpet because of the all the marks, but now having used it, the difference is amazing and I realize that we don’t need to replace the carpets after all which is very good news. I am really impressed with this machine and highly recommend it."
