Black & Decker FLEX Cordless Mini Canister Vac
The FLEX Cordless Vac from Black & Decker is a great household and shop vac for quick cleanups of dirt, dust, pet hair and more with the handy and light vacuum.
I have an update regarding the batteries and possibility of making your own here:
http://www.jeffsreviews.com/updates/flex%20update/flex%20update.html
Ease of Use, Performance: 19/25
Look & Feel: 23/25
Features 20/25
How much I enjoy 20/25
Total: 82/100
The Black & Decker FLEX is a cordless canister vacuum that is handy for quick pickups around the house and garage with handy portability from rechargeable internal batteries. While the FLEX is not your full powered shop vac you can rely on it for quick clean up of dirt, pet hair, dust and rocks from your floor, furniture and more.
The Black & Decker FLEX is a cordless vacuum using a small replaceable filter in the canister area and a plastic filter over the inner filter to separate the debris in the vacuum. The cordless nature using the small AC power adapter and the 10 internal batteries make the portable vac handy around the home.
The Black & Decker FLEX comes with the vacuum, 2-in-1 nozzle/brush tool, crevice tool, pet hair cleaning tool, storage caddy, filter and charger. The charger is your typical AC adapter that plugs into a wall outlet and into the base of the FLEX to charge the ten internal C cell batteries.
The batteries hold a charge well enough and allow for about five minutes of straight total vacuuming time when not shutting down the motor. This is the perfect quick pickup tool around the house for pet hair and for chasing down those little dust bunnies roaming around your hardwood floors.
The Black & Decker FLEX comes fully assembled except for putting the storage caddy onto the base of the vac and placing which ever two tools you want on the caddy. The tool caddy snaps into the base so that two tools can be stored on the caddy for quick access while you're working.
The Black & Decker FLEX can hold a charge well for such a small device and I found this makes a great house vac for quick cleanups. I have wanted to try some new vacuums for quick cleaning around my house since I took all the carpets out throughout the wooden floored home I bought a year ago.
The wooden floors are a great way to collect and distribute pet hair and dust around to the corners where they collect into and form those nefarious dust bunnies. I remember years ago owning a Dust Buster and how practically useless it was and wanted very much to try the current generation of home cordless vacuums.
The FLEX does a great job at quickly picking up dust, dirt and hair not only from a floor but from under cushions of couches and chairs as well as under the whole piece of furniture. The hose of the FLEX is your common size of vacuum hose so other hose attachments will fit on it from other vacuums as well as the three that come with it.
I found that other vacuum hose pieces would nicely fit on the end if you want to have a couple of straight extensions or other nozzles from other vacuums. Using a couple of spare vacuum hose extensions from old vacuums allows you to not have to bend over to vacuum in corners and around a room.
The small extensions that come with the FLEX give you an easy way to get in cracks like door frames and the weather stripping and in corners as well as in couches and chairs. The pet hair nozzle makes a great way to scrap off and pull hairs from carpets, chairs and cushions.
The pet hair cleaning tool has a rubber face with knobs to pull hairs as you scrub a cushion or surface to pull the hairs off the fabric with its gentle combing action. As you run the tool over a surface the hairs are pulled loose and then sucked into the tool and the canister so you can easily clean hair from furniture, fabric and cushions.
The 2-in-1 nozzle has a swing down brush on it so you can use the tool as a flat nozzle along a floor or turn the brush down and snap it into the down position. The 2-in-1 tool makes a nice tool for not only cleaning up floors or larger surfaces but a nice tool for getting dust and dirt from bumpy and odd surfaces like scroll work on a table or chair.
The nozzles make a nice selection without getting too crazy with all kinds of additional stuff to carry with your FLEX vac as you work. The FLEX has enough suction when empty to pull nuts and bolts or screws off the floor or a bench using a couple of one foot three inch extensions on the end of the curved hose end.
Even while full of pet hair and ready to empty the Flex has some suction but the vacuum does fill up quickly with my four pets which have given the Flex a good workout. I had no problems using the FLEX every day or every other day for the last couple of months with general pet hair cleanup around my home.
The hose can stretch out to about four feet and wraps around the body of the FLEX for easy storage so you can carry the unit and store it easily. The end of the hose with its snap clip to hold attachments is about a foot long and is curved to make cleaning easier.
Using the FLEX is easy and like I said you can use extensions and tools from other vacuums that use the common inch and a quarter hose end size. Cleaning out and emptying the FLEX is very simple with a flip of the door latch and simple tip of the tool into a garbage can.
With pet hair you may have to pull out the hair that winds around the central filter but this is very easy to do, even when clogged I had no problems taking the hose off to get at all the hair. The hose attaches to the body with two Philips head screws and easily comes off for simple cleaning of the attach point if you need to.
The door latch holds the plastic door with its hole in the middle for the end of the filter cleaning wheel that is simply used to move the filter around. When using the FLEX you can move the filter so it has a different area near the hose entry point to keep suction at its maximum.
The end of this plastic cover sits in the hole of the door so you can move and present a new area to the hose suction while in use but I found it did not have to be done all that often. I would usually just empty the filter and FLEX of the dirt and debris collected and clean the filter at the same time.
Since receiving the FLEX I have gotten into a quick routine for cleaning up pet hair and those dust bunnies around my house on an almost daily basis. I get the FLEX out and the two extension tubes and wander around my house from the dining room to the living room and then up the stairs.
The next day I simply reverse the order and hit my kitchen and back stairs to get the second half of the area I need to keep free of mainly pet hair. The FLEX does not have enough battery life to vacuum about 1500 square feet of the area of my living room, dining room, kitchen and two stair cases.
While having a larger battery would be nice for being able to do more work at once it would also mean more weight for the FLEX which is a balancing act for this type of quick use vacuum. The compromise of ten C batteries and being able to vacuum for the short time of five minutes balanced against the weight makes sense.
The FLEX vac is a great household vacuum for quick pick up of dust, dirt and pet hair on the floor, furniture and around the house or garage. I highly recommend the Black & Decker FLEX for a convenient and simple vacuum for light duty around the home or shop to pick up dirt, dust and especially pet hair.