Compare iron and steamer

Today we use a huge num­ber of devices in every­day life, the main task of which is to make our dai­ly life more com­fort­able. Devices designed for iron­ing fab­ric prod­ucts are among them. Next, we will talk about the two most com­mon devices among ordi­nary con­sumers — irons and steam­ers. Which device is bet­ter and how do they dif­fer from each oth­er? Our experts know about all the sub­tleties.

About irons

An iron is a sim­ple and con­ve­nient device, know­ing the fea­tures of which, you can choose a prod­uct for any pref­er­ence.

Features, functions

Mod­ern mod­els of irons are dis­tin­guished by an incred­i­ble vari­ety of func­tions and are designed to elim­i­nate wrin­kling on var­i­ous types of fab­rics, includ­ing del­i­cate ones. And the ergonom­ic design and eco­nom­i­cal pow­er con­sump­tion dur­ing oper­a­tion make the iron a faith­ful assis­tant in every­day life.

The irons have built-in ele­ments that main­tain the select­ed tem­per­a­ture on auto­mat­ic. The cool­ing of the prod­uct occurs when the bimetal­lic plate cools down, which direct­ly car­ries out the iron­ing of things. Thanks to the con­stant improve­ments made by iron man­u­fac­tur­ers, a huge vari­ety of the lat­ter is pre­sent­ed on the house­hold appli­ances mar­ket, con­di­tion­al­ly divid­ed into sev­er­al groups:

1. Sim­ple — sim­i­lar to the first mod­els of elec­tric irons. The devices are not equipped with addi­tion­al options and are intend­ed exclu­sive­ly for dry iron­ing. This is a sim­ple prod­uct that is rarely found on sale.

2. Steam — the most in demand by con­sumers. Ide­al for both dry and wet iron­ing. And in the lat­ter case, the steam func­tion is used. Such mod­els of irons have a num­ber of advan­tages com­pared to the rest. First­ly, they are mul­ti­func­tion­al (suit­able for pro­cess­ing prod­ucts with vary­ing degrees of wrin­kling). Sec­ond­ly, they are easy to oper­ate. Third­ly, they allow you to iron hard-to-reach places near but­tons or but­tons.

3. With a ther­mo­stat — they are already los­ing their pop­u­lar­i­ty due to the appear­ance on the mar­ket of more advanced mod­els of irons.

4. With a steam gen­er­a­tor — the so-called steam clean­ers or irons, referred to as “steam sta­tions”. Quite expen­sive prod­ucts, opti­mal when work­ing with a large num­ber of clothes.

5. Road — do not have any spe­cial dif­fer­ences from stan­dard mul­ti­func­tion­al mod­els. The main dis­tin­guish­ing point is the size of the prod­uct: trav­el irons are very com­pact, equipped with the opti­mal num­ber of options.

Criteria for selecting a suitable instrument

When choos­ing a suit­able iron, it is advis­able to be guid­ed by a num­ber of cri­te­ria, thanks to which you can pur­chase the opti­mal mod­el, tak­ing into account per­son­al pref­er­ences:

1. 
   Sole - for its man­u­fac­ture, steel and alu­minum are used as stan­dard (some­times their deriv­a­tives). The first option is the sim­plest, but no less prac­ti­cal: it is durable, weak­ly deformable, glides well over the fab­ric, etc. The sec­ond option is not par­tic­u­lar­ly dis­tin­guish­able from the first in its func­tion­al­i­ty, but with a small fea­ture: if even the slight­est defor­ma­tion appears on the sole , this will affect the clothes (puffs will appear on it). There is anoth­er option for the sole used in irons — Teflon. Quite com­fort­able, but not very prac­ti­cal, because it is eas­i­ly scratched by but­tons, met­al ele­ments, etc.

2. 
   Pow­er — an impor­tant aspect, because the heat­ing rate of the iron and the effi­cien­cy of its work depend on it. A pow­er of 1500 W is enough to process things of var­i­ous den­si­ties, a pow­er of 1800 W will elim­i­nate wrin­kling of heavy fab­rics (for exam­ple, win­ter ones). Devices with a pow­er above 2000 W are used exclu­sive­ly for pro­fes­sion­al pur­pos­es.

3. 
   Tem­per­a­ture regime — mod­ern mod­els of irons are equipped with a spe­cial switch to con­trol the tem­per­a­ture — each of the modes indi­cat­ed on it is designed for a spe­cif­ic type of fab­ric.

