Suck it and see
With more activity inside the home during lockdown, have you found that the place is dirtier? Sitting around eating biscuits all day will result in a lot of crumbs, and keeping on top of the clean-up can be a pain in the arse not of us need right now. That's why we've welcomed the chance to test a handy little sucker; the Hoover H-HANDY 700 vacuum cleaner.
This little beast of a hoover (and we can legitimately call it that, as it's made by Hoover) is a held-held, cordless vacuum cleaner designed for small spills and general dusting. While no good at full-house vacuuming, this has been created to offer a handy (again, it's called HANDY) grab-and-clean solution for those little jobs.
At just 42cm in length, the Hoover H-HANDY 700 is one of the most compact and lightweight 'hand-helds' we've ever tested. It's also very sleek, with no bulky dust compartment or battery pack to add to the weight. Shipped along with the vac is the upright charging cradle and a brush head accessory. A charge of two hours will give you a cleaning time of 12 minutes, which, in all honesty, doesn't sound like much. But wait..
Hoover have clearly considered a design that compacts everything down as much as possible, while still being practically useful. The internal storage, where the dust and crumbs end up, is just 0.15 litres, so it really doesn't take much to fill it. That, balanced with the sheer force of suction the Hoover H-HANDY 700 vacuum cleaner can produce, and that 12 minute battery makes a lot more sense.
Charging is a simple case of dropping the vac onto the cradle, which uses contacts to pass the power over. No fiddly wires, no batteries to remove; you just drop it on and forget about it until you spill another packet of crisps over the dog. Like the cleaning unit itself, the charging process is very H-HANDY. Tee hee.
As mentioned above, the included accessory slots onto the business end of the vac and offers added brushy-fun. The single piece can be used to get into nooks and crannies, as well as for hoovering dust with the long bristled brush, and upholstery with the very short bristled brush. The piece then slots very tidily away on the back of the charging cradle, making the whole package very neat.
In use the Hoover H-HANDY 700 vacuum cleaner worked best on counter-top spills of dry stuff, and for giving furniture general clean-ups. We never used it for more than a 30 second hoovering, so found both the battery life and capacity fine. We can imagine it being used more in homes with lots of shelves and dust-attracting surfaces, and the add-on brushes will help a tonne there.
For us the biggest selling point has to the size of the thing. A held-held vacuum cleaner is always a sound investment for homes of any type and size, but often they go overboard in terms of power and capacity, upping their size to rival full, 'whole-house' vacuum cleaners. The Hoover H-HANDY 700 keeps things simple yet effective.
Compact, easy to use, and appropriately powerful, we heartily recommend the Hoover H-HANDY 700 vacuum cleaner to fight those lockdown crumbs.
£99
Available from Amazon.com