• "Good ironing with a few issues"

Review excerpt:

In the last 13 years I have bought 2 irons - a low-end Proctor Silex and a middle-of-the-road Panasonic (NI-551R) comparable to the Panasonic NI-A56NR Steam/Dry Iron w/Non-stick Soleplate w/Vertical Steam. For approx. 9 years I have ironed with it every single week day and 6 weeks ago it decided it had just too much and quit.

Now this was an awesome opportunity for me....being a starving student (Yes Dude! Students need to iron clothes too :o) ), I had bought the cheapest iron I could afford - but now I could finally choose what I wanted!

My major requirements were that my iron:
* Get sufficiently hot
* Have plenty of steam - as I only wear 100% cotton shirts and slacks
* Have sufficient steam-on-demand - steam jet should not cool down the iron too quickly
* Should glide well, and,
* Have no leaks.

Doing my research, I found that Rowenta irons were on top, and people loved the Focus as much as the Rowenta DZ9080 Advancer Iron.

At the lower price-point I bought the Focus and the Rowenta DX-8800 1750-Watt Professional Iron, thinking one of these were it.

I was leaning towards the Focus and so opened that first. It is a great iron, plenty of powerful steam - I only needed the jet for stubborn wrinkles. The heat-up time was good and the ironing was smooth. But there were also some cons.

The iron is significantly larger and heavier than anything I have used. There is a fatigue factor to using this iron for ironing a weeks worth of clothes. I'm sure one can get used to it, but I didn't - I do workout but not in the same motion as ironing!
Second the iron will not fit in my ironing board stand. My ironing board is slightly smaller than the large pro-boards you see around. This is inconvenient as I am a little concerned walking away from a hot, heavy vertical iron. I have tried the larger boards and I prefer the size of my board.
The biggest inconvenience, and this may be for ALL stainless steel plate irons is that a residue builds up on the surface (I do not use any starch on my clothes!) and adds drag to the ironing. About 2 weeks into the ironing, the iron would not glide. I took a large, multi-folded cloth napkin and cleaned out the hot iron. I never encountered this in the past as the Panasonic has a titanium non-stick coating which had super smooth gliding all of those years.
Also for such a large iron, I would have expected better placement of the dial....I did change the setting accidentally.

So the verdict is that I really like this iron for what it can do, but I realized that my old Panasonic was lighter, just as smooth and removed wrinkles nearly as well. I decided that I would try the Panasonic 56NR which has a little more wattage than my old iron.

The DX8800 also raised doubts on the quality and reliability of this iron. It was DOA as far as the steam goes - no steam at all! (Yah! I did fill it with water)

A few other observations:
All irons seem to have sufficient water capacity for 2-3 cotton clothes - whether this comes out as auto-steam or the manual jet steam. And I think this is a good thing if you have to refill often as then you don't have water left over to leak.

And leaking while ironing....people need to ensure that they do not switch on steam options when they are ironing outside the steam zone...I did accidentally move the dial to a lower setting and sure enough, I got a few drops on my clothes. I realized my mistake, dialed up and everything was fine.

Contrary to what the women reading this think, I am a man and I DO read instructions - just never follow them!! ;o) I used distilled water instead of tap water (for 9 years!!) in my old Panasonic as I did not want to deal with cleaning the calc build up and it never leaked - NEVER! What you might not realize is that after cleaning your iron the calc will smear your next few clothes. It's just unnecessary overhead....I'd rather remove the water daily than use non-distilled water.

One last thing....I think most of the high-end irons use stainless steel as it is a good conductor of heat, it heats more effectively, maybe to higher temperatures and retains that heat....but even the top-of-the-line Rowenta Advancer has a Titanium non-stick coating - which leads me to believe that a non-stick coating is more desirable than a stainless steel finish.

I will be reviewing the Panasonic 56NR at a later date.

(4 Stars)

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