Truly Sucks Beautifully

My elderly mother was in need of a new hand vacuum to replace her old one. Based on reviews here (and a personal recommendation from a friend), we checked out this vacuum and bought it. She is very pleased. Here is why.

She had two hand held vacuums, one by Dirt Devil, and one by Black and Decker. Although both of them cleaned moderately well, she had GREAT difficulty emptying the dust compartments. She lives in an apartment building and when the dust bin would fill up, she would leave it on the back step and a neighbor would take it to his tool shop and open it. There was no way she could do it without his help, and although I have reasonably strong hands, I could not do it without tools either.

She wanted a vac that she could use to clean up small messes. She has an upright (Kenmore) that she uses for larger messes, and a maid service comes every other week and blows the dust around with their vac and their feather dusters.

We looked at several products, and ended up buying this one at Sears for $59.95. The B&D dust bin is easy to empty, but so far she says she hasn't had to empty it. It folds up very nicely into a compact space, so it doesn't dominate the space in which she stores it. Its nozzle adjusts easily. It even has a knob that she can turn to shake some of the dust loose from the filter. Although it is fairly heavy for her (she has small hands and isn't particularly strong), she can use it well enough to vacuum crumbs from the table, or pick up crumbs off the kitchen floor, which are her primary uses. It has two suction modes: high and higher, and the suction lasts well. By comparison to my Dyson Root 6, it is not as good for suction, but it also costs only 1/3 of the price, which is a bonus. It also runs longer than the Dyson on its battery charge, also a plus.

It also has some extra nozzle attachments; she had hoped to find one that took the attachments from the old B&D but we realized that this would be improbable, and it was. I can think of two ways to improve it: first, it needs a second space to hold the extra attachments (there is only a fixture for one attachment); second, it could have a slightly longer run time (it lasts about 8 minutes on the lower speed and 6 on the higher).

Box wasn't particularly hard to open, although she couldn't do it.