Panasonic NIWL600 Steam/Dry Iron (Silver)

(An iron review from a GUY? Get over it: I was in the military.)

This expensive little item can be thought of as Cordless Iron v2.0, with some real improvements. Unfortunately, Panasonic missed the sweet price point by a factor of two, but if that's not a problem for you, then this might be the best iron out there. It's heavy enough to be effective, yet light enough to be an all-day tool.

It heats up INCREDIBLY fast, like from dead cold with a full reservoir, it's puffing steam and ready to work in one minute flat. I never understood why irons are iron-shaped, with one sharp end and an awkward flat end that gets caught on seams and pockets when naturally sliding backward. This one is double-ended, solving that problem and allowing for detailed ironing in both directions. (One commenter mentions getting one for quilting: I'll bet he's thrilled with it.) Panasonic claims it's "360 degree" and it is, up to a point: the curl on the edges of the soleplate allows you to effectively move sideways, even over fairly rough seams, but that probably won't feel natural to you, either. The fully-retractable cord on the base is a nice touch.

One concern I had is that the stand for the iron is 95% plastic, with plastic rollers that contact the soleplate directly. I parked the iron on High for a long time (it cycles on and off, naturally). The plastic paid no attention. An iron mostly made out of "Plastics" would have been a punch-line back in 1967 when "The Graduate" was made, but is an actual selling point today.

(This part exclusively for guys.) First, a quick sanity check: Are you thinking of buying this as a present for your sweetie? PLEASE understand that when she is asked why she ditched you, she'll summarize the entire relationship with: "He bought me an iron for my birthday."
Ironing doesn't exactly come naturally to us, but I have several really nice shirts that I never wore because the collars turn into pretzels when washed. A good iron like this takes care of that problem in no time, but is actually so pleasant to use that the entire shirt ends up getting ironed, and then a few pairs of pants besides. I sheepishly admit that I did further research, discovered it's better to use a good spray starch like this one only on collars and cuffs; use spray "sizing" everywhere else.

Very nice machine. Feed it an exclusive diet of distilled water, and enjoy.

Now for he manual, which is actually useful. I've summarized the important details below, to save you from the usual endless lawyer-noise, like "NEVER IRON CLOTHES ON THE BODY." (No, I didn't make it up: lawyer-noise is impossible to satirize.)

Two obvious buttons, marked well with icons: Extra Steam Blast, and Squirt Of Water. The manual says Extra Steam Blast only works reliably on High, but from my experience it also works fine on Low. Squirt of Water is extremely mist-like, even from cold, so spotting should never be a problem - some real engineering went into that little feature.

One three-way switch, clearly icon-marked as No Steam, Steam, Extra Steam.

Less obvious: The water reservoir detaches from the base. There's a little button on the front stem of the handle, allowing you to pull the reservoir and all its controls off. This allows you to fill the iron from a shallow sink, preheat the iron while filling the reservoir, or use the iron as a dry-iron with the water reservoir detached. (The manual doesn't mention that little weight-saving slant.)

(Note: when removing the reservoir, first turn the steam control to No Steam. Not that important, but it stops drips.)

You know what I hate most about ironing? The cord that gets in the way, the water that sputters out when you were only trying for steam and the length of time most irons take to heat up and the amount of time it takes to actually do the ironing. This iron solves all of that. It heats super fast, there's no cord on the iron to worry about and it doesn't sputter. It doesn't even spit. It's well behaved, easy to use and does exactly what it's supposed to do, but with much less effort than any other iron I've ever used. Oh, and one other thing, I love that it doesn't have Teflon on the ironing plate. You know, that stuff that's supposed to keep stuff you burn from sticking but after a while always has built up gunk on it? This has a nice shiny stainless steel plate that glides smoothly over every type of material I've used it on.

The other very cool thing about this iron is the shape of the bottom. It's not like the old fashioned irons with the flat bottom plate that moved forward but not backwards very easily. This truly moves in any direction which makes a huge difference in how quickly you finish ironing a garment and get back to fun stuff. And if you want to cheat, the vertical steam feature turns this thing into a steamer so you can get away with not ironing some items at all! If the item isn't too wrinkled you can just hang it up and use the steam feature to "virtually iron" the garment. Because the iron heats up so fast it's much better than using a traditional steamer, most of which take a long time to start producing steam.

I hope this video gives you a better idea of what the iron looks like and some of the features. You can see that it's pretty simple but actually a nice improvement over the old fashioned irons. Since using this iron I'm actually looking at 100% cotton and linen clothing again!

I was hopeful for this iron, given its unique design and wireless ability. Years ago I had another wireless iron that was bulky, time consuming, and required constant re-charging. Unfortunately, this time around my experience is the same. This iron is receiving a number of reviews in men's magazines as an iron that even men can appreciate, but that's not been my experience. The iron simply does not get hot enough for long enough to do anything but light ironing, forget about ironing the cotton shirt or jeans unless you have 30 minutes to spare per item while struggling with recharging the iron in order to achieve what can only be called intermittent steam. The design and the light weight and the integration of the cord and carrying handle are all terrific, but ultimately even an inexpensive iron at half this cost will deliver better results. However, if you iron, like, one or two shirts a week and want something that looks really cool and don't mind spending the money, then this might be the iron for you. If you want a workhorse because you do the ironing in the family, this is not the iron to buy.

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