BLACK+DECKER 1600W Multifunction Corded Steam Mop with Detachable Body and STEAMITT Glove and 14 Accesories Included (BHSM1610DSM-GB)

Product Information

Carmel used this with the floorhead and carpet glider to clean the tide marks on an old, colourful rug. It worked to great effect and she only needed to switch to the brush a few times. She’s an engineering graduate, an award-winning journalist and writes regularly in the Evening Standard. She has appeared as a technology expert on TV and done countless radio interviews.

The mop is overall lightweight, but when it’s full of water, the handheld device can get heavy if you are using it for an extended time. A good value, this cleaner is helpful for both homes with pets and without four-legged friends. Once your steam cleaning is finished, this unit is extremely easy to clean–one swipe of a wet wipe cleans the head. A great value, this product is recommended for households without kids, or pets, high-traffic areas, or anyone who needs a more powerful unit. If that’s your situation, you’re better off investing in a steam mop that is a bit more expensive and much more effective. If you only want to steam clean floors, consider a simple machine that doesn’t convert to a handheld. It will be light, easy to manoeuvre and you won’t have to store fiddly tools that you’ve no intention of using.This premium, cylinder-style steam cleaner is a completely different animal from a normal steam mop. It does an outstanding job of cleaning so much more than floors and it can keep cleaning for hours. It has a 6m cord and a large 1.5 litre water tank and the water is then pumped into a pressurised steam tank. This means you can refill the machine at any time, even when it’s in use, without pausing your cleaning. As a steam mop, t feels a little flimsy. There is a lot of flex from the handle downwards, although this is more due to the skeletal design and removable main steam section, rather than any issues with the build quality. Our testing found the bristle attachments were extremely effective at cleaning grout, which is part of what makes this model especially great for tile. The steam comes out between the bristles, which you can hear the whole time, and truly did loosen and remove debris. 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. Finally, the testers evaluated the process of removing the cleaning pad or cleaning the bristle brush. After hours of testing, we were able to narrow the selection down to the eight best steam mops for your money.

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. Pretty much all convertible steam mops have a handheld that pops out of the middle of the upright cleaner. This, however, is designed more like the best cordless vacuum cleaners. You hold the handheld and then add tubes below to clean floors. As a result, it’s nippy but top-heavy. It won’t stand up by itself then and there’s no carpet glider.Our Ecommerce Editor Molly oversees vacuum and cleaning content at Ideal Home. She has tested out a number of these steam cleaners in her two-bedroom London flat, including the Bissell PowerFresh SlimSteam and the Shark Klik n' Flip Automatic Steam Mop. Our favorite steam mop of the bunch, this steam cleaner is lightweight, super effective, and has a lot of nice-to-have features without a budget-busting price tag. On the most basic level, we appreciate that this steam mop has an on and off button, so you can turn it off even when plugged in, which we think should be more common after testing this model. While this seems like a small detail, many other steam mops don’t have such intuitive buttons.