HurryCane Honest Review: The Good, the Bad and the Bulky

Here is the part of the HurryCane story that the product page leaves out. My husband Gene did not want a cane. He is 74, his right hip is the weak one, and for eleven months he treated the whole idea like a public announcement that something was wrong with him. What finally changed his mind was not an advertisement. It was a plain borrowed cane sliding off the edge of a restaurant table at our anniversary dinner, hitting the floor in the middle of the room, and Gene having to ask the waiter to pick it up for him. He said never again. I went looking the next week, and the thing I came home with was the HurryCane.

That was two years ago. The cane now stands beside his chair in the living room. He carries it in his left hand, opposite the bad hip, which is what Dana, the physical therapist I have seen since my knee replacement four years ago, told him to do. He uses it every single day. Two years is long enough to stop being polite about a piece of equipment, so what follows is the version I would give a friend in the church parking lot, not the version printed on the box.

What Nobody Tells You About the HurryCane

The first thing the listing gets right is the feature that actually sold us. This cane stands up by itself. Set it down at a restaurant, on a pew, on the pharmacy counter while you get your wallet out, and it stays where you put it. The base is wide and made of resin, and that width is what does the work. For a man who had just been humiliated by a cane rolling off a table, that single behavior was worth more than every other specification on the page combined.

The second thing nobody mentions is the weight. It is 16 ounces. Our Drive rollator weighs 20 pounds, and I can still feel every one of those pounds when I lift it into the trunk. Gene carries the HurryCane from the bedroom to the car in one hand and does not think about it. When a piece of equipment is light, it gets used. When it is heavy, it gets left in the garage. I have watched both of those things happen in my own house, with my own equipment, and I know which one I would choose.

The third thing is where the folding claim gets slippery. Folded, it measures 13.7 inches. That number sounds like it slips into a coat pocket, and it does not. Folded, it is still a bundle of sections with a handle on one end, and it takes up real room. What it does do is fit in a tote bag or the pocket on the back of a car seat, and it lets Gene bring it along on a Sunday without the cane standing up between us in the front seat. Manage your expectations on that one and you will be perfectly happy. Expect it to vanish into a pocketbook and you will be annoyed by week two.

How We Have Actually Used It

Gene's day starts with the walk from the bedroom to the top of the stairs. The cane waits by his chair. Down the stairs he uses the handrail, not the cane, and I want to be clear about that, because a cane is not a substitute for a rail on a staircase and nobody should tell you it is. On flat ground, though, in the kitchen and out to the mailbox and along the sidewalk in front of the house, the cane is in his left hand and he is steady. That is the whole job and it does the whole job.

The height adjustment runs from 30.5 inches to 37.5 inches. Gene is 5 foot 10 and he sits comfortably in the middle of that range, nowhere near the top of it. I am 5 foot 4 and I tried it out of curiosity one Sunday before choir when my knee was complaining about the standing. It adjusts down for me without any trouble. I would not want to be the person resetting it twice a day, though. If two people of very different heights plan to share one cane, that is a chore rather than a feature, and you should know that going in.

The handle is a T shape and the grip is rubber. Gene has never once complained about his hand, and for a man who complains about his hand, that is a real report. What I notice is that his grip does not wander. He is not readjusting it every few minutes the way he did with the borrowed cane. The T handle sits in the palm and stays there, and if his hand is tired the flat top gives him somewhere to push.

It goes to church on Sundays, to the farmers market, to the pharmacy, and to the diner where we get breakfast on Saturday. It rides in the back seat of our sedan. When we get where we are going, Gene takes it out and the first thing he does is set it down so he can shut the door. It stands there next to the car while he does it. That sounds like a small thing. It is not a small thing. Small things are most of what decides whether a piece of equipment gets used or gets left at home, and this one gets used.

The Bulky Part, in Plain Terms

The wide base that lets this cane stand up is the same base that catches. Our front door has three steps up and a metal threshold at the top. Gene has caught the edge of that base on the threshold more than once, and he has learned to lift the cane slightly as he crosses. The same happens on the strip between the kitchen and the dining room, and on the mat by the back door. On carpet it is fine. On a bare floor it is fine. It is the raised edges that get you, and if your house is full of raised edges, you are going to feel them.

