Handheld vacuum cleaners Vax H90-LF-B Life Handheld

Vax H90-LF-B LiFE Handheld

Vax’s new Life Multipack gives you a set of two cordless vacuum cleaners - an upright (the Vax Life U91-LF-B) and a handheld – for £199.99. We gave the handheld, the H90-LF-B, a try to bring you our first impressions.

Getting started with the H90-LF-B is easy. It takes three hours to charge the battery initially – much less than some other handheld vacs – and the light on the charger changes to let you know when it’s fully charged. Operating the vac is simple as it only has one button – the off/switch – although this does mean that there’s only one power setting.

Longer-lasting

The H90-LF-B vacuumed continuously for an impressive 21 minutes, so you won’t have to charge it as often as other handheld vacs. It has three battery indicator lights which let you know how much power remains.

With some other cordless appliances, power will slowly fade, but Vax claims that the lithium ion battery of this cleaner maintains consistent strong suction until it is drained. When we tried it out, the suction appeared to remain just as strong until a few seconds before the battery ran out completely.

Suction power

The H90-LF-B seemed fairly good at picking up dust and food crumbs, but struggled to pull threads out of carpets and seemed to have no effect on trodden-in dirt.

It comes with two accessories - a crevice tool to help get into harder-to-reach spaces and a dusting brush. The latter wasn’t very useful as we weren’t able to keep it locked in place.

Emptying the H90-LF-B is simple, so there’s no chance of spilling dust on yourself.

It weighs 1.5 kg – heavier than some handheld vacs we’ve tested – but our researcher used it for more than 20 minutes continuously without any discomfort.

Pros: Very easy to use, easy to empty without spilling dust, good battery life

Cons: Won’t pick up everything from your carpet, heavy compared with competitors