The jet impingement heat transfer process promises exceptional heat transfer performances, attracting worldwide attention for cooling potential industrial applications. This cooling or heat transfer process has been determined by various factors and parameters. The several affecting factors include Reynolds number, flow velocity, and impact ratio, are responsible for achieving this goal and are critically reviewed in the present article. Jet impingement heat transfer parameters such as heat transfer coefficient, heat flux, Nusselt number, and cooling rate are also discussed in detail. There are many conflicting results of affecting factors on the heat transfer characteristics found in the literature, but the behavior in the resultant trend of the parameters is the same. In the present review, all the factors and parameters are analyzed for various coolant conditions and surface conditions. Various Nusselt number and heat flux correlations for all conditions corresponding to single and two-phase heat transfer published in the literature are also mentioned in the present review. © 2023 Elsevier Ltd