I have been lurking here for a while as one of many web sites in researching which washer to buy. And now that I have done so I thought I would pay all of folks back for the good information I have received here in helping me decide by submitting a review. It's long but I hope it helps.
If you are in the market for a new washing machine, the good news is there is a tremendous amount to choose from. The bad news is there is a tremendous amount to choose from. If you are like me you researched the web ad nauseam for what to buy and somehow the Speed Queen front loader has ended up on your short list. Now you are torn between buying the Speed Queen and some other brand, and there are few things that are still driving you nuts about the Speed Queen vs. the "other machine". Things like load capacity, lack of wash cycles, and high cost, but the reliability reputation, commercial laundry pedigree and warranty keeps it a strong contender. To make the decision even more difficult is the very scarce amount of user reviews on the web, and Consumer Reports rates it at the bottom of the front load washing machine list. So now relax and read on for this review is the one you have been waiting for to help you decide, for I too know what you are going through and it is my sincerest hope to help make this decision a little easier.
I am an engineer by profession, which is a curse because I can't even buy a bottle of ketchup without analyzing all of them on the shelf. I have designed equipment that have been to the bottom of the sea and have been launched into space. You probably have a 25% chance that you are using some piece of electronics in your home that I have designed at some time in my 40+ year engineering career. So I know a thing or two when it comes to manufacturing commercial and consumer products and have a good idea about what makes something good.
I'll begin by breaking down the process of washing clothes. There are only three things required, water, soap and agitation. You provide two of these things and the washing machine provides the agitation. In the good old days, women spent a good amount of time agitating their clothes by beating them on rocks by the side of the river. The river provided the water and the rocks. Now we modern folks use washing machines.
There are only two ways washing machines agitate. One method is to fill a tub with lots of water (top load) and employ some device (an agitator) to swirl the clothes around and paddle (agitate) the dirt out of the material. The second way is to get the clothes soaking wet and drop the clothes against some hard object over and over again (front load washer) driving the dirt out of the material. Since I was interested in buying a front load washer to replace my Kenmore top load, this narrowed down my search by 50%.
Agitation - From my observations all front washers agitate the same. They wash by soaking the clothes in soapy water and rotating them in a drum flipping the outer clothes over the top causing the outer part of the load to drop into the drum side wall while the clothes on the inner part of the load rotate and grind against each other. Each manufacturer starts the drum rotations in one direction and then reverses direction multiple times during the course of the wash. This serves to move clothes around such that all clothes move from inside of the clothes pile to the outside numerous times allowing all the clothes to experience the outer beating action during agitation. Some manufacturer come up with variations of starting and stopping the drum rotation, calling it some type of marketing hype but that is all it appears to be. If clothes are dirty, increasing the agitation time is all that is required to get them cleaner. If clothes are relatively clean a shorter agitation time will work. All things being equal, agitation time is the only variable that one has to select to clean clothes. The selection of agitation time is done by selecting your wash cycle. I wish they simply allowed you to set the agitation time rather than choose between wash cycles like "Normal Regular Cotton", "Permanent Press", "Delicate", etc. This would make things a lot more straight forward.
Soap - Soap does two things. First it acts as surfactant, meaning it makes water wetter, and second it acts to break down the various substances that have stained your clothes like wine, ketchup, oil, etc. Since the amount of suds you see has no bearing on how good the soap is working, you are always better off with a low suds detergent in your front load washer because it will prevent soap residue from building up. Hence the reason that front load washer manufactures recommend high efficiency soaps.
Water Temperature - The hotter the water the better the washing action of the water. This means that with hot water you can spend less time agitating the clothes than you will need with cold water to get the same results. Having said this, the soap brand you use can also dramatically affect this relationship of water temperature to agitation time. In the end you will need to experiment and determine what works best for you. Also clothes manufactures have washing instructions located on the clothes tag and this will dictate your wash cycle as well.
