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Bissell 5200 Flip-It Bare Floor Cleaner

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Brand: Bissell
Category: Kitchen

List Price: ~~$129.99~~
Buy New: $68.95
You Save: $61.04 (47%)

New (26) Used (1) from $50.00

Avg. Customer Rating: 3.0 out of 5 stars

149 reviews
Sales Rank: 19152

Color: Acier blue
Autographed: No
Memorabilia: No
Number Of Items: 1
Batteries Included: No
Shipping Weight (lbs): 12.5
Dimensions (in): 31.8 x 13.5 x 9.5
Warranty: 1

MPN: 5200
Model: 5200
UPC: 011120002652
EAN: 0011120002652
ASIN: B0002IG4U0

Release Date: October 15, 2004
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days

Customer Reviews:

Showing reviews 146-149 of 149

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I have 3 shedding dogs and a tough floor to clean. November 12, 2004
176 out of 176 found this review helpful

I have 3 large dogs that drool any water left in their mouths after a drink, and a large textured ceramic floor that collects dirt in the grooves of the texture. I bought a Hoover Floor-mate in hopes of eliminating the mop and bucket, and because I felt that after a while I was pushing around dirty water. The Floor-mate did pick up a lot of dirt, but it is too large to get under cabinets and the brushes are too soft and too high to get into the crevices of the texture in the ceramic.

I decided to try the Flip-It because it is supposed to vacuum and wash the floor. First of all, you really have to vacuum first and clean the receptacle before washing. Otherwise, you will end up with a yucky mess to clean from the receptable and filter. I didn't find that the vacuum blew the hair as one other buy had reported, but I agree that it doesn't vacuum very well. It picked up some hair and small crumbs, but didn't get all of it. This was obvious when I washed the floor. More hair was picked up in the washing process.

With the rubber brush and a little pressure, this cleaner did get much more of the dirt out of the floor texture. I still had to scrub some with the brush on the unit, but I would have to do the same with a sponge mop. At least with this cleaner, the dirty water is vacuumed up and clean solution is dispensed for the next section. Even with my uneven floor, the unit did pick up the water, and the floor dried quickly.

The first floor bathroom, hall, kitchen, and foyer are pretty large, kitchen alone is about 12' x 18'. I had to refill the cleaner 3 times. I filled the unit with hot water from the tap. So maybe that helped. I don't think this is too bad because I had to refill the Floor-mate as many times and it didn't get the floor as clean.

I wouldn't use this unit as a vacuum again, but as a hard floor cleaner, I think it works well on floors that need more scrubbing than a soft brush.

2 out of 5 stars

I'm returning it. November 3, 2004
15 out of 21 found this review helpful

I was very unhappy with this product. The suction for the dry vacuum was very weak. The air blowing out the side of the vacuum actually blew the dirt away before I could vacuum it up. The wet vac left streaks and did not dry the floor. The cord got in the way while using it. It is actually less time consuming using my regular vacuum and then mopping. Although it is a small vacuum, it was bulky and difficult to use.

5 out of 5 stars

Goodbye mop & broom October 21, 2004
30 out of 35 found this review helpful

I have had a Bissell steam cleaner for years and it works great, so when I saw the Flip it I had to give it a try. It's much easier to put together than the steam cleaner I bought a few years ago. There was only 1 screw for the handle and that was it. It comes with 2 trial formulas, one for wood and one for other hard surfaces. I only used the one for hard surfaces and it smelled really good and seemes to do the job well. The dirty water in the tank was black when I went to empty it. Hard to imagine that I was walking around on that grime. The dry vacuum function worked well too getting up crumbs, dirt, etc. You can choose between a scrub brush or a soft cloth for cleaning your floor depending on the type of surface. I no longer need to use a mop and broom as the Flip it takes the place of both. It is also quite a bit cheapr than other models I have looked at in the past.

3 out of 5 stars

Has serious drawbacks October 1, 2004
406 out of 419 found this review helpful

Purchased the Flip-It a couple of days ago, so my review is based on only one cleaning of kitchen tile floor. But it was enough to reveal serious flaws in the design and manufacturing of this device. Overall, I'm not satisfied with this unit, mainly for three reasons: (1) due to the very poor dry pick-up due to the design flaw of air blowing down and dispersing the dirt you are supposed to pick-up, (2) the fact that you need to use a rag or mop to dry after the last square foot of floor space cleaned, (3) using this unit in a relatively small area is actually more difficult and considerably slower than using a mop, unless you leave the floor wet, which defeats the purpose of the drying function.

