Which machine
One uses heat and a litre of water; the other uses several hundred litres an hour and mechanical force. They overlap far less than the shops suggest.
Both machines clean without detergent. That is where the similarity ends.
A steam cleaner boils a litre of water and delivers it as vapour at 3 to 5 bar. It softens grease, lifts grime from grout, and leaves the surface nearly dry. It works at centimetres, indoors, on tile, hobs, taps, screens and sealed floors. It does nothing useful to a terrace.
A pressure washer moves 400 to 600 litres an hour at 120 to 180 bar. It strips algae, dirt and old coatings from hard outdoor surfaces, and it will strip soft ones too. It is an outdoor machine, and it needs somewhere for the water to go.
Neither disinfects in the domestic sense unless you accept a manufacturer’s laboratory claim, and neither replaces a vacuum. Households that clean tile floors indoors and a drive outdoors need both — which is worth knowing before spending the whole budget on one.
130 bar · 420 l/h · 30 m²/h · 5.7 kg
The first Kärcher that publishes its flow rate — and the number that tells you what the machine will actually do.
Best for: A terrace, a drive and a car, cleaned two or three times a year, where the K 3 would need too many passes
≈ 220 €
No. Steam carries very little water and no mechanical force to speak of; a terrace needs volume to carry the dirt away. Steam is for grout, hobs, taps, shower screens and sealed floors — indoor work at close range.
Only in a garage or utility room with a drain, and even then it makes a mess. The machines are designed to move hundreds of litres an hour, which has to go somewhere.
Pressure washers and floor washers swing by a hundred euros or more across the year, and the biggest "discounts" often land at prices the same model sold for six weeks earlier. UniverTrack tracks the real price history across retailers, spots fake reductions, and alerts you when it is genuinely the moment to buy.