Load size - So how big is a load of laundry? There is no standard to define this. Some manufactures rate their machine by volume and others by weight. After pouring over the internet I have come to my own definition of what constitutes a load of laundry based on the inference of the various washing machine manufactures. From this a standard load of laundry weighs 9 lbs. and occupies a bushel basket in volume. A bushel basket occupies 1.244 cubic feet. In actual practice a bushel basket of laundry weighs more like 7-1/2 lbs. but 9 lbs. is what I have concluded looking all the specifications and ratings of various washers manufactures. So if the washer you are looking at claims to be able to handle 4 cubic feet of laundry then you should be able to stuff a little over 3 bushel baskets or 27 pounds of laundry in it. Actually the laundry weight will be more like 24 lbs. The reason weight is part of the load equation is that cloths can be compressed if you stuff a basket and the weight is way to limit overload by stuffing.
So how much clothes can you load into your front load washer and still get good agitation? If you stuff your clothes in tight enough you can probably fit twice the rated capacity, but then your clothes will simply get wet and go around in circles with no agitating action. A front load drum can be fully loaded meaning every square inch of the drum can be filled with loosely packed clothes. Care must be taken to load clothes in such that the only packing that occurs is from the weight of the clothes and not due to the force of your hand loading the clothes. Then as the wash cycle begins, the wet clothes will compress down to occupy 60-65% of the drum volume leaving enough room for good agitation to take place.
How clean is good enough? Once you remove all the dirt and stains from your clothes cleaning longer will only waist time and energy and increase clothes wear.
Now that I have established what I think goes into washing with a front load washer I can begin discussing washing machines. Since I did not care about steam, sanitize, heating water, or allergen cycles this narrowed down the list of available front load washers dramatically. The largest load I ever do weighs in between 14 to 16 lbs. and occupies 2.7 cubic feet which is a little over two bushel baskets. Thus the largest amount of laundry I do in any one wash is just over two loads in volume and under two loads in weight.
Looking at the available washers I initially choose the LG WM3050. This is a basic 4 cubic foot front load washer that yielded a lot of good reviews from the likes of Home Depot, Lowes and Best Buy, but what also came out or these reviews, from those that had issues with LG, was poor customer service and a bunch of consistent nagging problems such as leaking, mold/mildew smell, and bearing and main circuit board failures. In addition I could not get a handle on the longevity of this product. Consumer reports also liked this washer's predecessor but the various forums were a lot less kind to LG and the majority of the few reviews on Amazon were critical. The warranty was also average being only one year. The 10 year motor warranty is a bunch of marketing hype because the failures that I have read about tended to be bearings, circuit boards and seals costing much more to fix than what the machine cost new.
Throughout my internet search the name Speed Queen kept coming up which got me to consider this machine. The Speed Queen front load washers have a load capacity of 2.84 cubic feet or 18 lbs. in laundry weight. This machine just makes it as far as my maximum load requirement. The reviews are almost nonexistent with under a dozen positive reviews on Amazon and the review that Consumer Report gave some 5 years ago rated it at the bottom of the list with a rating of 44 out of 100. The LG got a rating of over 70. What kept Speed Queen in the running was a hard core following in the various laundry forums, the few reviews on Amazon and the good reviews various Consumer Report readers gave this machine rebutting the rating that Consumer Reports gave. Going to Speed Queens website I learned that this machine had a commercial pedigree and used the same internals that Speed Queen put in their Horizon series commercial washer. Their 3 year warranty was unique and was also offered to their commercial customers. Further research indicated that in vended laundry, multi-housing laundry and on-premises laundry use, as told by commercial laundry owners in various forums, these washers go for years without a hiccup used in such places as apartment buildings, dormitories and Laundromats.
Wash times for the LG's using their normal cycle setting can vary from 55 minutes to over 90 minutes and is a function of load size, soil level and water temperature selection and the displayed wash times don't include the time this machine spends calculating the load size. In addition it lacked a spin only cycle. The Speed Queen took 44 minutes, in the regular setting, independent of load size or water temperature setting.
