Vax S2 Hard Floor Master

Overall I'm very impressed with this. Essentially it's a steam mop - there's a fabric pad on the end and the machine pushes steam, and optionally detergent, through the pad, you then mop the floor as if you're using an ordinary mop.

The pad attaches to the bottom of the machine with a Velcro-like mechanism - it's not actually Velcro, but the principal is the same. It's a doddle to attach and remove. Plug it in, wait for about 20 seconds for it to heat up ( I was surprised at how fast it is ), and away you go. The cleaning head is triangular and swivels, which makes it great for getting around toilet and sink pedestals. The power cord is quite long, which is a nice design thought as obviously you don't have sockets in bathrooms.

When the cleaning pad gets dirty, just stick it in the washing machine. I particularly like the fact that the detergent is optional, you can use just steam if you want - though having said that, the detergent actually makes quite a difference. You don't need much of it, so a bottle will last a fair time. The floors dry off really quickly since it's only steam rather than water that you've used.

I was initially a bit sceptical that this would be one of those things that sounds great, but is such a faff to set up that it ends up sitting in the cupboard. In actual fact, it's a lot quicker than using a mop and bucket - if you just need to give a small floor a quick once-over, it probably takes less than 5 mintues from start to finish, and by the time you've got your mop and bucket out, washed the floor, rinsed everything out and put it all away, then waited for the floor to dry, it's far easier to use the Vax. It's also very light and easy to move around.

Overall I thoroughly recommend this. If you've got anything more than a small area of hard floor to deal with it's well worth investing in.