Black+Decker dustbuster 8V Review

While it's lightweight and comes with a built-in crevice tool, a host of other design flaws make for a less-than-awesome user experience. Let's dive into our test results to find out why.

Tough Messes

Handheld vacuums are generally intended for lighter messes and quick cleanups, but we like to see how each model handles something a little burlier. A handheld should be able to tackle minor spills in the kitchen or the remnants of a dropped bite in a car. To test this, I sprinkled oats and mini wheat cereal over couch cushions, car upholstery, and hardwood floors and gave each vacuum 20 seconds to clean on each surface.

The dustbuster 8V performed surprisingly well in my tough mess testing. On car upholstery, I was able to clean about 95% of the oats I set out, although I did find that despite multiple passes, the vacuum was stubbornly unable to pick up the final bits of oat and dust. At a quick glance, the area looked clean, but closer inspection showed it wasn't quite there. I had similar results with oats on couch cushions, with the V8 picking up most of the largest pieces but leaving behind a frustrating quantity of dust.

Like many handheld vacuums, the dustbuster's nozzle was only just wide enough to admit a Mini-Wheat. Some of the cereal pieces got wedged in the intake, blocking it until I pulled them loose. But, considering that some handhelds cannot suck up the ceareal at all, I considered this one functional for larger debris. It wasn't optimal performance, but it got the job done.

Hard-to-Reach Areas

The ability to get into tight spaces is one of the great things about handheld vacuums. From the gap between couch cushions to the base of a car's center console, there are tons of areas that catch detritus and pile up dust but are simply too small to be cleaned with a conventional vacuum. To see how each handheld vacuum performed in tight spaces, I used cardboard to create a low, wide space, similar in dimension to the gap under an oven or car seat. Then, to assess performance in a taller, narrower space, I vacuumed a window slide. I used oatmeal and coffee grounds for both tests.

The V8 comes with a built-in crevice tool, but it's quite short. I found that between this and the stout vacuum body, I could really only clean about 3 inches under the low ceiling I'd created. I think it would perform similarly in any confined space, making it not the best choice if you're interested in a detailed clean in a car, under furniture, or inside cabinets. It felt similarly limited on the window slide, which I spent several minutes on, even tackling it from both the inside and outside.

Ultimately, the nozzle failed to get a good seal on the narrow, uneven surface, and its suction power was so weak that it couldn't pull in the debris, so it wasn't positioned directly over. I also found the trigger activation frustrating in tight spaces because if you want the vacuum to be running, you can really only hold it one way. Overall, I wouldn't choose this vacuum if I knew I was going to be cleaning a lot of tight spaces.

Dusting

Dust is universal: it's in our cars and our houses, on our books and our windowsills, constantly accumulating and regenerating. So, if we buy a handheld vacuum, we want to know that it can do some dusting. To assess this, I used a wool cloth to create a static charge on a smooth plastic surface and then sprinkled it with flour, which comes in particles of a similar size to household dust.

Then, to get an idea of each vacuum's capabilities on more irregular surfaces, I sprinkled coffee grounds along the base of a wall corner and along a strip of baseboard. The vacuums I tested showed a wide range of capability in these simple but representative trials. The dustbuster V8 didn't perform the worst, but it wasn't far off.

On my flat surface, it did a decent job with the initial cleanup, but struggled to eliminate the film of flour that was left over after the first pass. This wasn't a problem unique to this vacuum, but it did feel more persistent here. I vacuumed for almost a minute and was still left with flour dust. Though other vacuums struggled with the same problem, they were far faster at eliminating most of the flour.

In corners, the V8 actually performed pretty well. The semi-circle of short, stiff bristles on the nozzle helped to achieve a good seal against the wall and floor, and the coffee grounds I laid out were taken care of in one quick pass. On baseboards, though, a seal was harder to achieve, and its low suction power didn't help matters. I was left with most of my coffee grounds still sprinkled along the baseboard and the sad impression that a broom would have worked better.