The idea to have separate dedicated dry vacuum side and wet pick-up side was what initially sold me on this unit. I was comparing to the Hoover Floor Mate models about which I read that dry pick-up is not very good, plus they are 60%-70% more expensive than the Bissell.

The unit indeed is very easy to assemble and was ready to use in less than 5 minutes after attaching the handle with one screw. The handle was a bit squeaky due to all screws being rather loose, so I tightened them about a 1/4 turn of the screwdriver to remedy this. The build quality seems fine and the motor noise acceptable (at least compared to the overly noisy full-size Hoover SteamVac I got for carpets, which by the way cleans carpets very well).

I noticed that the amperage rating of this unit is only 3 amps. Compare this to the 10-12 amps of most regular vacuums or carpet cleaners (or the 5 or more amps on wet/dry vacs you might use in your garage) and you will get an idea of the suction power. It turned later that indeed it is not very strong (but it would have been adequate if not for the serious design problem which rendered the unit useless for dry pick-up)

After filling in the solution tank with the supplied hard floor cleaning solution and warm tap water, I was ready to try it.

First I tried the dry vacuum function. Immediately, I noticed that as soon as I approach a piece of lint, dust or any light particle on the floor within a few inches in front or to the side of the cleaning head, the exhaust air stream would blow it AWAY from the cleaning path. This makes it impossible to even go near the things you want to suck-in, unless they are heavy enough to not be moved by the exhaust air stream. Once over them, the suction is OK to retrieve them in the dirty tank.

I thought I perhaps assembled the unit incorrectly, which would be hard if not impossible to do. Still, I reassembled it more carefully, taking care that all openings fit where they should snugly. Same problem! Then I removed the dirty tank to look at what's going on (exhaust air was escaping at a great force down from around the elliptical opening on the back of the dirty tank - this is on the top/front side when you vacuum and on the back/bottom when you wet pick-up). There are two plastic ducts on the inside of the machine, which blow air down for some reason. The actual exhaust port is pointed sideways as it should, and is blowing air out too. But it looks too small, so most of the exhaust air actually comes out through these two openings. The dirty tank is supposed to block the air from escaping down to the floor, or at least to the front in dry pick-up mode. It has some insulation on the inside of the machine, but it is not adequate, so air escapes around the dirty tank and out down through the opening and towards the floor. In effect, the exhaust air blows down pushing away any light debris that you try to approach...

So much for dry pick-up - not good and definitely not usable for anything but stuff like cheerios, heavy crumbs or seeds (hair and light stuff moves away due to the exhaust blowing down).

Second, I tried the wet pick-up with the supplied brush installed. This works OK - cleans dirty step marks fine and dries the water. BUT ONLY if you go backwards - moving forward, after the brush has been already saturated with water/solution, leaves a wet streak even if you no longer push the spray trigger. So you need to move backwards to leave the floor dry in front of the machine...

It does a fair enough job of drying the tiles and the water in the dirty tank was quite dirty. The kitchen floor was cleaned well enough, although sticky stuff had to be scraped-out by hand (a steamer would have loosened and cleaned these out).

Although it does not look to be the case, I hope I have a defective unit - after all I'm probably one of the first customers to buy this at Sears the day they received it in the store... It would be a pity if this relatively moderately priced device with good potential fails miserably due to poor design or execution...

I'd be curious if other reviewers experience the same problem.

--- Update 10-7-2004 --- While returning the cleaner to Sears, I tested the floor model. It has the same problem blowing air down from the same place mine did. I'm starting to think that if the engineers flipped (!) the cleaning head 180 degrees so that only the wet pick-up is affected by the downdraft, it will actually help dry the floor, and it won't interfere with the dry pick-up, as it will be blowing now behind the cleaning head in dry mode instead of in front of it... Getting a less restrictive exhaust port would help too. The only other change needed might be to put the outlet on the clean water tank on the opposite side when they rotate the head to allow all solution to drain to the bottom. I'd try this if I had my unit still with me, but now it's too late :(. My only hope now, besides finding something affordable that works, is when Flip-It 5200 "Plus" (a.k.a. revision 2 with all bugs fixed) comes out with these changes implemented, I'd get a dollar for each one sold, or at least a free one :)

One other thing I forgot to mention was that the capacity of the water tank was sufficient to clean my kitchen of about 15'x8' with a 6'x3' counter in the middle. So for larger rooms you will need to refill halfway through.

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