Back in the 1980s, there was only one type of wipe. It was a refreshing innovation—literally—a scented wet wipe to inject energy into your face. Over the years, the industry evolved, marketing became more sophisticated, and today there are wipes for the face, countertops, hard and soft surfaces, bottoms, and whatnot.
In a way, the same transformation occurred in the vacuum cleaner industry. What began as a standard product in the 1960s and 70s turned into a whole discipline. From corded vacuums with bags, we saw the development of mini-vacuums, cordless vacuums, robotic vacuums, and the cutting-edge—washing vacuums that eliminate the need for a mop. In recent years, an essential little sibling has joined the family—the fabric cleaner, which serves one specific purpose the others can't—it washes sofas, carpets, and the like.
Lior Reuven, who founded Unico and made an exit of about NIS 12 million, founded the company Brilliant and began importing products by Deerma from the Xiaomi group. One of these is the flagship washing vacuum, the by-700, which can heat water to steam in just 30 seconds. It's suitable for sofas, carpets, curtains, car upholstery, and windows. It includes three operating modes: room-temperature water for delicate fabrics, warm water, and 100°C steam for deep cleaning and sanitizing up to 100% of bacteria and up to 99.9% of dust mite residues. The cleaner comes with 5 cleaning brushes, a 5-meter power cable, voice function, and indicator buttons, at a price of NIS 1,390, including a one-year importer warranty.
We gave it to a tester who had long complained about having no solution for cleaning sofas and carpets at home. Here's her impression.
“This vacuum is what we needed and didn’t even know it,” she says. “For a long time, we wanted to book a professional sofa cleaning service because when you have dogs at home, deep cleaning is something you just have to do regularly. When I received the product for trial, I realized it’s truly life-changing for us.”
She adds with a smile, “It should probably come with an addiction warning because from the moment we started cleaning, we worked for two full days on every surface in the house—mattresses, carpets, car seats, surfaces, and even curtains. The addiction comes from how satisfying it is to see all the dirt being sucked out and the visible difference between the cleaned areas and those not yet cleaned. Another satisfying—and admittedly a bit gross—moment was seeing the dirty water when emptying the tank.”
The tester notes, “The product is very convenient thanks to the various brush sizes, which allow for vacuuming on surfaces with unconventional shapes and sizes. The long cable is also helpful, giving full flexibility of movement, especially when the power outlet is far. There’s an option to use it with or without heating the water and vacuum, although we only used the heat option.”
She does emphasize that while the vacuum is very effective, when dealing with large or numerous surfaces, it requires a considerable amount of effort—not necessarily physical, but rather the repetitive action of moving the brush back and forth: “To scrub the area and suck up all the water, it’s important to keep the brush pressed against the surface at all times to maintain the vacuum for drawing the water into the tank. It’s not hard work, but on large surfaces, you should expect to get a bit tired. Also, you’ll need to refill the water often and empty the dirty water tank. Still, after the initial deep clean, all that’s needed is occasional spot cleaning to maintain the results, and a full deep clean only when necessary.”
The downside, she points out, is that the device doesn’t come with soap (by the way, in the washing vacuum category, some include soap and others don’t). However, cleaning can be done by spraying fabric-cleaning shampoo onto the surface or by pouring a small amount of non-foaming soap into the tank.
So what’s the bottom line?
NIS 1,400 isn’t a small amount, but if you need to clean fabrics on a daily or even weekly basis, this may turn out to be one of the best investments you’ll make in home maintenance.