4. 
   Steam humid­i­fi­ca­tion sys­tem — found in most mod­els of irons and is rep­re­sent­ed by two types: hor­i­zon­tal and ver­ti­cal. The first is designed for pro­cess­ing over­dried fab­rics like jeans, the sec­ond is suit­able for iron­ing out­er­wear or coats, for exam­ple, with­out hav­ing to remove them from the hang­er.

5. 
   water tank - it hap­pens in dif­fer­ent vol­umes — the larg­er it is, the longer the iron­ing process can be, which is impor­tant when pro­cess­ing fab­ric prod­ucts in large vol­umes.

About steamers

Ergonom­ic, pow­er­ful, effi­cient — steam­ers will appeal to con­nois­seurs of fast results with large amounts of work.

Features, functions

Steam­er — a device often more com­pact than a stan­dard-sized iron. Its oper­a­tion is based on the prin­ci­ple of an elec­tric ket­tle. A reg­u­lar steam­er is not able to cope with very dense fab­ric, but it can process light things. This is ide­al for iron­ing del­i­cate under­wear.

The essence of the steam­er is sim­ple: dur­ing oper­a­tion, the device gen­er­ates steam, which, when it pen­e­trates the fab­ric, straight­ens its fibers. To use the device, you just need to plug it into the net­work, after fill­ing a spe­cial tank with water. Just wait a few sec­onds and it’s ready to go. It is note­wor­thy that the steam­er, unlike the iron, does not leave shiny spots on clothes, does not burn it. This is an ide­al “tool” for remov­ing wrin­kling on whim­si­cal fab­rics like silk and things with a lot of dec­o­ra­tive ele­ments (ruf­fles, sequins) or folds.

ON A NOTE. When oper­at­ing the steam­er, we rec­om­mend using only puri­fied water. The use of tap water will lead to the for­ma­tion of lime deposits on the inner walls of the tank, and scale is noto­ri­ous­ly dif­fi­cult to remove.

Steam­ers are divid­ed into two cat­e­gories: man­u­al and floor. The for­mer are ide­al for busi­ness trips and trav­el. Their duty cycle is mea­sured in min­utes: so, for exam­ple, if the capac­i­ty of the water tank is 200 ml, this will be enough to steam 2–3 things, which is equiv­a­lent to 15 min­utes of work.

Out­door appli­ances (con­sid­ered pro­fes­sion­al) are dis­tin­guished by sig­nif­i­cant dimen­sions, includ­ing a large water tank (about 1.5–2 liters). The dura­tion of such a “mon­ster” reach­es sev­er­al hours. The process of steam­ing the prod­uct takes place ver­ti­cal­ly, and the design of floor steam­ers also pro­vides for the “steam boost” option, the essence of which is to deliv­er steam under high pres­sure (how­ev­er, the dura­tion of such a “strike” usu­al­ly does not exceed a cou­ple of min­utes).

Criteria for selecting a suitable instrument

In order for the steam­er to become not just a styl­ish, but also a use­ful acces­so­ry for the home, when choos­ing the right prod­uct, you should be guid­ed by the fol­low­ing cri­te­ria:

1. 
   Steam pow­er and quan­ti­ty — if this fig­ure is below 1000 W, the steam­er will not be able to pro­vide suf­fi­cient steam flow: the aver­age water flow will be no more than 20 ml / min. Such a device often “spits”, leav­ing stains on clothes. But the pow­er, close to 2000 W, increas­es the effi­cien­cy of the device, allow­ing you to effec­tive­ly use it for iron­ing any things.

2. 
   Type of iron - it is worth giv­ing pref­er­ence to a mod­el with an iron made of met­al or ceram­ics. Plas­tic is often sus­cep­ti­ble to defor­ma­tion under the influ­ence of high tem­per­a­tures, and it is dry steam that will allow bet­ter pro­cess­ing of the fab­ric (espe­cial­ly dense).

3. 
   Hose length — the larg­er it is, the more com­fort­able the steam­er is to use. In addi­tion, a short or medi­um length of the hose indi­cates the absence of a heat­ing func­tion. And this, in turn, means that the device pro­duces only wet steam (after iron­ing, things will have to be dried).

4. 
   Addi­tion­al acces­sories — clean­ing pad (per­fect­ly removes lint, wool); fab­ric brush (aligns the threads, allow­ing the steam to pen­e­trate deep­er); pro­tec­tive glove (pre­vents pos­si­ble burns from high tem­per­a­tures).

Comparative characteristics

Tra­di­tion­al debrief­ing. Hav­ing con­sid­ered all the fea­tures of irons and steam­ers, our experts have com­piled a detailed com­par­a­tive table.