RowentaIron, Stainless Steel Soleplate Professional Steam Station for Clothes, 1.1L Removable Tank, Fast Heat Up, 1800 Watts, Blue Clothes Iron, DG8624

This review is for the Rowenta DG7626 Compact Steam ProI am a home sewer. I make both garments and the occasional craft project. 15 years ago I bought a Delonghi Steam Generator Iron (a.k.a. Steam System a.k.a. Mini-boiler) and found it to be vastly superior to using an inexpensive iron with a water tank in the handle (which usually drips water on the fabric and doesn't make enough steam.) Also, spritzing the fabric with water while ironing is fine for cottons and may work for quilters but just does not cut it if you are trying to shape seams for a garment or working with fusible interfacing. I stupidly broke my Delonghi and I just can't go back to the old type of iron. Sadly Delonghi doesn't seem to make these anymore. The only brands I found with products in the "low" price range ( $250 to $300) are Rowenta and the Reliable "Maven" model. Over the years on sewing forums I have heard plenty of complaints about Rowenta quality. The Reliable Maven reviews also had a number of complaints and there were a lot fewer reviews. While Reliable's commercial steam systems have a very good reputation, spending over $600 for a professional steam iron doesn't make any sense for a home sewer of only average skill and small output. So after reading a bunch of reviews and shopping all over the internet I decided to try the Rowenta DG7626.The Rowenta iron works differently from the Delonghi. The Delonghi had a big metal water tank with a heavy metal cap that screwed on really tight. It then heated the entire tank of water and once the tank had reached the proper temperature, you had lots of steam and it would only cycle the heat on if the water cooled enough. The Rowenta uses a plastic tank in which the water remains cool, and periodically a pump kicks on to inject some more water into the (much smaller) boiler to generate the steam. The Delonghi (which did not have a pump) produced more steam for a longer period of time, but it took FOREVER to heat up to temperature and produce that first blast of steam. The Rowenta has steam in about 3 minutes. The Rowenta design seems more energy efficient for shorter ironing sessions. The Rowenta is ready much faster but the quantity of steam can drop somewhat as it draws more water to make more steam if you exhaust the smaller boiler. The Rowenta does make a very noticeable humming sound for a few seconds every time the pump kicks on. I think the Rowenta system is fine for my individual needs as I am usually alternating between sewing and pressing steps in my projects, but if you need a LOT of steam in a continuous stream without any variation, this may not be the product for you. The Rowenta did generate enough steam to iron a bed sheet while working continuously. (I did that just as a test, I normally could not care less if my sheets are wrinkled.) The only other downside I can think of for the Rowenta is that this pump is another component that might fail over time.The Rowenta goes into Standby mode (for steam) after 8 minutes of disuse which is not a very long time, and shuts off completely after about 30 minutes. The Delonghi had no auto shut-off -- it would stay on for days if I forgot to shut it off. Some people really don't like auto shut-off but I'm at the age now where I appreciate the safety precaution and I will just work with the 8-minute limit. You need to press a button to get it to come back out of standby and it takes a couple minutes to generate steam again.As with both "steam system" irons, when you first heat up, you want to blast some steam away from your fabric so any condensation sitting in the lines from the previous use can be pushed out. Otherwise you get water dripping on your fabric which may or may not be a problem depending on what fabric you are pressing.The instructions say to use normal tap water for the Rowenta which is good because I am not buying special water for my iron.I have no need for "vertical steaming" so I can't tell you if the Rowenta is sufficient for steaming garments on the hanger. There are other appliances designed specifically for garment steaming that don't have an iron, just a wand that shoots steam -- that might be a better buy.Everything looked good coming out of the box and it is working correctly according to the manual. If the Rowenta starts to have problems I will update this review.

I waited a couple weeks to write a review. So far so great really. Love it.It does take a couple minutes to warm up which is not a problem. Excellent steam for long periods when I need to hang and steam something. I thought I would miss having steam constantly coming out without triggering like my old irons but I find the easy trigger control steaming better. More control really. There's two steam mode buttons. Econ and max. After trying both I use econ which is less steam for normal ironing and max mode for heavy fabrics or when I steam a hanging shirt or whatever. Great amount of steam comes out for as long as I need.We love the iron and hope it lasts a long time.

