The Avent Express steriliser concept:
Avent's Express steam steriliser is an electric unit designed to sterilise up to six bottles or a breast pump and accessories quickly and easily in the same way as the sterilisers used in hospitals. A rack system inside can be adjusted depending on what it is you want to sterilise and part of the rack also doubles as a dishwasher rack to hold small accessories. Once the eight-minute cycle is complete, the contents stay sterile for up to three hours if the unit is unopened.
The Avent Express action:
Ease of use
The Avent Express is quite easy and relatively quick to use. You do need to accurately measure the correct amount of water for the sterilising cycle - too little and the unit won't sterilise effectively, too much and the cycle will take longer - but this is easy with the measuring cup and the helpful line indicator inside the unit. The lift-out rack loading system makes it easy to fit lots into the unit and to get to what you want quickly after sterilisation. The rack is also specially designed to accommodate the parts for the Isis breast pump. You need to wipe dry and re-fill the water for the unit before each sterilising cycle but the removable rack inside means that you can do this without unloading everything.
The sterilising cycle of eight minutes isn't bad, particularly for an electric steriliser. You do have to allow an additional couple of 'cool-down' minutes after the cycle is complete to avoid burning yourself, but this is the same with any steam steriliser. There are faster options for sterilising the same number of bottes, such as some microwave sterilisers. However, as the contents stay sterilised for up to three hours if unopened, if you put the cycle on anytime within three hours of feeding time then you'll be ready to go straight-away. For some, this three-hour window won't be enough, and there are other sterilisers, such as the Avent Express IQ 24 that can keep your bottles and bits sterile for either six hours or up to twenty-four hours, great for the middle of the night or first thing in the morning (the Express IQ also sterilises more quickly, in six minutes), but you will have to pay more for the extra bells and whistles.
One way in which the unit could be improved would be an audio alert indicating that the cycle has finished. As it is, the unit's light simply turns out when the cycle is complete, so if the cycle was interrupted for some reason, such as someone accidentally unplugging the unit or the fuse box tripping, you might not know whether the cycle had completed and so need to re-sterilise just in case and this did happen to us a few times.
Cleaning
The Avent is very simple to keep clean on a day-to-day basis, you just pour out the excess water from the last cycle and then wipe the inside dry. But you do need to remember to de-scale the unit once a month with citric acid to keep it running effectively.
Space
The Avent isn't a small steriliser which is something to think about if, like us, you have a small kitchen, but because it's tall rather than wide it takes up less unit space than you might expect for a steriliser that takes up to six bottles. If space is an issue but you do have a microwave then you might want to consider a more compact microwave steriliser.
