Bissell CrossWave Cordless Max Review

A powerful all-round cleaner, the Bissell CrossWave Cordless Max can vacuum and mop at the same time. It’s excellent on hard floors, dealing with tough stains quickly, and does a reasonable job with lighter stains on carpets and rugs, too. Decent battery life combined with fast cleaning should result in enough juice for most people to manage their homes. A relatively high price means that those on tighter budgets will be better off with a plug-in model.

After being impressed with the Bissell CrossWave Cordless hard floor cleaner, the company is back with a lighter, more powerful model. As with its sibling, the Bissell CrossWave Cordless Max can tackle hard floors as well as rugs and carpets.

Impressive cleaning and vacuuming performance, the thicker roller will see you quickly cover floors. Its high price means that those who don’t need the convenience of cordless power should seek out cheaper, plug-in alternatives.

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Bissell CrossWave Cordless Max design and features – Simple to use and clean

• Clear controls make selecting a mode easy
• Bin separates debris from dirty water
• Easy to fill with detergent

Although this model is called the CrossWave Cordless Max, it’s no bigger than the previous CrossWave Cordless. In fact, at just 5.22kg, this model is actually lighter than its predecessor. It’s also the recipient of a few design tweaks that make it the better cleaner overall.

While the cleaning width is shorter on this model, the Cordless Max has a thicker floor brush, allowing greater depth for absorbing dirt. The roller also features a few hard for agitating dirt.

At the end of a clean, the CrossWave Cordless Max can be placed on its charging dock and the self-clean button hit to automatically clean the brush. You can then easily lift out the brush and stand it upright for drying. With the brush removed, you can wipe the floor head clean.

This isn’t an anti-tangle brush, as such, but the extra thickness over the previous model means that hair is far less likely to become wrapped around it. In fact, I didn’t suffer this issue at all.

For cleaning, there’s a 0.83-litre tank that takes a mixture of detergent and water. There are handy fill lines for large and small areas, which means you won’t be wasting detergent.

Bissell provides 1 litre of cleaning fluid in the box (its multi-surface cleaner) and you can buy more for £12.99 a pop. Bissell also sells formulations for pet and wood (both £12.99 each).

To use the cleaner, you turn on the power and select the desired mode: hard floor or area rug. The Cordless Max vacuums all of the time as you move it forwards and backwards, but there’s a trigger to release cleaning fluid, which comes out over the roller.

Once you release the trigger, the floor cleaner then sucks up the dirty water (and any other debris) into the waste tank. The tank has a capacity of 0.55 litres, so you’ll likely have to empty it a couple of times for each full tank of cleaning solution.

Since the CrossWave Cordless Max is also a vacuum cleaner, it can happily suck up large bits of debris. As such, there’s no need to vacuum the floor first, as you’d have to when using a steam mop.

Cleverly, there’s a filter in the dirty water tank, which separates the larger bits of debris and pet hair from the water. You can just pull out this filter and throw away the dirt, pouring just dirty water away down the sink, without fear of causing a blockage. Both the tank and its filter can be easily rinsed clean.

Manoeuvrability is good, with the jointed head letting you sweep around and through bits of furniture and chairs. The only issue you might have is that there are now detail tools, so you may still have to clean some areas by hand if you can’t physically get the CrossWave Cordless Max’s head into a spot.

Handy LED lights at the front of the Cordless Max illuminate the area you’re cleaning, so you’re unlikely to miss any dirt.

Bissell CrossWave Cordless Max performance – Makes short work of hard floors and can tackle lighter stains on carpets and rugs too

• Works well as a vacuum cleaner
• Deals with tough hard floor stains
• Can cope with lighter staining on carpet or rugs

To test out the Bissell CrossWave Cordless Max, I put it through a series of real-world tests, combining both vacuum and hard floor cleaning. First, I started by spreading a teaspoon of flour onto the kitchen floor, right up against the skirting board. Running the cleaner through on vacuum mode, it picked up most of it when running the head along the skirting. Bissell says that the edge performance is 60% better here than on the CrossWave Cordless – and it would appear so; there was just a small trace of dirt left to be collected.

Next, I sprinkled a teaspoon of rice onto the floor, then ran the cleaner over it. Here, it picked up everything without dropping any grains back onto the floor, showing that this cleaner can easily cope with bigger debris.

Next, I tested its cleaning performance. My kitchen floor often gets quite dirty because I have three cats that regularly walk in and out, bringing in mud from outside. The CrossWave Cordless Max made short work of even toughs stains that some floor cleaners struggle with, leaving a clean and relatively dry floor.

More regular mess proved a cinch, with only a few sweeps required to leave a muddy floor super-clean.

This cleaner also claims to be able to handle stains on rugs, so I put it to the test on a dried-on ketchup stain. Here, performance was okay, getting rid of most of the stain, leaving only a trace amount behind.

Note that you should only use this cleaner on rugs that are marked as suitable for wet cleaning (look out for W or WS on the care label). For day-to-day cleaning, the CrossWave Cordless Max can handle all surfaces, but if your home is mainly carpeted, or you need to deal with tougher stains, then a proper carpet cleaner such as the Vax Platinum SmartWash might make more sense.

This model offers 30 minutes of run-time from the powerful 36V battery: that’s five more minutes than the standard CrossWave Cordless. Not only that, but since cleaning ability has been improved, you’ll be able to cover a wider area on a single charge. I managed to clean my entire downstairs, plus the loft-conversion bedroom and bathroom on a single charge, and I still had a bit of juice remaining.

On running out of power, the CrossWave Cordless Max takes four hours to recharge. Depending on the size of your home, then, you may need to schedule your cleaning over a couple of days.

In terms of noise, I measured the cleaner at 76.9dB, which is similar to a regular cordless vacuum cleaner: you’ll hear it, but it isn’t unpleasant to use.

Bissell CrossWave Cordless Max Conclusion

A lighter, more powerful cleaner than its predecessor, the combination of vacuum and cleaning performance makes the Bissell CrossWave Cordless Max a great all-round tool for keeping hard floors and the occasional rug at the best. It’s expensive, though, so if your budget is smaller then check out my guide to the best hard floor cleaners has alternatives.