Old Faithful (Henry HVR200)

Member Name: tomo359

Product:	Henry HVR200
Date:	12/11/08 (58 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Good suction, long lasting, easy to use

Disadvantages: Uses bags to hold dust and can be a little hard to replace them. A little heavy

Henry has always been our 'Old Faithful' as i have mentioned in my other vacuum review.
Henry only make one or two types of vacuum but they have done it so well they do not need other version of it as it works so well.
Ok we have had ours for quite a long time now and i think it may have been updated a bit since then so if it has i will be talking about our version.

Firstly it looks great. It has a face on the front with the hose acting as its nose, this makes it great for kids to be around as it will not look scary to them.
There is one hose that comes out the front. This can then be attached to different accessories such as a metal steel tube or a stairs cleaner. On the back of the vacuum is the power switch to turn the vacuum on and off. On the top is a fold down handle to make it easy to carry the vacuum but also means it can be stored easier.
Also on the top is a small knob on a rotating disk. This is used to retract the power cable. The cable comes out the side, near the power switch. You just pull it out and it comes out nice and smooth and is not stiff at all then you just turn the top place and the cable is retracted back inside the vacuum.
This vacuum uses a bag to store the dirt and dust in. This bag is accessed by removing the top black part of the vacuum. This is done by pulling two tabs outwards, one either side of the black lid. Then you lift the lid off revealing the bottom part of the vacuum. Here there is a cover which sits on top of the bag. Just lift this cover off and you see the bag. The bag is easy enough to remove. It just pulls off a connector but it is a bit harder to put a new one on. When you get new bags, the are packed flat, so first you have to open them up and then you have to feed the hole onto the plastic connector inside the vacuum. The hole is surrounded by a bit of rubber to act as a seal but it can mean it is quite stiff to get the back over the connector properly.
Apart from this, everything else is simple. It is getting a bit harder to find these bags, but most big supermarkets still do them, and often shops like Comet and Currys will do them or you could just buy them online. Amazon sells them fairly cheap. You usually get 5 bags in a pack and a bag will usually last a long time but if you find it hard to get these bags, buy several packs at one time so you have them stocked up. The bags can be quite expensive from stores but like i said, you can get them cheap at Amazon.

The black part of the vacuum i talked about earlier, this part contained the suction part. Its quite hard to explain how it all works as this is the suction part but the bag is separate. Anyway, how ever it works, it does work well.

The vacuum is fairly noisy when running but you soon get used to it, and it is quieter than the newer vacuum we bought recently (read my other review) but you will not be able to listen to music easily without turning it up load. Another thing i haven't mentioned yet is the vacuum is a bit heavy. It is fine for me but some people may struggle to carry it up stairs or lift it up onto a shelf, most people will be fine with it though.

Ok, the accessories you get included are a large main floor head which has pull down brushes for use on hard floors. You also get a smaller head for things like stairs, this also has a detachable brush head which slides onto it or hard floor. You then get a small round brush attachment for things like skirting boards, radiators and other small areas, then you get an angles thin nozzle to get into tight areas. All these attachments (apart from the main large head) all attach straight to the black hose with the help of a small black connector tube.
The large head (as seen in the picture) connect onto the end of the metal pipe. On this head there is a switch type thing to push the brushes down and to retract them again.
On the metal pipe itself there is a small black cover which turns open and closed to reveal a small hole to reduce suction on more delicate frabics and flooring.
The steel tube is made up of several parts, a couple of straight parts and a curved part. The curved part makes it comfortable to move around and because the tube is made of a few sections, a section can easily be removed for smaller people.
One problem regarding the accessories is there is no where to store them. You have to store them all separate. I just put the accessories in a small bag and i wrap the hose around the machine itself. It wraps round enough that you can lock it into itself so it will not unravel itself. We store everything in our airing cupboard. We put the vacuum itself on the shelf above the water tank. With the pole, we remove the curved part and store both parts at one side of the cupboard, then the accessories we put in a bag on the shelf next to the vacuum so we manage perfectly fine, but some people may not have this sort of space and may lose some of the accessories.

The vacuum is easy to move around using the 4 wheels on the bottom. Two small castor type wheens on the front which turn and two larger wheels on the back which only move forward and back. All the wheels move very easy making the vacuum extremely easy to move around your house. When you move forward the vacuum will follow you and if there is not enough power lead out, more will be pulled out with ease. The only small problem i sometimes find is if you go round a corner the vacuum can sometimes get stuck around the corner and will not pull round. But this doesn't happen much.

We have had this vacuum for many years now and never had any problems with it. It is powerful and has good suction.
It has never failed on us and we still use it a lot and we will be happy to use it for many years to come.

Summary: A good long lasting vacuum that we have been very happy with.

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