Designed to look like R2-D2 from Star Wars, this fully functional desktop vacuum will keep your desk tidy. It's designed to get rid of crumbs, dust and any mess you’ve made during the day. With a screw top lid everyone's favourite droid can easily be emptied, and he is perfectly portable, with a USB cable to power him up, he’s simple to use and slide or stand on your workspace...

A few years ago (back in the day when everyone had desktop PCs and CRT monitors I was so fed up with how much debris had built up on my office keyboard that I bought a mini vacuum cleaner. The information online stated that it was designed for cleaning up any bits of rubbish that had fallen between the keys on a PC. It was one of these gadgets that is modelled on a familiar, cute line of full-size vacuum cleaners. When the item arrived it was battery operated and hardly sucked at all. Thinking we had a faulty one we arranged to have it replaced. That too was next to useless - in fact it was only any use as a child's toy.

So, when I heard that a desktop vacuum was available that was based around Star Wars's R2-D2, I wasn't overly expecting it to do the job as advertised. On unboxing and plugging it in my worst fears seemed to be justified. The mechanism hardly felt like it was producing any suction when I put my finger over it. I vacuumed up a few minute crumbs on the desk and was surprised that they vanished immediately. I then ran it over the keyboard and was surprised to hear noises that sounded like things were travelling into R2-D2's body.

It does work, and much better than I thought for just giving your desk a quick tidy up. If I had one complaint it's that the design of it makes it hard to reach corners (I have a booth shaped designed workspace and getting the bits of dust right in the corners was a little tricky). This is due to the fact that R2-D2's middle leg is where the vacuum unit is, and his left and right legs kind of get in the way a little.

This is only a slight complaint, as to be perfectly honest this is mainly going to be used as a desktop ornament for Star Wars fans.

Dimensions: 13.5cm x 10cm x 10cm

It does what it says on the box... Star Wars fans will find this a useful and rather novel device.

8

Nick Smithson