new washing machine advice

[Peter Crosland]

My Bosch LogixX has done three washes per week for fifteen years and has never had any work done on it.

[Dave W]

[snip]

Actually proportional to the spin speed squared. Also proportional to the drum diameter squared.

[Java Jive]

[Andrew Gabriel]

bugger - that's what I meant to say, and I got it right in the calcs. (Proportional to twice the spin speed is toutology, besides being wrong:-(

[D.M.Chapman]

I'm a bit of a Miele fan I'll admit :-)

The killer thing with Miele is although they are very reliable, if they do go wrong then it'll cost you the price of a hotpoint to get it repaired if you aren't lucky...

That and the fact parts are like rocking horse shit to find. I guess as a result of the limited market for them.

We have a Miele washing machine, but waited for one of the 10 yr warranty offers before buying.

Cost 900 quid for 10 years. 90 quid a year was a price we were willing to pay - with a couple of kids it gets a fair work out and has been brilliant so far (9 years in...)

I could have been on my 3rd cheapo machine by now and still only spent the same (but I still like the Miele and would buy another one ;-))

Darren

[D.M.Chapman]

A (admittedly minor!) advantage of the Miele honeycomb drum - that can't happen as the holes are tiny :-)

Darren

[Sam Plusnet]

We bought a low-spec Miele at about the same time our neighbour bought a cheapo machine (same sized households).

She's on her 4th such machine after 20 years and has also spent a fair amount on repairs over that time. The Miele now looks well used, but works just as well as when we bought it. Note: Cleaning the filter & running it on a hot wash from time to time is the only maintenance it has ever needed.

[alan]

+1 I always treat them as disposable items and buy at the cheap end of the market and find that the machines last 5+ years. I don't bother with any warranty contracts. Although usually rubbished by many here with expensive machines I've found my bottom of line Indesit machine meet my needs.

Past experience of any machine is unlikely to tell you anything about future reliability etc. Many different brands are made in the same factories and/or manufacturing has been outsourced in the recent years. Although my last purchase was an Indesit it doesn't mean my next purchase will be.

Consider also what you need from a machine. I guess that 99.9% don't use _ANY_ of the bells and whistles on the more expensive machines at the top of the range. In this household it tends to be the use of one of two program cycles with a cold wash and the occasional high temperature wash to "sanitise" the machine.

[alan]

Too many variables to make a comparison.

Your neighbour may have been overloading the machine on a regular basis whereas you may have more kind to yours.

[Peter Crosland]

Correction Maxx is the washing machine, LogiXX is the dishwasher. Both running after 15 years continuous use. The Logixx needed a replacement podwer dispenser sping after 12 years.

[Stephen]

All of which makes perfect sense, so actually a 9kg model with wider drum should perform better than an 8kg one with a smaller drum.

I was still looking at Bosch models last night. Using the compare function on the Bosch web site, it looks as though the 9kg Logixx WAS32760GB would use more water and more electricity than the 8kg Exxcel WAQ28461GB, which makes sense if it has a bigger drum and holds more water and needs to heat that water.

But... I have downloaded the manuals from the Bosch web site and the

9kg model seems to use less water and electricity for every programme except cottons 60C; for that it uses 1.23kWh and 60L water, whereas the Excel uses 1.15kWh and 68L, so it seems to be swings and roundabouts: one sues more water on ether 60C wash and the other uses more electricity.

Perhaps these are only small differences (less than a unit) and nothing to worry about; perhaps I should get the Logixx on the basis that it seems to use less water and electricity for all the other washes and being a Logixx would be better built than the Exxcel?

Thanks, Stephen

[Stephen]

I have young children so it will be uses a couple of times a day. So it doesn't have to be a budget price, long lasting is more of a requirement.

[polygonum]

You can get decent Bosch washing machines for free.

Enter their regular monthly competition, one that does indeed have a w/m as a prize, and wait for the email to advise you that you have won!

That's what we did. :-)

[Bob Eager]

It's so dramatically better than the old Hotpoints, I didn't really care.

Yes. It does go into a very low power mode if you don't switch it off immediately after use (e.g. you forget about it). And it does have an alarm too, to remind you that it's finished.

We also got the condenser dryer (more expensive than the w/m!) Given that sons come in late at night and start a load of washing/drying that is often needed the next day, that has turned out to be a big saving.

[DerbyBorn]

+1. Buy on appearance and features that suit you. (Just bought a Gorenje Fridge on appearance and colour. Found that the maker is a huge company yhat supplies to many large countries in the former Yugoslavia region. Does it matter if it has a trnage sounding name?)

[Bob Eager]

Hmmm. That would be why my washing machine looks like this, then:

[PeterC]

Looking on JL's site, the figures don't always tally. First of all the initial figure for Annual Energy Consumption is given in kWh/cycle, then sometimes the energy p.a. can be higher for a lower energy per cycle. The same is true of the water, where a higher figure per wash has a lower figure p.a.. The same is so for TVs - although water useage isn't given for those.

Either the measuring criteria differ or it's just a good, plain, old-fashioned c*ck-up.

[Bob Eager]

Ah, sorry. I see. You are saying you have a Maxx washing machine! My mistake...

[Stephen]

I agree. The Exxcel model I was looking at has lower annual water consumption and electricity consumption than the logixx. However, reading the figures in the Bosch manuals shows that the exxcel uses

68L per wash whereas the logixx uses only 60L, so how can that be?

I am going round in circles and I am back to considering the exxcel model again. Notwithstanding the figrues don't add up, since the exxcel is £400ish and the logixx £800ish, I wonder even if the exxcel used more water or electricity, would these extra bills total £400 over the life of the product? Perhaps I should save £400 now by getting the exxcel at the cost of higher electricity or water bills later.

Thanks, Stephen.

[PeterC]

Nother thing to consider: I managed to get an impression from a review of a machine that it had a clock - (alarm) bells rang! If the power is off (and who would leave a washing machine on all the time?), the clock has to be reset before the delay can be selected. There's also a chance that, if it's like a cooker we once had, that it can't even be started immediately until the clock is at least running normally (although the time would't matter).

One review complained about a machine that did't have a clock, so she had to do the 'maths'!