BLACK+DECKER BDH9600CHV Dustbuster 9.6V Cordless Hand Vac

I normally wait a little longer to rate and item but I really like this. I actually bought this with low expectations based on some other reviews but I am very happy. I use it every day! I use it in the kitchen for crumbs mostly and around the rest of the house for just general dirt. It's also very handy to suck up bugs that make their way in. I have had no issue picking anything up EXCEPT pet hair that is on a couch. It does nothing for that, but that's not why I bought this, I have something else for that. It will get pet hair tumbleweeds though! I was also impressed when it picked up actual dust on a bookshelf. I just thought I would test it out on a shelf that had a thin layer of dust and it picked it up. I don't tend to use it for that purpose, seems like the rag is faster but I was impressed that it picked it up. It's very lightweight and isn't really all that loud. So far I have had no issues with the battery life or any other function. I'll update the review if anything goes downhill.Update 9/09/14: This is still going strong and I actually use it even more now. I use this at least three times a day just to clean up my little one's cracker mess! I also use it to clean the crumbs out of her high chair. It works really great on hard surfaces. Still super happy with this!Update 7/19/15: I am still so happy with this and it continues to work great. I use it everyday, and I'll admit I'm lazy about dumping it and I have not had to replace anything. I'm buying a second one for the basement.Update 10/28/15: Well this unit ended up loosing it's battery life just this past couple of weeks! It wouldn't stay on much more than a minute or so before it would start sounding really weak. I contacted amazon and they directed me to black & decker, they replied right away and sent me out a replacement unit. I haven't had the chance to set it up yet but I will keep the review updated with any changes. Overall I still love this unit and don't regret my purchase, I'm also happy with the great service from Black & Decker.

This is a defective product, and should have been recalled to replace the batteries with ones with an acceptable lifetime. It only took one year before they would no longer hold a charge long enough for more than a minute or two of use. By two years it was down to 20 seconds.If it is true that they should not be left on the charger continuously, then the charger should not be promoted as doubling as a storage mount: "Charging Stand/Wall Mount - One step charging and storage ". I suspect the battery still would have had a short life even without that.Throwing out a product after such a short period of use is an obscene waste of resources, as well as the consumers' money. If everyone bought these the landfills would be full of them.Another example of the cheap junk made by Black and Decker.Addendum: here's something I found in the B&D manual when looking to see if I could replace the battery: "The appliance can be left connected to the charger indefinitely." But that's exactly what causes the battery lifetime to be extremely short, since leaving Li-ion batteries charging continuously overheats and damages them. The B&D charger is too cheap to have an auto-shutoff to avoid this, or even a light to indicate when charging is complete. The above shows that they tell the consumer to do the very thing that causes the damage, which is either incompetent or calculating.They offered me a replacement which I turned down - who wants another one that will have to be thrown out a year later?And indeed the reviews of the new version show the same thing: a long list of consumer complaints that the battery no longer holds a charge after a short time in use. The charger bracket looks exactly the same at first glance, so did they bother addressing this problem, or did they just keep on the selling the same defective design? There must be hundreds of thousands if not millions of these in landfills by now. Well done Black and Decker!