Which iron sole is better — an analysis of important differences

There are sev­er­al types of iron soles:

• alu­minum sole;
• stain­less steel sole;
• ceram­ic sole;
• tita­ni­um coat­ing;
• com­pos­ite out­sole.

Aluminum outsole

An alu­minum sole is the basis for an iron made of alu­minum, alu­minum with the addi­tion of cop­per, chromi­um. Alu­minum out­sole is durable and strong but requires spe­cial careas it has high coef­fi­cient prop­er­ties of elec­tri­cal con­duc­tiv­i­ty in an oxi­diz­ing envi­ron­ment.

Coat­ing fea­tures:

• ease of iron­ing;
• high tem­per­a­ture resis­tance;
• plas­tic;
• low ther­mal con­duc­tiv­i­ty;
• resis­tance to cor­ro­sion;
• not sus­cep­ti­ble to defor­ma­tion;
• ease of man­u­fac­ture.

But in fact, alu­minum is a poor con­duc­tor of heat, and it is also poor­ly processed. There­fore, an iron with this sole­plate is suit­able for iron­ing light fab­rics (such as silk).

Pros:

• ease of care;
• light weight;
• strength;
• low cost;
• long ser­vice life;
• dura­bil­i­ty and high wear resis­tance;
• high tem­per­a­ture resis­tance;
• insen­si­tiv­i­ty to high tem­per­a­tures;
• plas­tic;
• low coef­fi­cient of elec­tri­cal con­duc­tiv­i­ty;
• resis­tance to high tem­per­a­tures;
• ease of main­te­nance.

Like any oth­er iron sole­plate, the alu­minum sole­plate needs spe­cial care.

Minus­es:

• insta­bil­i­ty to defor­ma­tions — alu­minum sole is eas­i­ly deformedwhich is notice­able dur­ing the oper­a­tion of the iron when iron­ing a dense fab­ric;
• high coef­fi­cient of ther­mal con­duc­tiv­i­ty — this leads to a rapid cool­ing of the iron after iron­ing and does not allow even heat­ing of the fab­ric;
• non-impact resis­tance — the iron may break if dropped;
• fragili­ty — even with care­ful han­dling of the iron, the alu­minum sur­face is erased over time and los­es its appear­ance.

Pro

Manufacturer technologies

Many brands offer their devel­op­ments to improve the qual­i­ty of the sole. Iron coat­ings are dif­fer­ent, but their task is to ensure high-qual­i­ty iron­ing and extend the life of the equip­ment. When buy­ing, you can choose one of the fol­low­ing options.

Eloxal

The coat­ing that improves the per­for­mance of the ironer is devel­oped by Braun.

Irons with Elox­al have an anodized alu­minum sole­plate, where expen­sive alloys are addi­tion­al­ly added to the com­po­si­tion, which ulti­mate­ly increas­es wear resis­tance.

Dur­ing pro­duc­tion, the alu­minum plate is treat­ed with an elec­trolyt­ic com­po­si­tion, which gives it anti-cor­ro­sion prop­er­ties, increas­es resis­tance to defor­ma­tion and ele­vat­ed tem­per­a­tures.

“Steamglide”

A Phillips devel­op­ment that increas­es the wear resis­tance of the iron base and facil­i­tates its oper­a­tion.

A fea­ture of the tech­nol­o­gy is that addi­tion­al holes are added to the sole­plate to sup­ply steam.

Dur­ing iron­ing, an air cush­ion is cre­at­ed that facil­i­tates slip­ping and pro­vides gen­tle treat­ment of the fab­ric. The main mate­r­i­al is alloy steel, but glass (“Steamglide Plus”) or cer­met is also found.

Durilium

Tefal is respon­si­ble for the devel­op­ment. Duril­i­um is a met­al base with a ceram­ic coat­ing for a light, smooth glide.

On such a sole, scratch­es are prac­ti­cal­ly not formed, the fab­ric is smoothed out effec­tive­ly, leav­ing no stains.

