About a year ago I bought a Rowenta professional grade iron for about $85 which was the best model at Target and made in Germany.  The build quality was excellent and I must admit that I am at fault for breaking the iron by using tap water and having it fall from the ironing board (once) which broke the spray nozzle, but didn’t impact its general functionality.

Well, last week I was using it and rust began to come out while I was steaming my pants and after attempting to use the “Clean” function I finally gave up and bought another this past weekend.

I did not want to spend another $85 so I bought the DC-1700 which is made in China, not Germany.

Wow, what $40 and another continent makes.  The iron works well enough, but is no where near the quality of the iron made in Germany.  I’m sure it will work fine and I even bought distilled water to avoid what happened to the higher quality iron.

What I don’t understand is that Rowenta doesn’t have better quality control in their Chinese facilities.  The finishing of the plastic on the iron is so poor compared to the better model that if they didn’t both have the Rowenta name on the side I would not recognize them as the same brand. The quality of the metal work on the iron itself is so well done on the model made in Germany compared to that of the Chinese model.

These are all humans, all can be trained to do good work so what is the difference?  Rowenta needs to step up and make sure that their quality is better across the board.

Below are some pictures of the German made Rowenta and the Chinese made Rowenta.

This is the difference between a BMW and a Chinese manufactured car, but since there aren’t any Chinese cars available in the U.S. this is a moot point.

Looks like crap, but as long as it functions properly…