Quite impressed – ***My Tefal Turbo Pro FV5648 was supplied through the Product Review Ambassador Program in exchange of my honest review. “We” is for my partner and I.***

First thing I noticed when I opened this iron was the packing styrofoam blocks has broken while inside the box that most likely happened during transit. So before I could do anything with it, I had to clean off the styrofoam bits which had come loose and adhered themselves to all parts of the iron like a cat that rolled in bean bag fillings. The instruction booklet was in clear, easy to understand illustrations (a bit like the IKEA instructions) demonstrating the use, care and what not to do with the iron. But it could do with a bigger font as not everyone finds pictures easy to decipher. It is also Made in France, which to me, made the Tefal stand out from the ocean of Made in China counterparts.

We could not help but admire the sleek almost aerodynamic appearance of the iron too! The mix of style with engineering is very French indeed.

The auto-off feature is something that I really like about the iron. Because aside from hair straighteners, irons are the most common appliance that tend to be left on. It is one less thing to worry about while ironing your shirt before work.

The power cord is a little on the short side, but not a show stopper by any means, we just moved the board closer to a power board, which gave us a little more wiggle room. A little plastic pouring cup to use for filling the steam reservoir would make the package more complete. The transparent nature of the reservoir wall makes it clear how much water is in there and you would know when you need to top up. The water filling hole is quite large as well - big enough to fit my thumb through it.

We plugged it in to start for the first time. One large dial with the different heat settings was easy to understand and use (in English and French), once you selected your desired setting, an indicator light starts flashing, when it is off, the iron is ready to use. The stand on which you set the iron is quite large and steady, no worries of it toppling over while you prep the clothing or unintentionally bump the ironing board. I imagine that feature makes it safer if you have young children or pets.

The iron felt heavy compared to our old iron, but you are not going to get a forced arm workout from using it because of the ease it glides along the fabric. The handle is long, so it was easy for me to handle the iron without pressing the spray button by mistake, but it is still not long enough to stop my partner from unintentionally spraying his shirt with water.

We have actually never been so excited to do the ironing, to test out the different temperature settings, we brought out clothing of different fabrics to see how they would perform with each of them. Starting with viscose that I always had difficulty keeping it straight because of its bad reaction to high temperatures. It turned out with our old iron, the temperature setting for synthetics/silk was simply too high, because the Tefal took out the wrinkles with one or two glides, and with my careful arranging the shirt on the board, I was very happy with the result indeed! I will not bore you with the result of each type of fabrics but the Tefal took them all on with ease. The narrow arrowhead like tip provided easy manoeuvre into hard to reach places. We were done with the both our week's worth of work shirts/blouse while watching a single episode of Big Bang Theory. It made a chore into an enjoyable task, and in that aspect we can not ask for more.

We can not provide the efficiency of the calc/scale function because Sydney has relatively soft water, and we mostly use ironing water to fill the iron.

We do have a few minor grumbles about the placement of the buttons on the handle though,

1. The Spray button could be a little further out towards the front of the iron,

2. the steam turbo trigger would probably be better placed on the side where someone's thumb might go instead of the bottom, where if someone grips the handle a little tight and unintentionally turn on the turbo assist, in lower temperature settings it causes water to leak out instead of blowing steam.

So in conclusion, I will sum up the pros and cons

Pros:

- long narrow tip for hard to reach places

- easy glide

- fast heat up

- turbo steam feature which removes crease faster and more effectively but....!

Cons:

- the shortfall of having a powerful steam function is the condensation of water droplets that forms when the temperature is in the lower settings

- short power cable

- the packaging has something left to be desired, eg. more sturdy so it wouldn't break in transit

- button placement gets in the way but you learn to avoid them

So over all it is an effective iron, where the shortcomings we found to be relatively minor and does not affect the usage of the iron itself.

C'est bon! Tefal!