Remove stubborn stains with ease

If you want an impressively powerful steam cleaner that can tackle anything from window sills to brick walls and boasts the highest level of steam pressure we’ve seen from a domestic appliance, look no further than the Karcher SC5.

Offering a mammoth 2L capacity, 2kW+ heater and a 4.2bar steam pressure level, the SC5 boasts serious steam cleaning power.

Don’t be intimidated by the 4.2bar steam pressure though, as the SC5 offers variable steam control that allows users to control just how much pressure it outputs. This makes it perfect for more delicate or detailed jobs.

With its VapoHydro mode water is mixed with steam and provides a pressure-washer level that we found could easily clean off tough dirt from notoriously difficult areas, including brick walls and garden tiles.

Numerous accessories are included with the SC5 that suit a variety of jobs. This includes an Easyfix mopping head with microfibre cloths and a carpet glider. We found this provided impressively speedy mopping, a wide cleaning sweep and was incredibly easy to manoeuvre.

Also included is a large square brush for tougher cleaning jobs, a detail nozzle and small detail brush and a power nozzle. All tools will easily see you through any household steam cleaning task, from hard floors and carpets to tiles and window sills.

All accessories conveniently clip into the onboard tool storage too, which makes for convenient storage and means less ferrying tools and brush heads around.

The refillable water reservoir lifts out with ease with an unmissable spout for foolproof refilling or topping up.

As it is one of the most expensive models on our list, if you just need a steam cleaner for simple jobs then this might not be the best choice for you. However as this is an easy to use and versatile steam cleaner then we would say this is a worthy investment for those who can spare the cash.

If you’re looking for a steam floor mop to quickly clean up hard floors, the Shark Klik n’ Flip S6003UK Steam Mop could well be the model for you. This well-priced steam mop is focused on floor cleaning, shipping with a double-sided mopping pad that clips to the bottom of the mop. It’s a huge mop, making short work of floors, as you can clean large areas with a single swipe based on our tests.

Cleverly, the Klik n’ Flip head can flip over partway through a clean, giving you the clean side of the pad to keep cleaning with, without introducing a lengthy changeover. This is a feature we found super handy, that let us clean larger areas without having to stop and start.

Cleaning performance was excellent, with the Shark Klik n’ Flip S6003UK Steam Mop tidying up mud on our tiled floor with ease, and picking up everyday kitchen stains: the steam blast function is particularly useful for cleaning up tougher stains, and we found that this helped remove dried-on pet food without having to get down on our needs.

Thanks to the design of the cloth, we found that we could push the S6003UK right into the edges of our room, giving us edge-to-edge cleaning. We needed to get down on our knees and manually clean areas far less with this model than rivals.

Easy to use, easy to move and brilliantly priced, the Shark Klik n’ Flip S6003UK Steam Mop is the best steam mop that we have ever tested. If you’ve got lots of hard floors, this is a great model to buy.

If you’re looking for a versatile steam cleaner that can be used across floors, windows and even to tackle bathroom tiles, the Vax Steam Fresh Total Home steam cleaner is a fantastic choice.

With two tanks on-board, the Vax Steam Fresh Total uses a combination of steam and detergent when in its upright mopping mode, with the latter adding a scent boost into cleaning.

Just note that when the device is in handheld mode, you can only use steam to clean.

Vax includes a huge array of additional tools which can be used in both handheld mode or via the hose. These tools include a detail nozzle for pushing steam into hard-to-reach areas, a squeegee, and grout, scrubbing and even deep scrubbing brushes too.

In upright mopping mode, you can either use a tough HD steam cleaning pad or a softer steam pad depending on how dirty your floor is. Both options attach via velcro, so it’s easy to swap them mid-clean.

There’s also a built-in scrubbing brush to help agitate any tough and dried in stains too.

Want to refresh a carpet or a rug? Attach the included carpet glider which helps the Vax Steam Fresh Total Home to slide on carpet without causing any damage.

Using the steam mop is impressively easy, thanks to its power button and intuitive switch that allows you to control the amount of steam that’s produced. A potential issue with using the mop is the fact you need to manually hold the trigger in order to start producing steam.

