Simply outstanding performance

We have been on an eco rampage, and reviewing our consumption of energy and water. Of course this has to do with rising energy prices, but also in our municipality we receive 2 water tax bills based on consumption. Our last bill showed that we consumed water for a family of 6 when we are only 3 in the house (gulp! guilt trip...)

We had a 10 year old Kitchenaid top loader that is built like a tank and still works like a charm, but realized that it consumed a huge amount of water and power when compared with the new HE front loaders. The consensus seemed to be with LG Tromm (sounds Swedish and efficient, doesn't it), but hearing bad stories about service and parts availability here in the Montreal area we nixed that idea.

Since we have had a very positive experience with our Samsung range which we would buy again in a flash (see my review on Epinions here) we decided to take a long look at the Samsung washers. After reading the mainly positive reviews here at Epinions and the typical problems with HE front loaders in general (motors/transmissions, leaks and smelly clothes) we decided to go for the Samsung Silvercare WF337 (AAG, the charcoal grey, which we felt would not date the machine as much as red or blue).

What sold me on the machine in addition to the silver ion sanitization was the direct drive motor (no transmission to break), ultra high-speed spin (1300 RPM), vibration reduction (it really works) and incredibly low water consumption (less than 1 gallon per load).

Installing and setting up was quite easy. The biggest difficulty was removing the shipping bolts (not obvious with the provided instructions) and then levelling the machine (very important for front loaders). A nice touch was the machine came with all of the water and drain connections and a tool for the bolts and levelling.

Our jaws dropped when we used the machine for the first time. the machine is utterly silent! Since our laundry nook is on the main floor, with the doors closed you can't even tell its running! You can barely hear the water sloshing around, and there is virtually NO motor noise. The vibration reduction is hard to describe. The machine starts to spin, then it shakes a little, then stops, then starts again. It does this a couple of times until it figures out its optimum balance, then off it goes, slowly at first, before kicking it in full speed. It has this precision mechanical whine like a Porsche turbo (guys, you'll love it).

Clothes come out virtually dry, which means significantly lower drying times. A full load of towels took about 38 minutes to dry completely. We haven't tried a heavily soiled load yet, but so far a tiny amount of HE soap gets a full load clean. The other thing we noticed was the very low amount of dryer lint, which we attribute to the gentle way in which the washer handles clothes. We expect that our clothes will last longer with this machine.

We have used the SilverCare cycle a couple of times, but without a microscope I would be hard pressed to tell the difference. There does seem to be some controversy over the effectiveness of the Silver Ion process, and it is important to know that not all bacteria and fungii (or dust mites, I imagine) are killed by silver ions. I consider this a partial solution, but an energy-saving one as it will sanitize in cold or warm water (without steam).

Of course it remains to be seen how reliable and durable this machine will be. We did take a 5 year service contract from Sears with annual visits, which we will likely renew depending on other people's experiences with their machines. My expectations are 10 years service life, at which point energy, water and detergent savings will have paid back its premium purchase price (and then some).

After using this machine for a couple of weeks, we are not at all disappointed and given a second chance we would go out and buy the same machine again. Anyone with a top loader and metered water will see a payback with an HE machine in less than 10 years, which turns out to be an investment when you buy a better machine, and not an expense.