Stellarators are attractive toroidal confinement schemes because they are inherently steady-state, are likely to yield more benign plasmas and do not pose the danger of severe mechanical stresses associated with sudden disruptions of the toroidal plasma current. In principle, the properties of the stellarator field can be tailored to suit reactor needs, however, at the cost of having to give up toroidal symmetry. Experimental research focuses on the plasma confinement properties of different stellarator fields and investigates the problems arising when one extrapolates to reactor parameters.