Disappointing over time

I received my Rowenta Professional as a gift from my mother. She got it for me after my then 7 year old son watching her iron with hers said "WOW! My mom should get one of those!!"

As my iron was dead, I was thrilled to have it. I was amazed at what a great job it did. It all but ironed the clothes itself. The narrower "nose" of the plate was terrific for getting into smaller spaces, pleats around buttons, etc. The powerful burst of steam simply blasted the wrinkles out of my clothes. For difficult to iron items or delicates, I could just hold them up vertically and blast a shot of steam into them and get the wrinkles out. Another advantage was that it is designed to use tap water rather than distilled water which gives me one less thing to think about.

So why only two stars? Durability. The first thing to go was the auto shut off mechanism. In general this mechanism is probably a bad idea as one tends to rely on it. After a few episodes of walking into my laundry room hours (on one occasion a day) after ironing and finding the iron still red hot I was upset that that function obviously was broken. Of course that leads to Iron Anxiety every time I leave the house on vacation!

Subsequently, I noticed that I wasn't getting the good burst of steam I had been getting. If I hold it vertical, it steams well but if I try to give it a shot while ironing, it doesn't work anymore.

Next I found that the control dial which is rather inconveniently located under the handle to begin with has become "sticky". It's not in a great spot anyway and now it doesn't move all that freely especially with one hand. If the dial had a raised tab it would help considerably as the dial is a flat disk.

The latest issue is that it is now leaking water when I try to fill the reservoir which I suppose means it's "dead" at less than 3 years old.

An issue that is not related to durability but rather a design flaw is the difficulty in refilling the water reservoir. It takes a long time and the water must be poured in at a "dribble" rate which is time consuming and frustrating. If you try to go to fast, it quickly overflows all over the place.

My mother and mother-in-law have both been through two of the Rowenta irons. My mom does a lot of sewing so she's willing to replace her iron frequently. I'm not. My old Black and Decker iron came to me used and I used it for 11 years before it broke down. I believe it was a $30 iron...vs. over $100 for the Rowenta. No, it didn't work as well as the Rowenta, but the improved perfomance just isn't worth it for such a short period. If I could have the performance of a new Rowenta with the durability of my Black & Decker, I'd be in steam heaven!