The German manufacturer announces a heating time of only 30 s. Promise kept! The SC 3 Upright Easyfix heats up in 24 s and its LED turns green. To assess the steam mop’s washing performance, we purposely soiled our lab floor with club soda, oil, carbon black, and lipstick the night before the test.
To clean the stains, we set the Kärcher to maximum power. It removes oil in one round trip and soda in two. Carbon black is more complicated to remove. The broom removes all three stains immediately, but leaves streaks behind. As for the lipstick, it is very well faded following eight round trips, without completely erasing. These performances are above the average of our comparison.
Finally, if this information is not taken into account in the final rating, we still timed the time of use with a full tank. Set to the highest intensity, the steam mop projects steam for 16 min 44 s. When we reduce the intensity to its lowest level, the Kärcher becomes an endurance champion: it cleans for 1 hour 32 minutes, a record in our lab!
