Turbocharged! (Numatic Henry Easy Ride Airo Brush)

Member Name: Alfettaman

Product:	Numatic Henry Easy Ride Airo Brush
Date:	07/08/09 (215 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Highly effective removal of hair and grit from carpets

Disadvantages: Noisy; needs to be cleaned periodically

Everyone I know of who's got a Numatic 'Henry' vacuum cleaner seems to love it, and there are certainly enough positive reviews online to suggest that its popularity is almost universal. Numatic have undoubtedly got an enduring success story on their hands with Henry - arguably the definitive commercial-grade 'canister' vacuum cleaner, with a developmental pedigree reaching back 40 years.

But there's an old adage that says "when you're at the top, the only way is down". So how on earth do you improve such a highly-developed, tried, tested and admired machine - albeit one that arguably originates from the late 1960s?

Easy: borrow an idea from the 1920s.

You might - or at least your parents and grandparents might - remember an old slogan that Hoover used for their classic upright vacuum cleaners, "it beats as it sweeps as it cleans". The 'beating and sweeping' bit was achieved by a motor-powered rotating brush that agitated the fibres in the carpet, just as the suction from the cleaner was about to pass over them. The result was that more of the grit buried deep down in your carpets (or just stubbornly clinging to the surface) would end up in the Hoover's dust bag.

Engineering a cylinder or canister vacuum cleaner to do that isn't easy because the suction head is mounted remotely from the machine, at the end of an air hose - so how are you going to get the rotating brush to rotate?

There have been some attempts although most of them seem to be either complicated and clumsy (tangly wires, heavy motors, fiddly switches...) or just plain ineffective. But with the Airo Brush, it seems that Numatic might have found a compelling solution.

Operating principle:
The Airo Brush takes full advantage of the considerable airflow (45 litres per second) generated by Henry's highly efficient motor to turn a 50mm diameter impeller that's just 40mm wide. It's connected by a gearwheel to a 240mm wide rotary brush, and the gears are chosen so that two revolutions of the little impeller will produce one revolution of the cylindrical brush.

Hey presto! An air-driven rotating brush just like on an upright vacuum cleaner, but with all of the "go anywhere" practicality of a canister cleaner - and with no extra motors or wires in sight.

In use:
Our Airo Brush came from cleanstore.co.uk for around £30, and setting up to use it couldn't have been any simpler: pull off the standard carpet brush that came with your Henry, and push the Airo Brush on. Check that the air-hole in Henry's handle is closed off, switch on (the high power setting, not the low one) and you're away.

Anyone who's driven a turbocharged car will immediately sense something familiar in the sound but, even so, it'll take you by surprise the first time you hear it, adding a slightly shrill harmonic to Henry's usual whirring sound. Put the cleaning head against your carpet and the rotary brush slows a little, with a commensurate - and welcome - reduction in the noise.

The next thing you'll probably notice is how very easy it is to glide the Airo Brush across your carpets. The reason is that this tool (unlike the standard one) is on wheels: two big ones at the back, two little ones at the front. The first time I used it, I almost felt as if I was cheating, because using a canister vacuum cleaner shouldn't be this easy. The direction of rotation means that the Airo Brush seems to work hardest on the backstroke - that is, when you're pulling it towards you.

The Airo Brush steers effortlessly and, despite the clever mechanism housed inside it, is only 70mm tall which makes it handy for getting under furniture. By the time you've finished vacuuming a room you'll appreciate just what a neat and ingenious feat of engineering it is. You'll also notice the improvement that it's made to your carpet, and understand why Numatic chose to call it the 'Easy Ride' Airo Brush.

Having used this for a year now, I'm quite convinced that our carpets are cleaner than they've ever been.

Downsides? Well, yes, there are a couple.

The rotary brush turns at considerable speed and sometimes long hairs (sharing the house with my wife, two daughters and a cat, I know about this) can get wrapped around the brush before Henry's had a chance to suck them up. You'll need to remove these hairs occasionally, and it's not the easiest of jobs because the rotary brush isn't removable from the rest of the tool.

Unlike an upright cleaner - where the brush is usually driven from the motor by a belt or gears - everything that Henry sucks up has to pass right through that 50mm impeller. Larger debris and pieces of grit can make a startling noise and anything bigger than about 6mm in diameter is probably going to get caught in the impeller's vanes and jam it, as can the tassels on a floor rug.

The good news is that there's a little trapdoor on the underside of the Airo Brush which you can remove without any tools, a bit like the battery cover on a portable radio. This exposes the impeller, and you can then hook out whatever jammed it, clip the cover back on, and you're back in business. I've only had a few of these 'jams' in a year of ownership, so it's not a big problem.

The Airo Brush might sound like a great way to transform any cylinder or canister vacuum cleaner (not just Henry), but I'd sound a note of caution here: Henry produces the very high airflow which, I think, is the secret of the Airo Brush's excellent performance. I've not tried it on other vacuum cleaners but I'd worry that some may simply not have the 'oomph' needed to work it properly.

One other thing to bear in mind is that this tool is intended very specifically for carpets, so you'll need to change back to the standard brush on hard floors.

Sum up:
Numatic have come up with another terrific product that extends the capabilities of their legendary vacuum cleaner, and certainly closes up the performance gap between Henry and a good upright when it comes to vacuuming carpets. It's a durable and well-engineered addition to Henry's toolkit, is easier to use than the standard carpet brush and gives outstanding results.

Oh - one last tip: if you've not already got a Henry then you could order the Henry Xtra HVX-200, which come with this tool as standard.

Summary: Go on, get him a turbocharger for his birthday...