If you iron a lot or like to ,ake fast work of ironing this is the best iron ever. I iron my sheets and can do 2 pillow cases one bottom and one top sheet in 20 minutes and that is amazing. The cork handle is so great and the iron is lite and for me with having two shoulder replacements I am impressed

Let me summarize this iron in one word: CRAP.This is the 5th Rowenta Steam Station I've owned since 2015. The previous units were the two models prior to this one (one white/blue, and one white/purple). On average they have lasted about 18 months or so before they began continually spewing brown water all over the clothes and ironing board. That was despite cleaning the sole plates regularly, using tap water as emphatically recommended in Rowenta's user manual, and decalcifying them and cleaning out the tanks regularly.On the last previous model, purchased in November 2019, we decided to try using distilled water only and from the start. We were thinking maybe the issue is the tap water after all, even though Rowenta says to only use tap water... Well by the first week of April it was spewing not brown water, but black water, and a new feature... black fuzz. That fuzz would stain instantly before you could get it off the fabric. It was maintained the same as the previous units, the only difference was the strict use of store-bought distilled water.After about a week of trying to clean it repeatedly, and piles of ruined fabric, I decided to order a new one and this is the new model. This one arrived in early to mid April and we immediately went back to tap water as the manual advises. Right away we noticed there are major design issues with this model.For years people have begged for an auto-shut-off feature and Rowenta added it to this model. Unfortunately they think it needs to shut off within 5 minutes. You can forget about stepping away to change the wash over, by the time you do that the iron has begun to shut down and needs to restart. If you're doing lots of small sewing work that requires iron - sew - iron - sew, you may as well use a different iron because you will wait longer between each step for it to heat up again.The steam trigger used to be a manual button which stopped delivering steam the second you let go of the button. This makes sense and seems like the safer way to make a steam appliance. This model appears to be electronic and has a mind of its own. If you press the steam trigger once, and then press it again one or more times in too rapid a succession, the iron will get caught in a loop of pumping out steam in rapid little bursts and this will continue for a while relative to the number of times you pressed the trigger. Press it 3 times too fast, you might get 5 seconds of burst, press it 8 times and you might get 27 seconds of bursts. There is no way to stop it once it starts, you just have to stand there and hold the iron until it stops and try not to over-steam your clothes, or yourself, or whatever might be in the path of the iron. This seems like a major safety issue, which totally negates the added super fast auto-shut-off feature.And finally, the sludge... Just like previous models, this one spews brown liquid and brown fuzz (yay!) all over the place periodically. I don't mean it "spits"... I mean it POURS out. Curiously, it isn't black water/fuzz like the last one, which only ran on distilled water. Some days it does it, some days it does not. There is no real pattern to it. The only way to guarantee you'll get brown sludge is to run the iron on any temperature below MAX. Anything less than the hottest temp, and there's a 95% chance you will get brown water/fuzz. But even on MAX, it's a 50/50 chance from one day to the next. So today is July 1, 2020, and this iron has lasted from April 15 to June 27 before the brown water/fuzz started, by far the shortest time from new out of the box to sludge of any of the previous models I have had. For the last three days, no matter what is done to clean it, nor only using Max temp setting, it's all brown muck, all the time.I've calculated the amount of ruined garments and fabric I've had over the years, and I'm placing it somewhere around $1500. Coincidentally, that's about what I have spent on all these Rowenta Steam Stations. Well Rowenta... never again. There are very few companies that make tank style steam irons, but it's time to try one of the others. This is the last Rowenta I will own.

I've just received it and I have to say it is AMAZING! If you work with a lot of fabric—quilters, sewists, crafters—this is exactly what you need. I iron a significant amount of fabric, and after washing, it becomes incredibly wrinkled. It is exhausting and extremely time-consuming.The steam is much more powerful, the iron itself is significantly lighter than my other Rowentas, and the cork handle is much easier to grip. Heats quickly, love the pointed tip for finer seams.Yes, it is not cheap, but if you iron a lot, it pays for itself quickly.

Amazing quality of ironing with high quality steam output and the weight is completely balanced