I’ve been busy, although I don’t seem to have much to show for it, so I’ve been slow to post my initial review of my new wheelchair, the Quickie Helium.

The delay is partly because I have no reliable frame of reference. My old chair was the coolest and most badass-looking moderately priced off-the-peg one on the first page of Amazon search results while the new one is considerably more expensive and built to the specifications required by both my body and my imperious demands.

Is a comparison of those two particular chairs useful? I’m buggered if I know, which is why I’ve held off writing about it. But then I remembered that nobody reads this blog anyway and futility squared is still just futility, so here goes.

First, here’s a picture of my old chair:

There is much to recommend it given the price, which was in the region of £300. It’s a folding chair, which means it’s not really up to much of the punishment I’ve put it through. It’s also rather heavy (about 14KG without wheels) and has those awful footrests, which were at least as much of a punishment as not being able to walk in the first place.

But it’s sturdy, folds up quite nicely and has lots of places to clip things like bags. The arm rests look dorky in that picture but they fold down with quite a nice, clicky action, which goes a long way, with me. Slotting them pointedly into the downward position is as good a way of indicating that you mean business as I’ve seen. I kind of miss them, now they’re gone.

The Quickie is another beast entirely. It’s non-folding, which means the frame is a lot sturdier and can take a lot more punishment. It’s also a lot lighter at 6.8KG (without wheels) and has the standard, non-punishment footrest. Mine has lightweight wheels (I also got a set of offroad wheels), weird, minimalist mixed-blessing brakes and too many options to write about here.

All in all, with various extras and attachments, my new chair cost around ten times the price of the old one. It’s a scandal, there’s no reason at all why decent wheelchairs should cost so much. But the difference is honestly like night and day; if you can afford around £3000 for a wheelchair, you should definitely spend it. Assuming you need a wheelchair in the first place, of course. If you’re just buying one to piss about in on building sites like bumper cars (and you should, they’re great) then you can buy my old one, if you like.

Anyway, here is a list of the things that are better about my new chair:

• Manoeuvrability. This thing can turn – pretty much literally – on a dime. The camber of the wheels is set to 3 degrees. More degrees equals more manoeuvrability but I’m not sure you’d need it unless you’re playing basketball or eternally battling crows. The camber on the Quickie is adjustable and I’m a tinkerer at heart so I’ll definitely adjust it at some point, but purely as an experiment. The manoeuvrability is fine, especially given the weight. A larger camber makes it more likely that you’ll tip over backwards and less likely that you’ll fit through doors.
• Weight. 6.8KG. That is about what my admittedly monstrous cat weighs. It’s hardly any weight at all. This counts in a number of key areas: pushing the chair, obviously. Maintaining momentum. Acceleration. But also getting the thing into cars, up ramps and around corners. Weight counts, get a chair that weighs closer to what a cat weighs than to what an alsation weighs.
• Footrest. I know I talk about this a lot, but the footrests on my old chair were one of those low-level intrusions that end up training maladaptive behaviour. I ended up hating to get out of my chair not because of the excruciating pain but because the feetrests were even more annoying than that. The pain, I can cope with. The footrests, I don’t have to, now. The new chair just has a bar I can put my feet on. Perfect.
• Non-foldability: I had thought that I needed a folding chair so that I could get it in cars. That is not true. Non-folding chairs can easily be crammed into cars in a variety of ways. If you are able to drive a car, you are much more likely to be able to get out of the chair, into the car and then drag the chair in after you with a non-folding chair than a folding one. I know that sounds unlikely so watch some YouTube videos. You’ll see I’m right.
• Centre of gravity: On my chair…I don’t think it’s set quite right. As I said, I’m a tinkerer and I’ll be experimenting. I think the rear of my seat needs to be a little lower so I can put more power through the wheels. My upper body strength is very good and I think I can sacrifice some ease of getting moving in the first place in favour of dangerous acceleration. I’ll let you know if I break my wrists or something by channelling too much force through them. Or rather, I won’t, I suppose, because I won’t be able to type.
• Looks pretty awesome: Goes a long way. When you’re in a wheelchair you are simultaneously invisible and taking up a lot of space. You feel shockingly visible even though everyone is doing their best to pretend not to notice you. Some good can come of this, if you are as brazen as I am; you can park up in the middle of a public thoroughfare to check your phone and make everyone walk around you. It’s especially satisfying if you pull out some tools and start modifying your wheelchair in the middle of a car park (I do this more often than you’d expect.) But you won’t have that confidence if you don’t think your chair looks badass. Get one you think looks badass.

Getting my first chair was indescribably liberating. I hadn’t realised how important it is to be able to leave the house at (more or less) will. Getting the new chair was as much of a step change as that. I recommend this chair because it’s fine. I don’t have experience of any other similarly priced chairs. Perhaps they’re better or worse, but they’re probably more or less the same.

Get one, though, I urge you. If you need a wheelchair and you have the upper body strength to use a manual one, spend the £2-3000 if you can. In an upcoming post I’ll talk about how I found out – too late – that there’s government funding that can help you pay for it.

But spend the money, if you can.