Battery Life

All handheld vacuums are pretty limited when it comes to battery life. This isn't necessarily a reflection of their quality; it's just a result of the fact that batteries are very heavy and bulky, and compromises have to be made to achieve a product that can be used with one hand. Some handhelds strike this balance significantly better than others.

For its part, the dustbuster V8 has a pretty short battery life. When I tested it, it died at the 11-minute mark, but I noticed a significant downturn in power around 10 minutes, so I'd say that the total run time is closer to 10. This is not a lot of time for most cleaning tasks. You could certainly take care of a small mess in the kitchen or the upholstery of a single chair, but it's not enough to clean a car or any other large area.

The other important factor in a handheld vacuum's battery life is the time it takes to recharge. For some models, it's extremely long- think twelve-plus hours. This model isn't quite that slow, but at 9.5 hours, it's long enough that you can really only use the vacuum for ten minutes out of a day. If you're tackling anything but the lightest, fastest methods, I'd choose something with a longer battery life and a shorter recharge time, like the Black+Decker Furbuster AdvancedClean+.

Convenience

While the various aspects of cleaning performance are the most important things to consider before a vacuum purchase, there are other, more subtle qualities that can make or break the experience of using it. The weight, bin capacity, and attachments each vacuum comes with all contribute to its ease of use.

The dustbuster V8 is extremely light. At just 1.4 pounds, I'd definitely trust that my arms would outlast the battery life, even vacuuming overhead. And while its integrated crevice tool doesn't give a huge amount of reach, it's definitely a nice feature, as is the brush tool that comes with the vacuum.

Unfortunately, this was where the conveniences ended. The dustbin is very small at just 0.385 Liters, and even if it isn't completely full, it can sometimes spill debris back out the nozzle. To clean the dustbin, you have to pull out the filter, which is unpleasant, particularly if you've cleaned a stubborn mess like pet hair.

While I liked that this vacuum was featherweight and easily maneuverable, I didn't feel that it made up for its poor performance in tight spaces, or the hassle of emptying the dustbin. The trigger activation was another low point in terms of convenience: though this vacuum's battery life wasn't long enough for my finger to really get tired, the need to hold the trigger down to run the vacuum felt like another factor limiting the V8's performance, particularly in tight spaces.

Pet Hair

Pet hair is one of the toughest messes for any vacuum to tackle, so we make sure to conduct our testing realistically. To assess our handhelds' capabilities with pet hair, I massaged real fur into a car's floor upholstery, which has a textured material that really grips the hairs. I noted both the quality of the cleaning and the time it took to achieve.

The V8 did ok on pet hair, particularly for such a cheap model (though it wasn't in the same league as the BISSELL Pet Hair Eraser, our top performer on pet hair). It was able to remove the majority of the hair and left behind not clumps, but more evenly distributed strands, which contributed to a cleaner feel.

It was relatively slow and plateaued at the end of about a minute of cleaning, refusing to remove the stragglers that were left. My biggest qualm with this vacuum's performance on pet hair was that a huge amount of the hair was wrapped in the bristles of the brush head. I had to pull a lot of it out manually, and that didn't really feel like a completely successful clean to me. Overall, I think this would be a decent choice if I had a pet and was on a budget.

Should You Buy the Black+Decker dusbuster V8?

The vacuum is a truly affordable option, and if you're on a tight budget, it can absolutely help you keep your space clean. It performed surprisingly well on some tests, including tough messes and pet hair. However, for most buyers, we think that spending a little more would be worth it. While it put up an admirable fight for a $30 vacuum, you can't get around the sacrifices in performance that are necessary to deliver such a low price. Between low suction power, poor battery life, and some vexing design flaws, we'd recommend this vacuum only to those whose top priority is price. If you're pinching pennies, it can still be a useful tool, particularly if you're a pet owner: of the handheld vacuums we tested that cost less than $50, the V8 performed the best on pet hair.

What Other Handheld Vacuums Should You Consider?