This post contains items gifted by HooverDirect.co.uk for the purposes of this review. All views and opinions are my own.
I’m very much a fan of household items that are functional, fulfil their purpose and which don’t dominate your living space. So, it shouldn’t be a surprise that when I was offered a H-FREE 500 Twin Battery 3 in 1 Cordless Stick Vacuum Cleaner (this is the top of the range from this series) to review I was keen to see if a compact hoover could deliver great performance (spoiler – it can). When it arrived, I was surprised at just how compact it was.
As you can see from the picture below, it’s not a usual sized vacuum cleaner box – it’s just a bit more than half way over the height of the radiator. And in that box, there’s a lot of vacuum cleaner.
It’s also really well packaged. The items are separated by cardboard with each piece in its place, getting so much into the space available is a pretty mean feat. Add to that, that for my area, all bar two bits of the packaging are recyclable in our kerbside bin, and that’s also good news.
In the box, along with the unassembled cordless H-Free 500 is a crevice tool, pet brush, additional filter, two battery packs, a dusting and upholstery tool (which is stored on the handheld), a bag for the accessories and the quick start guide and manuals, as well as a wall mount and screws (not shown).
The instruction manual shows clearly how to assemble the cleaner, but it’s really intuitive and so you’ll not be surprised that I went ahead without referring to the manual, looking at it to check that I was on track. When it’s fully assembled (see the picture below) it’s a fully sized cordless vacuum cleaner, which I was keen to put to the test.
I expected to need to charge it though before I could get started, so it was a pleasant surprise to discover it already had some power, but more on that in a moment. First let me show you the cordless hoover in its compacted form – it was easy to switch into this mode – and you can see it’s clearly reduced in height, which will make it easy to store. It’s also pretty sturdy standing alone in both set-ups, another plus in my view.
What’s equally impressive is the dual battery – that allows you to have the second battery charged and ready to go, I can see that being a real advantage. On the Hoover Direct website, it says that ‘each battery pack gives up to 40 minutes of power in auto mode, 25 minutes in standard mode, or 8 minutes in turbo mode’. The other thing to note about charging the HF500 is that it can be plugged in anywhere, so there’s none of this ‘returning to base’ for a charge which gives it even more flexibility which would have come in really useful for my MIL’s house move at the start of the year.
But back to giving it a test drive.
As you know I’ve been working from home in my ‘top’ office for a while now, it’s a room that I’m using so much more than in all the time we’ve lived here. That’s true for MOH and our spare room too though to be fair. What we’re finding is that our house gets way more dusty than we noticed when we were out at the office each day (or maybe it doesn’t and we’re just noticing it more, who knows!)
My ‘top’ office also doubles as my yoga space, and recently it was when I was supposed to be emptying my mind that I noticed just how dusty part of the floor was. Embarrassingly so, but in my defence it’s where our washing dries and at this time of year it’s put to good use – yet another use for my ‘top’ office, which despite the picture I’m painting really is a nice spot to work in. For a start it’s not the kitchen table and it gets the warmth of the sun from being at the front of the house – but back to the dust.
What the HF500 does really well is switch easily between carpet and non-carpet. The LED lights really do help you find the hidden – or in my case, not so hidden – dust. And reassuringly it’s definitely much cleaner now – my yoga sessions can go back to being much more relaxing.
I also want to share more about the dusting tool – and once again my home office set-up provided the perfect place to test the handheld mode. Removing the pink tube – I forgot to mention how much that made me smile when I opened the box – and fixing the dusting tool in place, I was off – there was no stopping me – skirting boards, radiator pipes and my ‘borrowed from the office during lockdown’ footrest. It’s amazing how much the HF500 picked up from these areas alone – and clearly I’m going to claim that it was my plan all along to have somewhere where the difference is obvious… ahem. But I’ve also tested its pick-up power in much higher traffic areas – and therefore more often cleaned areas - of our home, and even there it’s making our space much cleaner, and that’s no bad thing, especially when it’s easy to achieve too.
So it’s a big thumbs up from me, and I know MOH is itching to get his hands on it too to give it his own test drive, and well, who am I to argue with that?
View this product on Hoover Direct.
* With thanks to Hoover Direct for providing the Hoover H-FREE 500 Twin Battery 3 in 1 Cordless Stick Vacuum Cleaner for the purposes of this review.
