The addition of a large HEPA filter ring inside the hood of this vacuum is the main element that stands it apart from a regular red Henry. The floorhead latches on at the back of the vacuum, keeping the hose and pipes in an upright position, so you’ll need a tall storage space. For even better results on hard-floors, Henry Allergy is equipped with a specialist FreeFlo Tool, giving you optimum pick-up, wherever you need it most. You just twist the flexible hose into Henry’s nose, slot the metal wand tubes together (choosing how long you want it to be depending on your height), add your chosen cleaning tool and off you go.

The second thing you might notice, or you certainly will once you hit a rug or carpet, is that the power can prove a little too fierce. Able to trap particles up to 800 times smaller in width than a human hair, time’s truly up for those household pet and dust allergens. From the outside, the main difference between the Henry Allergy HVA160 and the standard Henry is the colour; the Henry Allergy is decked out in a light blue colour. And the cleaning was truly excellent, it’s easy to see why Henry vacuums are a top choice for commercial cleaning.Capable of trapping even the tiniest particles, the vacuum cleaner combines HEPA and TriTex filters with HepaFlo bags to capture even the tiniest particles. This means that you don’t need to empty every time you use it (which is what I do with my existing bagless upright). We have expanses of oak wood and porcelain floor tiles in our house, especially in the open plan kitchen/diner area, so I popped on the FreeFlo tool for hard floors and immediately felt the strong suction connection with the floor surface. I had to open the vent every time I moved onto a rug or carpet and often forgot to close it again, but the suction is so good, it probably didn’t matter. Firstly, there is something to be said about corded vacuums; they are reliable, and if you live in a busy household, you will know all too well the frustration of going to use the vacuum only to realise it has little to no charge left on it.

Today, we have millions of users a month from around the world, and assess more than 1,000 products a year. The beauty of bagged vacuums is there’s precious little maintenance required in terms of cleaning, compared to bagless, which seem to need a full internal scrub down every week or two to maintain suction. I didn’t find the latter particularly useful; I found it easier to stick with the regular floor head.

The box was not as heavy as one would expect, and I was able to lift it up a flight of stairs without assistance. I can’t honestly say whether it significantly improved my daughter’s allergies, not least because they vary by the day/season, but I definitely noticed that the surfaces in our house were less dusty.

Coupled with this NVR170 has a handy shaped handle that allows you to easily carry the NVR170 with the wand on top of the handle as per the below photo. Offering the same quality performance as the regular Numatic Henry, the Henry Allergy HVA160 adds an extra HEPA filter to keep everything locked away.The products will have batteries which exceed 80% capacity relative to new and will function like new. When I tried it, I didn’t find it any better or easier to manoeuvre than the main floorhead supplied and certainly didn’t want to be switching floorheads in rooms that were solid floor and rugs. Admittedly it is corded but being tethered to the wall is worth it for the raw suction power in play. The henry NVR170 Allergy's advanced filtration system and specialist tool kit reduce this exposure to per related allergens.

I used the hard floor head initially, but this proved quite difficult to push, so I swapped for the regular head, set to hard floor mode. A Tool for Every Job – There are hotspots for allergens all around the home, including carpets, upholstery, mattresses and stairs, but Henry Allergy has a tool to reach them all.For our hair and fibre tests we comb real cat and dog hair into wilton carpet and then time how long it takes for each vacuum cleaner to suck it all up, the best can do it in less than 30 seconds, the worst take more than three minutes.