Although we appreciate the fact we can control the amount of steam, some may find this tiring and difficult to use after a while.

There’s unfortunately no option to collect solids, which you can find on the more expensive Dyson WashG1, however if you need fast and efficient cleaning around the house then the Vax Steam Fresh Total Home steam cleaner remains a seriously great choice.

If there’s one problem with cylinder steam cleaners, it’s that you have to wait for most of them to cool down before you refill and continue cleaning. Not so with the Polti Vaporetto Smart 100_B, which has a removable water tank, so you can fill it as many times as you need to complete your cleaning job, all without any cool-down time.

We found this makes this cylinder steam cleaner a great choice for large and difficult jobs, but its bulk means that it’s not an ideal tool if you only want to tackle smaller jobs or just mop floors.

Although the controls are a little confusing on this model (the steam dial goes from min to max, but it’s not clear where about you are in the range), performance is mostly excellent. The Polti Vaporetto Smart 100_B coped well with our tough floor challenge, brought grout back to life and easily managed to clean up a hard floor.

There are tools to tackle most jobs, but only one mop pad in the box is a little disappointing, as this gets dirty quickly. That said, for the price, this is an excellent choice and the continuous cleaning makes it brilliant for large jobs, particularly those outside of hard floors.

The Bissell Vac & Steam 1977E is a fantastic time-saver, vacuuming and cleaning at the same time. We loved the original, and now the 1977E model has had a small update and now comes in a fetching blue colour. As a standalone steam cleaner or a standalone vacuum cleaner, this model won’t win awards; yet, the combination of the two features produces some powerful cleaning results.

With a 400W bagless vacuum cleaner and 1100W steam heater, we found that small particles were sucked up before the microfibre pad steams the floor and picks up stains. For well-trodden areas in your home with hard floors, the Bissell Vac & Steam 1977E effectively halved our cleaning time. Bissell recommends three passes for a dirty area and that worked well for us, picking up dust and removing stains well.

The downside of the system is that it’s not very flexible, and it’s neither a good vacuum nor a flexible and powerful steam cleaner. Still, it’s the combination of parts that is important, and the Bissell Vac & Steam 1977E delivers on hard floor cleaning. We recommend this model for homes that need regular cleaning; our tester has dogs, so needs to clean daily, where the Bissell Vac&Steam 1977E came in handy. For deeper floor cleaning, the Shark S6003UK is a better choice.

The Beldray Detergent Steam Cleaner is our top pick for the best budget steam mop that can also use detergent.

It’s sturdy and a mop we found to be easy to work with, given how lightweight it is. We also think the Beldray cleaner looks the part with its turquoise and white colour scheme, too, and is able to be conveniently disassembled with the handle can be removed with a literal touch of a button. The fact there’s a 5-metre cable here also enables this cleaner to go rather far round your house, and also helps its manoeuvrability.

For its steaming powers, this Beldray mop comes with a 330ml water tank. That may sound small, but thanks to the fact it uses its water rather sparingly, you can actually go rather far before that tanks needs refilling. To go with the 330ml of water, this cleaner also has a 200ml detergent tank to help freshen up floors and offer a little more oomph for cleaning.

Beldray says water will heat up in 25 seconds, making this a relatively prompt mop to heat water up with. There isn’t much in the way of controls, apart from an onboard power switch, which is a handy addition considering other cleaners require you to physically turn it off from the wall. This appliance also comes with a Velcro-attached microfibre pad for the mop head, and a carpet glider to help it to move smoothly across carpeted surfaces.

In our testing, we found the Beldray Detergent Steam Cleaner to do a pretty good job of removing most of the mess we’d left down in tiles in one fell swoop. In addition, it saturated the colours of our rug when steaming a patch for 30 seconds, although didn’t quite get rid of a small stain that was left. It arguably did a better job of dealing with laminate flooring, as our dried muddy footprints were fully gone within 20 seconds without any marks or residue. Our toughtest test involving a combo of coffee and tomato paste stains dried into a patch of tiles arguably pushed this cleaner to its limits, with it taking around two and a half minutes for the stain to be fully removed.