Customer Reviews

Black & Decker F210 Variable Steam Iron with SmartTemp System and Nonstick Soleplate

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

This iron is an absolute waste of money! Do not purchase this iron! It is very, very lightweight and the water continues to squart out of it every time you try to iron with it, and continues to wet your clothing. I used this iron only once and had to go back to my old one! I will have to return this iron for a refund.

Black & Decker Steam Iron F210 I wanted a lightweight steam iron since I have arthritis in my hands and plenty of ironing to do. Almost every iron I looked at, especially the more expensive ones, seemed to have been designed and tested by men who've never ironed in their lives, and are weightlifting body builders with huge hands and strong fingers to press steam and spray buttons. Fill one of those irons with water and you'd be lucky to drag it across an ironing board, never mind lift it and maneuver it around the garment 20-40 times as you iron each item.

The Black & Decker F210 steam iron seemed perfect for my needs, very lightweight, with all the key features I want, except auto shut-off. It has adjustable continuous steam, dampening spray, fabric heat settings, even a bonus ridiculously low $14 price tag, everything I wanted without the hand-numbing weight. Pleased with myself and my purchase, I toted it home, filled it with water, plugged it in, and from there it all went downhill.

The F210 proceeded to sputter, spit, spurt, dribble and drool water all over the ironing board and garment while I tried everything possible to make it function properly. I adjusted the fabric heat settings and steam settings, gave it more time to heat up, laid the iron flat, stood it up vertically (on its rather wobbly base) and checked to make sure I hadn't overfilled it, but nothing cured this iron's chronic incontinence, it continued to let loose all over my clothes. Amazed this iron had even made it onto the market, I gave up, unplugged the iron and got ready for bed. Two hours later, just as I was drifting off to sleep, I was awakened by the sound of water spontaneously cascading out of the iron's reservoir, spilling over the ironing board and streaming onto the floor of my bedroom.

Wanting to be fair, I wondered if this could be a a fluke, a one in a thousand defect peculiar to my iron, so I looked up consumer reviews of the F210. Apparently leaking and dribbling is a standard feature of this engineering masterpiece iron. At least half the reviews I read complained about it. So, unless you want to waste your time and money, don't even consider buying this iron.

IMPORTANT SAFETY NOTE: As if this wasn't enough reason to look elsewhere for an iron, the bottom of the F210 box warns the consumer in tiny print that the power cord on this iron contains lead "a chemical known ...to cause birth defects and other reproductive harm. Wash hands after handling." How does the U.S. government even allow this iron to be imported and sold in the U.S.? Why would a well respected manufacturer like Black & Decker abandon their company's goodwill and reputation by hawking a cheap defective iron with serious potential health risks? I would have happily paid twice the price for the same iron if it worked, were made in America and didn't contain health hazards. Wise up Black & Decker, you used to be a reliable and well respected company. Keep manufacturing off-shore cheap foreign health-risk lemons like this one and you'll be out of business with no one to blame but yourself. Ever heard of "quality control" or "Made in America"?

This is a terrible iron!! It constantly shuts off and when you are ironing, you end up with soaking wet clothes because it spits everywhere!!! Not even worth the box it came in!!

This iron has 3 main flaws:

1. It does not get hot enough. I regularly iron cotton dress shirts and this iron will not do them justice. It simply does not get hot enough to iron cotton (which is the one fabric that really needs ironing the most).

2. It leaks water all the time. Because it doesn't get very hot, water does not steam properly. This means that water will drip out of the steam holes, staining your clothes with rust spots that are impossible to get out. I have ruined a few shirts this way, as it often tends to drip on the most visible parts of the clothing, leaving little orange spots everywhere!

3. It shuts off too early. If you are trying to press out a seam and you leave the iron in the "down" position for too long, it will beep at you and turn off, leaking water everywhere. It's the culmination of the first 2 flaws: Since it doesn't get hot enough, you have to leave it in the down position longer than with a real iron. This causes the iron to think that someone has left it unattended, so it shuts off, causing the leaking problem to be even worse than normal.

The only positive thing I have to say is that the iron is lightweight. If you really need a light iron to do things like polyesters or wrinkle-free shirts, then it might be ok, as long as you watch out for the water leaks.

All in all though, I would NOT recommend this iron. You can get better irons for less money.

Bought this iron from Target because it was nice and cheap and I really don't need to use an iron that often. Decided to try this guy out the day I bought it...filled it up with water...

...with out delay the water just poured out of it from everywhere. The fool that I am, I tried it several more times with the same exact result.

Don't even waste your time or money on this.

This iron went bad after 6 mo of light use. It "ate" my clothes through the steam holes and the bottom of it got very dirty after a couple of weeks.

Super great iron, perfect for what I do. The service you provided me was great.


Thank you.

I agree with the others; this iron stinks! I, too, bought it because the price was inexpensive, and we are on a tight budget. But you get what you pay for, I guess. I've had the water leakage problem, but mine has another problem no one here has mentioned. Mine overheats (maybe because the water leaves it too quickly?). I've ruined one of my husband's dress shirts already. The soleplate became corroded, and now bits and pieces of it come off on other shirts, especially near the shoulders of my husband's dress shirts. Add to that the cord is way too short and now the sprayer doesn't even work. Did I mention I've only had this iron for about 6 months? Terrible.

We'd picked up this iron in a pinch when my boyfriend started culinary school; those coats and aprons get VERY wrinkled in our dryer.

I didn't have a problem with it dribbling or making the clothes particularly wet like the other reviewers mentioned but it was excessively steamy and the spray button would just spit some water in a very small spot. The iron itself if kind-of light weight which means I had to do a lot of the work when trying to remove the wrinkles. Also, there's nowhere to wrap the cord within the design of this iron so the cord ends up being a mess when you put it away. For me the cord was a bit short too.

We are replacing it primarily because of a hem tape mishap that is now burnt on to the bottom of the plate but I am very confident that had that not happened we'd be replacing it soon. Too many cons with this iron. There are other inexpensive alternatives that look much better on paper (and have way better reviews) like this: Panasonic NI-S300TR 1200-Watt Steam Iron with Curved Titanium-Coated Soleplate, White/Green