I would say the "small socks in the drain pump" is a strange thing that people say.
For clothes that small you will need to put them in a mesh bag no matter what washer you get. Just ask here and you will get a bunch of stories about people who had to call service for their toploaders because small items (including women panties) ended up between the washer basket and outer drum and then the drain pump. Who knows when that happened, if it's because the machine was overloaded and things were forced past the clothes guard, of if people were not paying attention while loading/unloading the machines and garments got past the clothes guard or something else entirely.
All I'm saying is it can happen with any washer.
As for the Electrolux new washers, I am also curious about why the "Delicates" cycle on the new Electrolux washers are not adequate for silk or wool garments?
For a family with kids, particularly babies, I'd think the biggest problem would be the lack of a true pre-wash that uses one dose of detergent, empties (and hopefully spins) the wash liquor out, then refills with fresh water and a new dose of detergent -- the "pre-wash" compartment on that series is basically just to hold a dose of pretreating products that gets dispensed at the start of the cycle along with the detergent, then a profile wash with a "stain treat" cycle happens.
For a lot of the cases, one can make use of the "quick 15 minute wash" for a pre-wash, in fact it can work better than traditional automatic prewash because it will drain the solution, spin the clothes and rinse them and spin again. But one must come back to the machine and reload the dispensers and restart for a normal cycle. Also, if you use the quick wash, the wash part of the pre-washing would be 5 minutes or less, as opposed to the 10-15 minute usual with other washers.
In any case, at first glance, the Electrolux 617 washer and dryer set seem like a pretty competent choice at a very decent price, but I'm just on my first couple of months with my set and haven't yet put it thru all the paces (for example, I haven't run the delicate cycle yet). You get a regular/normal cycle that is geared more towards saving time/energy (45 minute cycle), cleans well, could rinse better (still much better than most top loading washers), then increasingly more elaborate cycles that use more water, energy and time (up to some 130 minutes) that clean and rinse very well. What I like about this set is that the machines do not appear to waste time on things like balancing the load for 30 minutes -- it decides pretty quickly if it's balanced and spins up or tries again so the cycles are *very* close to the initial estimate, as opposed to some famous machines that claim "60 minutes" and aren't done before one hour and half or two hours.
