I wish I could rate the Bissell SpinWave higher, because I can't imagine cleaning my laminate floors without it now. It's easy to use and gentle. I haven't seen a better option, so when it finally dies, I'll probably have to buy another. But there are things that could be better, and it isn't so durable, with mediocre product support. First, the good. The SpinWave cleans effectively and gently. It doesn't clean with much pressure; the pads spin gently on the floor, polishing with the help of solution you can dispense from the tank with the press of a button. Unless something is stuck in the pads or the screw comes loose, there doesn't seem to be much risk of scratching the floor. While spots don't come up immediately, several light passes will usually do it. (You might have trouble with something that's really ground in, but I have yet to face anything on a laminate floor that can't be gotten up by gently passing the mop over it several times, reapplying cleaning solution in between.) The spinning motion means the SpinWave is gently self-propelled; it very lightly pulls your arm forward, in such a way that it keeps moving but you can still fully control the motion. I think that's just a side effect of the spinning motion, but it's nice. And being cordless is excellent! It makes mopping so much easier not to have to work around a cord. The unit isn't silent, but it is reasonably quiet. It's easy to maneuver, and the head is small enough to mop under furniture, though it will obviously only go as far as the head with the pads will reach. When it's working, it does its job well, and it's become an indispensable cleaning tool. That said, there are some things that could be improved. First, the battery life isn't great. Expect to have enough charge to clean one or two reasonable-sized rooms; I can basically do the downstairs of a small house—less than 600 sq ft in total—before the battery dies. Once it's dead, the charge time is several hours. On the one hand, that's fair from a small portable unit. But it would have been so easy to avoid this problem. Bissell could have designed this with a swappable battery, so that you could have one battery in the unit and another on a charger. Or they could have designed it so that it can also run from AC power (you plug the power directly into the unit; the battery is non-removable). Either simple change would have extended the life of the unit indefinitely and made it useable for much bigger cleaning jobs. Another deficiency is the water tank. You're supposed to mix up the solution by filling the tank to a mark with warm water, then topping it off to another mark with Bissell's cleaning solution. There are two levels marked on the tank, a smaller and a larger. The problem is that even the smaller measure is way too much solution given the battery life. I don't know if they're imagining people just soaking their floors, but for me the point of the SpinWave over other electric mops is to mop a laminate floor gently, using a minimum of solution, the way I would with a flat mop. If I make up the solution to the smaller mark, I won't even use half of it before the battery expires. (And since it performs best when the water/solution is warm from the tap, there's no point mixing up extra even if I plan to return to cleaning on the same day.) I've had to improvise by figuring out the proportions and marking new measures on the tank. But I can't imagine a world in which even the most aggressive wet cleaner would ever use a full tank, so the tank and its markings feel like nothing so much as a scheme to sell more Bissell solution (which is, of course, the only brand they recommend you use). Now, the ugly. I mentioned durability problems. After I'd had it for well under two years, one of the discs stopped spinning. When I unscrewed the disc to find out why, the problem was obvious. The discs themselves are all plastic; they are screwed onto metal shafts with two flat sides. Well, I guess the disc had stuck and the shaft had completely ground away the flats on the plastic mold, so the hole in the disc was now perfectly round and no longer gripped the shaft. That could be avoided by giving the discs some reinforcement so they weren't just plastic on metal, but that's neither here nor there. Bissell sells replacement parts; in my case I needed Part 1611710. (The discs themselves are interchangeable, by the way, but the screw for one disc is threaded in reverse.) I'm always glad when parts are readily available, but I wasn't impressed with the longevity of the mop, so I contacted Bissell to ask if they would be willing to provide a replacement. My SpinWave was over a year old and so not under warranty, so they did not provide a replacement. That's fine (although I do with the product lasted better). What was absurd, though, was my email exchange with customer service. In my initial email I provided a very clear description of the exact problem with the precise part that was damaged. At first, the email rep directed me to walk through a series of troubleshooting steps that clearly didn't apply, because I had already explained the mechanical problem. Okay, so they're on a script. But when I replied explaining that those steps didn't work and restating the problem, after telling me that my unit was out of warranty, the rep proceeded to direct me to a service center in a city over an hour away! All I needed was a $16 part, and if the rep had directed me to the appropriate parts page, I might not have finally felt inspired to write this review. I had clearly explained the problem, and it can be fixed in about 2 minutes; it would be ridiculous to go to a service center for it. Declining to provide free parts for an out-of-warranty product is fine; directing customers to an expensive service call instead of an easy fix with parts that Bissell sells is decidedly customer-unfriendly. Really what that means is that they need to train reps to give genuine responses instead of solely following a script, but between the poor service and the fact that the product didn't last, I'm less than impressed. And yet, as I said, it's hard to imagine cleaning without it; it's cut lots of time and effort from my cleaning, and when it breaks in a way that can't be repaired, unless there's a better option out there by then, I'll probably replace, it, despite that ridiculous interaction and some definite deficiencies in design. So take that for what you will.