If you shuffle your feet, that base is going to be a nuisance. I would rather say it plainly than have someone buy this and find out in their own hallway. A cane with a single small tip goes over a threshold without a thought. This one does not, and it is not because the cane is badly made. It is what you trade for the standing up, and the trade is worth it for Gene and might not be worth it for someone else.

The second bulky thing is the folded package. It runs 13.7 inches long and about 3.5 inches across, which is compact for a cane and still too much for a pocketbook. Gene keeps his unfolded and next to him. The folding is for travel, not for daily stowage. If you pictured yourself folding it up and tucking it away every time you sit down, you are going to stop doing that by the second week, and then you have bought a feature you are not using.

Where It Has Held Up and Where It Has Not

The frame is aluminum and after two years of daily use the handle has not loosened, the lock has not slipped, and the height has not crept down under his weight. That last one matters more than it sounds. A cane that slowly shortens as you lean on it is worse than no cane at all, because you never notice it happening. It also comes with a limited lifetime warranty. I have not had to use it, so I cannot tell you how that process goes, only that it exists.

Where it has not held up is the rubber at the bottom and the general grime of two years of sidewalks. Tips wear out. That is true of every cane ever made. Gene's is due for a new one and we have not gotten around to it, which is its own kind of review. The rubber grip cleans up fine with a dishcloth. Nothing has cracked, nothing has bent, and nothing has rattled apart, which is more than I can say for the borrowed cane that started this whole story.

One more honest note, and this one matters. This is a cane. It is not a walker. On a long day, the county fair or a big store with a lot of walking, Gene takes the rollator and leaves the cane at home, and he has done that since the first time we tried the fair with the cane alone. A cane helps with balance on level ground. It does not give you a seat and it does not give you support on both sides. Anybody who tells you the two are interchangeable has not spent an afternoon on their feet at a fairground.

Three Things I Would Change

First, the folded length. I know the number on the box and I know it sounds better than it lives. If this folded down to something that genuinely went into a purse, I would have bought one for myself as well, and I have not. The folding is good for a car and for a suitcase. It is not good for carrying in a bag on your shoulder all afternoon, and the listing should say so.

Second, I would stamp the height setting so it does not need to be found again. When I borrow it, I have to fiddle until it feels right and then Gene has to fiddle it back. A simple mark on the shaft would solve that in a second, and I would not have to guess whether I have put it back where he had it.

Third, I would put a second tip in the box. Two years in, we need one, and it is the sort of small errand that sits on the counter for a month in a house like ours. That is a small complaint about an otherwise well made object. I mention it because the small complaints are the ones that decide whether you are still using a thing in year three, and I would like to be using this one in year three.

Two years of daily use and the height has never crept down on him. The base has caught on our front threshold more times than I can count. Both of those things are true at once.

Who This Is For

This is for someone who has been resisting a cane and needs one thing about it to stop being embarrassing. For Gene it was the cane falling over in public and a stranger having to fetch it. If the person you are buying for has that same sore spot, the standing feature is worth the whole purchase and I would not talk you out of it. It is also for someone who gets around the house unaided but wants steadiness on a sidewalk, in a parking lot, or on a church floor that has just been waxed.

Ask before you buy. I say that as a retired schoolteacher and not as anybody's doctor. Dana is the one who told Gene which hand to carry it in, and she is the one who said a cane was reasonable at this stage and that he should keep the rollator for long outings. That is why we still have both pieces of equipment and why neither one sits unused. Your own physical therapist or physician will see things about your gait that no review on the internet can see, and the height setting should be checked by somebody who knows what they are looking at.

Who Should Skip It

Skip it if the person using it shuffles, drags their feet, or has already tripped over a cane tip. The wide base is a trip hazard in a bad hallway and no amount of standing-up convenience makes up for a fall. Skip it also if the cane will spend most of its life folded in a bag. You would be paying for the standing base and then never setting it down. A plain folding cane, the kind the hospital sent me home with after my knee, does that job better and costs less.

And skip it if what you need is real support rather than balance. If the person you are buying for cannot cross a room without holding on to something with both hands, a cane is the wrong tool and this cane is the wrong cane. Our rollator sat in the garage for a while and then went to the county fair and earned its keep, and I would buy it again tomorrow. Buy the thing that matches the actual need, not the thing that fits in the back seat.