I bought this to maintain the carpet in our home. We have two young children and no pets. The deep clean mode works great. I could see using the express clean mode just to maintain the carpet in between deep cleans. My son spilled an entire container of cocoa powder on the carpet. After using the vacuum cleaner my entire carpet was a rust color. I used this machine to clean it the next day and you couldn't tell that there was ever cocoa powder. It did take hours and many many passes with the carpet cleaner, but my carpet is clean. Worth the money, in my opinion.