The most gadgety wheel chair I have ever seen has to be this one, the Sunrise Medical Quickie SalsaM.

Powered Wheelchairs have become more and more technical over the years, and of course with that they have become more and more expensive to purchase. It is a niche market, there are a lot more people buying cars than power wheel chairs, so the profits are greatly affected by that. So are the costs. The wheelchairs will be more expensive to produce due to the cost of the machinery vs the numbers they can produce to recoup that cost. Unlike cars though a wheel chair is not a lifestyle choice, wheel chairs are an absolute necessity for those of us who are using them.

 When I got my power chair I went with whatever I was told, not knowing much about the styles of chair out there. For that reason recently I started to hunt down companies that make these things to find ones that are different from the norm out there.

In the UK the standard chairs you see most are the rear wheel drive versions where you have two larger tyres in back (about 12”diameter) and two small tyres in front that on my chair are about 7” diameter. Not great, believe me, when you live in an area that is older, not as wheel chair friendly, or where there are cobbled streets. The front “castors” often are small enough that they get stuck in just about any little crack, the curb climbers that get fitted to our chairs only really work if your battery is kept topped up, full power, on some curbs. Going into my local post office is very difficult as it has a small step at the entry that my chair cannot handle most days.

The better options would be the front wheel drive, where the larger wheel is in front and pulls better, or the 6 wheeled mid wheel drive options that are much more popular in the US and Canada but are only just starting to come over here to the UK.

Enter Sunrise Medical and their Quickie Salsa M model

I think, first of all, that I really surprised the lady at Sunrise Medical that I talked to. It is the first time that a publication like ours has approached them for a review item I guess. The Sunrise Medical Marketing Manager, Ms Jane Elsworth, was very helpful in locating and securing a demo model for me to try out for a few days to review, even though this is a very popular model at the moment, is brand new, and she is a very busy person right now. She put us in touch with Anderson Medical & Mobility who sent Stewart Taylor over to show us this new chair. Stewart was over three times in fact, once to demo the chair and once to drop one off with me and adjust it to my size so that I could test it for a few days then the day he picked it up to take over to someone else. They are very busy people and this chair is much in demand, for good reason as you'll see.

 Incredibly this one chair, made in one size but with so many possible adjustments that can be made, can go from child size to adult size so there is no need to make various sizes. In one fell swoop he had this chair transform in front of me from a tiny seat a child could sit in to something my 6’ tall (and very long legged) frame could fit into comfortably. I sat here amazed as he told me of the options available, right down to a chair with blue tooth ability so you could use its own jo

 ystick as a mouse for your computer.

In making one chair that grows with the user it seems to me that Sunrise Medical are onto something. You can then make a lot of chairs from, basically, the same pattern and just customise the fit later. I would expect, then, that these chairs can last longer as they would not need to be entirely replaced as a young person grows up, just do the needed adjusting to the chair to grow with the user. I’d imagine you can mass produce these then, as much as can be done with this type of specialist product, and get more out there to the customers who so desperately need them. Efficiency!

 Tilt for comfort.

My thoughts on this chair, first of all, are from the standpoint of someone with very limited mobility as well as a person who can empathise with those who have no use of their legs or lower body at all.

The Salsa M we had.

The four major points about this model of powered chair, the Salsa M, are:

• Opens up housing options, no need for lowered counters etc.
• More freedom when doing “simple” day to day activities ie; going shopping.
• More safety.
• Much better handling.

The chair itself does a lot of the work in raising and lowering the person using it so that I was personally able to raise to counter height to make coffee, tea, prepare meals etc at the normal counters we have in our home, where usually I either have to use a perch chair that is higher or use the counter that surrounds my lowered hob.

Rise to the occasion

In our local shop, and any shop for that matter, I could reach things on the top shelves at our Coop for example by raising the chair instead of asking passersby for help or waiting for a store clerk to come over and help. In my situation usually I can stand just long enough to grab things off the top shelf but if this were someone who was completely unable to weight bear what so ever this ability would be an added freedom, giving the user more independence and self confidence in being able to do what, to most, is such a simple task. My face must have been a bright light in that shop that day, my smile going from ear to ear, as I realised just how fantastic it would be to never have to depend on someone again to reach things that, in any other wheel chair, would normally be way out of reach for a wheel chair user. Don't worry about taking off in that position though. If you are in a position that the chair senses is unsafe to move at top speed it will not allow you to either. If I had tried to move off too quickly in this position, for instance, the lights on the controller flash to tell me that, though it is moving, it will not go above its minimum speed because it would be unsafe to do so.

