What is the Lakeland Electronic Steam Mop?
The Lakeland Electronic Steam Mop is a budget steam mop with no frills. It’s pleasantly lightweight and affordable, and it does an OK job of cleaning, but the good news stops there. It's barely less effort than using a mop and bucket and there are more affordable steam cleaners that offer far better features.
Lakeland Electronic Steam Mop – Design and Features
The "Electronic" in the name may confuse: after all, electricity is used to boil water in all steam cleaners. But the word is there for a reason: to differentiate it from Lakeland's previous model, which required you to laboriously pump the cleaner's handle in and out to pump steam to the mop head. That wasn't much fun.
This newer model is an improvement then, and it retains the original's main virtue: it's very lightweight and easy to manoeuvre. As well as adding a steam pump it has an unusual "back saver" folding handle that lets you angle the cleaner down low to get under furniture.
There are no tools, but it comes with three machine-washable microfibre cleaning pads – these are flat and more simply made than some, but they do the job. It also comes with a carpet glider attachment to put on the base for cleaning rugs and carpets.
Lakeland Electronic Steam Mop – What's it like to use?
Setup is simple. Unscrew the cap on the water tank and fill using the supplied jug and then switch the steam generator on. Unusually, the on button is on the body of the cleaner and the button found on the handle is unrelated to steam: instead it lets you fold the handle to get under low furniture. This looks neat but also seems a bit gimmicky – we've never found other cleaners to be a big problem in this respect.
Steam is ready within half a minute but it's not terribly powerful. It does an OK job of lifting dust from hard floors but it's ineffectual on carpets. Also, the cleaner, complete with pad, sits on the carpet glider but doesn't actually clip into it. This means whenever you lift the cleaner to move it elsewhere you leave the carpet glider behind. This small thing is a constant annoyance as you clean.
Almost as annoying is the fact that the cleaner doesn't lock in a vertical position if, for example, you want to leave it for a minute when the doorbell goes. It seems to balance in the right place for a second… and then topples the minute your back is turned.
Should I buy the Lakeland Electronic Steam Mop?
No. It is affordable (sometimes very affordable – at the time of writing, it was discounted to less than £50) and cleans floors adequately. But ordinary mops do a better job, and by the time you have set it up, this only makes cleaning a bit less effort than mopping. If you want an effective steam cleaner on a budget, look at the Polti Vaporetto GO instead.
Verdict
The Lakeland Electronic Steam Mop is lightweight and affordable but low on power and features; you're better off with a mop and bucket.