In view of the fragili­ty of the coat­ing, such an iron should be used care­ful­ly, not for­get­ting about care.

User voting

Which iron would you choose or rec­om­mend?

Braun TexStyle 7 TS745A

33.33% ( 1 )

Bosch TDA 702421E

0.00% ( 0 )

Polaris PIR 2186

0.00% ( 0 )

Redmond RI-C263

0.00% ( 0 )

Braun SI 3041GR

0.00% ( 0 )

Kitfort KT-2601

0.00% ( 0 )

Philips GC4595/40 Azur FreeMotion

33.33% ( 1 )

Panasonic NI-E610TVTW

33.33% ( 1 )

Panasonic NI-E510TDW

0.00% ( 0 )

Braun TexStyle 7 TS775TP

0.00% ( 0 )

Philips GC5039/30 Azur Elite

0.00% ( 0 )

Bosch TDA 2315

0.00% ( 0 )

Sinbo SSI-6612

0.00% ( 0 )

Home Element HE-IR219

0.00% ( 0 )

How to choose the perfect cover for you

• Slid­ing on fab­ric;
• Dam­age resis­tance;
• Speed ​​and uni­for­mi­ty of heat­ing;
• Iron weight.

The choice of cov­er­age will also depend on the price. The cost of mate­ri­als can vary great­ly. If every­one had a lot of mon­ey, we would just buy the best and not suf­fer from the choice. But due to the lim­it­ed bud­get, they are often forced to look for the best option for price and qual­i­ty. What will we do.

Main characteristics

The main indi­ca­tor is the qual­i­ty of the sur­face itself. It should not have vis­i­ble pro­tru­sions, inden­ta­tions, chips, cracks, scratch­es, burrs, dark­en­ing or white spots. A non-smooth sur­face will tear del­i­cate fab­rics, leav­ing puffs on dense fab­rics.

On a note!

Sur­face qual­i­ty can be assessed by exam­in­ing the edge of the part. If the coat­ing on it is even, the met­al base is not vis­i­ble, then the entire ele­ment is made in good faith. For cheap mod­els of irons, fakes, burrs and delam­i­na­tion of the coat­ing are vis­i­ble here.

The main cri­te­ria for assess­ing this ele­ment include:

• uni­form heat­ing;
• ease of care;
• ease of slid­ing with­out effort.

Some man­u­fac­tur­ers also indi­cate that their mod­els are most del­i­cate in con­tact with any type of fab­ric. That is, the fibers do not melt, do not shrink, do not break, the fab­ric struc­ture itself is not deformed. Out­ward­ly, all this is expressed in stretch marks, shiny areas on ironed things.

The ease of slid­ing depends on the mate­r­i­al, the method of its pro­cess­ing, the accu­ra­cy of grind­ing. The base of the iron should heat up quick­ly, even­ly, and also quick­ly give off heat in the event of a decrease in tem­per­a­ture. If some areas warm up faster than oth­ers, the iron will get stuck on the sur­face, the iron­ing process will be delayed. If the mate­r­i­al has insuf­fi­cient ther­mal con­duc­tiv­i­ty, when the tem­per­a­ture drops, switch­ing to anoth­er mode, there is a risk of sim­ply melt­ing more del­i­cate tis­sues.

Criteria for choosing an iron

The devel­op­ment of the tech­no­log­i­cal process con­tributes to the emer­gence of new mod­els of irons. Today, such a tech­nique is absolute­ly not sim­i­lar to its fore­fa­thers. A good iron should guar­an­tee high-qual­i­ty iron­ing, be func­tion­al, safe, light, and as con­ve­nient as pos­si­ble to use.

Irons are dif­fer­ent: pro­fes­sion­al (used in stu­dios, com­mer­cial enter­pris­es), spe­cial equip­ment for dry clean­ers, laun­dries, house­hold appli­ances. The lat­ter, in turn, are divid­ed into sim­ple, road and steam.

