Vax Steam Fresh Power Plus review

The Vax Steam Fresh Power Plus leads the brand’s steam cleaning range, with multiple different cleaning functions and even a detergent setting, which lets you use specially formulated detergent with steam power to remove really stubborn stains. Certainly, from the specs alone, this looks to be the big daddy of steam cleaners, with every feature under the sun, but does the premium price make it a cut above the rest?

Design

The Vax Steam Fresh Power Plus is rather top heavy, with the water storage tank placed at the top of the cleaner. Weighing 3.4Kg overall, it’s certainly not light and is quite difficult to move around the house. It doesn’t stand up on its own either, unlike the Vileda Steam mop, but it does come with a wall bracket for neat and secure storage. The mop extension can be detached, leaving a handheld unit, but it’s still heavy and a little unwieldy.

The 0.3-litre water storage tank can be disconnected from the mop itself for easy filling. There’s also a detergent tank section, for the steam detergent supplied in the box, that can be used while cleaning to help get rid of tougher stains. There’s also plenty of attachments, including brushes and nozzles, to help you scour tougher messes.

A light turns on to let you know the cleaner is in use, but that’s it for safety features. The storage tank can be accessed during use, although the lid isn’t external, so you have to remove it from the cleaner first. The outside casing gets very hot to the touch during use, including the handle which made could be uncomfortable during longer sessions.

Cleaning performance

Variable steam controls are accessed via a four-way thumb control on the handle. This gives you plenty of flexibility, with different power modes and you can choose if want to use detergent. All settings worked perfectly well when put to the test, with plenty of steam power even at the lower settings.

The nozzle can be rotated in 90-degree increments, which was very useful when cleaning walls, just make sure not to rotate it towards your face, though. The Fresh Power Plus didn’t excel when put to the test against some dirty walls in our kitchen, seeming to not reach a high enough temperature to shift really stubborn stains, with less steam being produced than I’d hoped for.

Cleaning floors is definitely the Vax’s key strength, handling dirt and stains with ease. When put on the higher setting with detergent, it really shines and you can see a clear difference almost instantly. The steam mop has given me the best clean I’ve seen when using the detergent, managing to quickly break up stains and make the hard floor shiny again.

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It is a shame that the use of detergent feels necessary when cleaning, as a steam cleaner should really just do its job without added cleaning solution. The mop head did struggle to stay velcroed to the base when using it on hard surfaces too. Overall steam time was pretty poor at just over 8 minutes, although at least the water tank heated up in a relatively speedy 60 seconds.

Conclusion

The Vax Steam Fresh Power Plus is a decent multifunctional steam cleaner that’s let down by a few flaws. While hard floor and carpet cleaning is great, especially with the use of the detergent, it struggled to get rid of grime on wall surfaces.

There are definitely some cheaper and better alternatives out there. If you’re looking for a very effective steam mop that can handle floors incredibly well without forking out too much, the Vileda Steam Mop is a great choice. Alternatively, if you want a multifunction steam cleaner, the Karcher SC1 is better placed to handle numerous tough tasks.

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