In our tests, Carmel found that steam took over one minute to heat up and then can stop and start instantly with a press of the trigger. It’s powerful: the lowest setting is similar to the steam offered by most steam mops, the highest setting is much stronger.

Roll with the prodigious amount of steam however and window cleaning is very good indeed. On tall patio doors, the water runoff was fairly serious even on the lowest steam setting. Carmel absolutely loved using the Polti, even if it is a bit on the pricey side. The controls are excellent, the design is practical and it feels weightless in the hand, so much so that you can lift it to clean windows, curtains and more. Use on a tiled wall was particularly easy too, so if you hate cleaning your bathroom, this is a great cleaner to consider. As both the cable and the water tank are fixed to the steamer body, and there is no filler jug supplied. you must take the whole ensemble to the sink to fill up. Three levels of steam are available via a rotary dial. B&D refers this to as Autoselect but there is very little ‘auto’ about it. The dial is simply labelled with different hard floor types to simplify choice rather than three steam levels, although it amounts to the same thing. That’s not an issue when using the hose and details tools of course. The steam unit’s superb output means you really only need the minimum setting for most jobs. Go higher than this and you will be mopping up floods of water run-off. Using the squeegee tool on windows is a prime case so have a cloth handy.Filling the tank under the tap is easy but there is no gauge to say what is ‘full’. It’s very easy to over-fill, at which point the filler cap vent hole spits water when you move it around. The same vent hole also dribbles if you tilt the steamer unit over, such as when steaming at an angle to clean a shower. A.k.a. 2-in-1 cleaners, these are upright steam mops where the steam generator can pop out from the middle to be used as a smaller, handheld cleaner. They come with various tools for steam cleaning smaller stuff.

There’s a lot to like about this Bissell steam mop–in our tests, it worked equally as effectively on tile, grout, concrete, and sealed hardwood floors. Intuitively designed, there’s a removable water tank, which is easy to fill, and three levels of steam.Then you can attach various tools. There’s a large, rectangular floor head which comes with two Velcro cloths and a clip-on carpet glider. This steam cleaner also has a large square brush with cloth and large round brush – with space on the Kärcher to stow. The only thing it’s missing that we care about is a window squeegee. However, Kärcher offers a wide selection of accessories if you care about this or other tools. It’s only designed for cleaning floors, so there are no accessories except a filling jug. There are two steam levels: a button on the front of the body of the cleaner cycles between these and off. In our tests, Molly found it heats up in under 30 seconds. We appreciated that this cleaner was very lightweight and was easily able to maneuver around areas to clean. While lightweight, even when filled with water, it is hard to prop the unit up when not in use—it fell over a few times during testing because of this. Add-on accessories are so useful, just make sure you have a handy place to store them, since there’s no on-unit storage. And speaking of storage–we loved that this steam mop had a big hook to hold the 15.9-foot cord—a feature that gets skipped by many of the other mops on the market. All of the steam mops on this list have attached cords, so think about your house, the outlet locations, and if you’ll need to constantly plug and unplug the steam mop to adequately and safely move around your home. Also keep in mind that steam mops maintain their heat by being plugged in, so if you need to change plugs, you might need to wait for it to heat up again.

This steam cleaner never let us down during testing; in fact, our tester Carmel thought it was so excellent that she found it difficult to step away from it as she envisioned other things in her home she could clean. While it’s described as a pet steam mop, there’s nothing that makes it a steam cleaner just for pet owners—in fact, we think it’s much more than that. The detachable handheld device is a nice bonus if you do need to clean pet toys, but works equally well for cleaning any bathroom or kitchen items.

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As a steam mop, it worked very well and cleaned up the test spills in our lab with just a few passes. We found that the steam is dispersed across the whole pad, so it’s an effective cleaner from edge to edge. The head of this mop is very maneuverable, so cleaning in corners was easy and effective. The downside is that the head swivels and moves so much, it’s a challenge to just mop in a straight line. Along with the new features, it has a similar digital ‘Auto Select’ Technology to the previous model, which allows the steam mop to automatically adjust the steam pressure depending on the floor type you’re cleaning. It also features an extra steam on demand button that is designed with a one-touch control instead of needing to hold down a button each time you need extra steam. The body boasts variable steam control and an anti-calc collector. It comes with a squeegee with cloth cover for cleaning upholstery, plus concentrator, scraper and two sizes of nylon brush. These are all great for cleaning, but might be a bit much if you're tight on storage space.