A sim­ple iron is equipped with a ther­mo­stat that reg­u­lates the heat­ing of the sole. How­ev­er, in this tech­nique there is no func­tion of mois­tur­iz­ing linen, there­fore today such mod­els are irrel­e­vant and are prac­ti­cal­ly not pro­duced. Trav­el options are char­ac­ter­ized by small size, eas­i­ly fit in bags, have a min­i­mum num­ber of func­tions. Steam irons are the most pop­u­lar, they do an excel­lent job with dry or wet iron­ing, they have many addi­tion­al modes.

When choos­ing such house­hold appli­ances, it is rec­om­mend­ed to pay atten­tion to pow­er. Irons are low-pow­er (below 1600 W), medi­um (from 1600 to 1900 W) and high pow­er (over 1900 W). The best choice for a fam­i­ly of sev­er­al peo­ple is a medi­um pow­er iron. Such a device is con­sid­ered quite eco­nom­i­cal, it will per­fect­ly cope with iron­ing a large amount of linen. The length of the cord and its attach­ment affect the com­fort of iron­ing. It is bet­ter to choose an iron with a swiv­el flex­i­ble mount that allows the cord to rotate in any direc­tion.

The sur­face of the iron has spe­cial holes through which steam is sup­plied. The uni­for­mi­ty of its sup­ply affects the qual­i­ty of iron­ing things. The auto­mat­ic shut­down func­tion will auto­mat­i­cal­ly turn off the device after a while, pre­vent­ing tis­sue dam­age. The pres­ence of spe­cial anti-lime­stone rods or resin cas­settes, the self-clean­ing func­tion will solve the prob­lem of scale for­ma­tion. Mod­els with an anti-drip sys­tem will not allow water to enter the fab­ric.

TOP 15 irons according to user ratings and reviews

Which iron would you choose or rec­om­mend?

Take a sur­vey

We have com­piled a rat­ing of iron mod­els that are in demand on the mar­ket. The list includes those options that have received high rat­ings and good reviews from most users. Recall that the opin­ion of the edi­tors of the site is not the only true and cor­rect one — you may well choose a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent mod­el and con­sid­er it the best. For con­ve­nience, we have divid­ed the list into sev­er­al cat­e­gories depend­ing on what the sole of the device is made of.

Stainless steel

In com­par­i­son with the pre­vi­ous mate­r­i­al, the stain­less steel of the iron heats up a lit­tle longer, but it also holds the heat tem­per­a­ture longer, which is con­ve­nient dur­ing iron­ing. The unde­ni­able advan­tage of this mate­r­i­al is its strength. The stain­less plat­form will not be scratched by a but­ton or a zip­per. Resis­tant to stain­less steel and cor­ro­sion. The smooth, pol­ished sur­face will glide over any can­vas like clock­work. From such an iron, your clothes will not shine, and clean­ing stain­less steel is easy. It is this plat­form that is con­sid­ered almost the best sole­plate for iron­ing. How­ev­er, such devices are more weighty, espe­cial­ly wom­en’s hands feel this heav­i­ness.

Rep­utable man­u­fac­tur­ers come up with new coat­ings based on stain­less steel. This is done to fur­ther improve the advan­tages of such a work sur­face. Saphir (Braun), Pla­tini­um (ROWENTA), Inox (Bosh), SteamGlide (Philips) coat­ings or chrome-plat­ed sur­faces from Moulinex, enam­eled from Siemens, nick­el-plat­ed from Pana­son­ic are espe­cial­ly pop­u­lar and famous. This is not just a mar­ket­ing ploy to increase sales, but an effec­tive way to increase the ther­mal con­duc­tiv­i­ty of stain­less steel, slight­ly reduce its sever­i­ty and max­i­mize the strength and ease of slid­ing.

It is worth not­ing that the lead­ers of the “price — qual­i­ty” cat­e­go­ry over the past cou­ple of years of sales are equipped with stain­less steel plat­forms, and this says a lot.
See also -
What is bet­ter to choose — an iron or a steam gen­er­a­tor?