Pressurised Steam Iron

The Philips 7400 Series

Anyway, I heard about these pressurised steam irons years ago. Manang Helen have one, our friend Luisa have one and they both rave about it. But at a $1000 price tag – I wasn’t about to rush to get one for years to come. I went through a couple more standard irons which also uses a bit of steam. Lately however, our iron is giving up. It is time to consider a new one.

The steam iron has now become more common with Tefal and Philips have over 8 models between them. The price range is still between $300 to $600 – still quite hefty for me. But I received a $100 gift card for my birthday that can go towards it. I started looking for the best price online and found a 15% discount in Myer for a $399 model which had a reasonable review. I signed up to buy but after I went through the sign-up and order process, I realised that the gift card cannot be used for online purchases. I grit and swore and cancelled the order. Then the next day – I went to Myer to buy it in-store. To cut a long story short – the same model is on an Australian Day Long Weekend Sale for a massive 50% discount. With the gift card, I only had to fork out $99. Great.

Now the acid test of using it. There’s a bit of noise from the unit when it generates the steam. The iron itself is so much lighter. It glides when the steam is on but a bit sticky when it’s not. I’m worried about the steam switch as you tend to use it a lot – about 10 to 15 times on-and-off per shirt. There were some reviews that says some of the lower models breaks after a year of use, so I’ll hang on to the 2-year warranty card of this one.

As to the ease of use – it’s a world of difference. You cut the work time easily in half, specially on those cotton shirts that are hard to iron. They are still not quite as perfect as my Lola’s ironing using a 1960 model over a banana leaf lined ironing board and a wet towel – but good enough and a lot quicker. I would just set out to iron a week’s worth of shirts but this time I got through at least enough shirts to last a month. It was a humid day in Sydney and with over 2 litres of steam further generated it felt like a sauna. At least the next time I would need to iron would be towards the beginning of fall 😉