I found this chair to be really solidly built too, good weight at the bottom for stability especially since this chair can go faster than my normal chair. My only issue with it were the mud guards over the main tyre. Considering the way the tyres move when handling uneven surfaces the guards need to be positioned a bit higher in my opinion. As it is they rubbed a little, and continuously at times, if you’re driving on an uneven surface. I loved that they were there though to be honest, my current chair hasn’t got these so in rainy weather I do get splash back from the tyres sometimes, they just need to put them a touch higher up.

The fact that this chair does go faster than the one I currently use meant it took a little to get used to the controls. Yes I am a gamer, I am used to joysticks, and I have been using a powered wheel chair with a joystick control for almost 4 years now, but when you go from a chair that has a top speed of 2kms/hour to one that can go three times that it means there’s much more scope to every little movement of that joystick controller. The sensitivity of the controller takes time, but is well worth it. It handles very well, corners, and stops beautifully. It handled even the pavements around here, some of which I cannot go on at all due to the steep curves, with my normal chair (meaning I have to use the road at times usually). This means I am safer using the Salsa M as I did not have to use the road anywhere at all, not even on the tiny thin little pavement near our park here that not only is just wide enough for one person to walk along but is steeply tilted to the road for rain runoff. Even the lichen covered walk along one path in our local park was no problem, where my usual chair slips and slides on that path regularly, the Salsa M handled it with ease. The tyres have terrific grip, the centre tyre as the main drive meant I could turn on a 6pence piece, and having 6 tyres to rely on made it incredibly stable.

The Quickie Salsa M has some serious hydraulics underneath that do all this work of keeping the tyres in sync and working with the person and the road, keeping the chair and user safe and on the move. There is no curb climber but I didn’t find I needed one at all and came out of the shops and off the curbs without any issues at all. Even our local pharmacy, where I usually have to back out due to needing the curb climber on my current chair, was no problem with the Salsa M as I faced forward and took the step, no problem! We even tested it on a little bridge in the park that I normally cannot safely go over in my usual chair. The Salsa M went up and over with no hesitation. It’s got what they call “anti-pitch” technology, along with the all wheel independent suspension, that makes it a much safer chair to use.

If you want comfort one other option with this chair is a tilt in space, kind of like your recliners but there is a lot more scope with the Salsa M. So if I had had this while going to university lectures I would have been able to tilt and lift the chair seat enough to get a little more comfortable, which would have been a big help.

Narrow width: 
Narrow width of 60cm enables easy access through doors and confined spaces.

It is also a lot smaller than my current chair, even though it is more comfortable and doesn’t pinch anywhere, so it fit in the house here very well. Going through tiny aisles in the shop was no problem either, I tried ones I normally could not go through and it was much easier in the Salsa M.

Also, in my case working from home, this chair is a lot easier getting around the house, due to its turning radius and size. It also fits at my desk much better as the arm rests lift up, or if you prefer you can just move the controller back as it sits on a set of metal arms that pull back and inward.

The back of this chair also lifts off, and the foot rest folds in, so you can transport the chair easier as well.

My only problem with these chairs, all of them really, is that, as I mentioned in my opening, they are not cheap! My old chair was about £3000 when I got it, these new ones start at about that and go up, depending on what options you choose. With that standard back (pictured above), lights for night time use, tilt and rise, plus a more efficient controller unit the Quickie Salsa M would cost about £5600.00 to buy.

It is amazing just how much easier this chair makes something as simple as shopping for yourself, going to the park to walk your dog, or even stopping at the chip shop for a take away. Being able to raise the chair to see over the counter at items or to be able to use the bank machines easier, made a world of difference to that week I had the Salsa M here. People who have not had these abilities taken away from them have no concept of just how great it does feel to be able to do this for yourself again.

Most importantly I felt safer and more secure, and a lot more capable, in this chair than any other I’ve used.

This is also the most fun I've had with a wheelchair ever!

AbriiD