It appeared both washers would do the job of cleaning clothes well and the cost of the LG was $1000.00 less than the Speed Queen, so I was leaning towards the LG. Then I called Speed Queen to ask some questions. The lady verified that the home version of their washer was identical to their commercial washers except for the outer case and no coin box. Doing a comparison of the bearing designs between the LG and Speed Queen, a weakness of many front load washers, seems to justify the claim that the Speed Queen washer is built better. The business end of these washers is the visible drum, made out of stainless steel where the clothes are loaded in and that rotates the clothes during the wash. These inner drums are suspended in an outer horizontal drain tub by a shaft attached to the back center of the inner drum by a three wing spider arm assembly. This shaft goes through a pair of bearings at the back of the outer drain tub to the motor. The outer drain tub of the LG is a two piece plastic assembly where the bearings are press fit into the plastic back. The outer drain tub of the Speed Queen is one piece welded stainless steel. Bolted to the back center of the Speed Queen outer drain tub is a steel trunnion that houses the beatings through which the inner drum shaft passes through to the motor drive wheel. You decide which is better built and will last longer.
The Speed Queen Representative also suggested that I find a laundry mat that had their Horizon series washers and try one for myself. What a shocking idea. Try before you buy. This would take all the guess work out of how well this washer would work. And so I did. I brought my largest load and stuffed it in. I did this multiple times over the course of a month, and this convinced me to buy the Speed Queen AFN50.
Now I don't know how much better the LG would do in comparison to the Speed Queen but at least I knew the Speed Queen would do what I wanted it to do before I bought one. Because the LG agitates clothes from 11 to 41 minutes longer than the Speed Queen I have no doubt that is will clean the dirtiest of clothes better, but then again it may only be wasting energy by washing them longer then needed.
I like that my new Speed Queen ANF50 is a basic and simple washer that cleans very well with only the simple selection of water temperature and load type. It also includes the ability to add an extra rinse to the wash cycle if desired. I like that it can be paused to allow the load to soak a while or re-start a wash cycle that has been running for a while there by adding more wash time before going into the rinse. I also like the heavy duty build quality of the bearing assembly and the no nonsense approach to doing laundry. The machine runs quiet with little to no vibration during the spin cycle and the cloths come out well rung reducing the dry time from my previous washer. As of this moment I cannot comment on the other wash cycles since I have not used them yet and thus I don't know how a queen size comforter will fit, but I may post updates as I learn more. Finally I do highly recommend this washer, but you owe it to yourself to try out a Speed Queen at your local laundry before you buy. That way there will be no surprises. And if you do intend to test one, make sure you are washing in a Horizon series Speed Queen. This is the smallest front load machine they make. Good Luck Shopping!
If you are in the market for a new washing machine, the good news is there is a tremendous amount to choose from. The bad news is there is a tremendous amount to choose from. If you are like me you researched the web ad nauseam for what to buy and somehow the Speed Queen front loader has ended up on your short list. Now you are torn between buying the Speed Queen and some other brand, and there are few things that are still driving you nuts about the Speed Queen vs. the "other machine". Things like load capacity, lack of wash cycles, and high cost, but the reliability reputation, commercial laundry pedigree and warranty keeps it a strong contender. To make the decision even more difficult is the very scarce amount of user reviews on the web, and Consumer Reports rates it at the bottom of the front load washing machine list. So now relax and read on for this review is the one you have been waiting for to help you decide, for I too know what you are going through and it is my sincerest hope to help make this decision a little easier.
I am an engineer by profession, which is a curse because I can't even buy a bottle of ketchup without analyzing all of them on the shelf. I have designed equipment that have been to the bottom of the sea and have been launched into space. You probably have a 25% chance that you are using some piece of electronics in your home that I have designed at some time in my 40+ year engineering career. So I know a thing or two when it comes to manufacturing commercial and consumer products and have a good idea about what makes something good.
I'll begin by breaking down the process of washing clothes. There are only three things required, water, soap and agitation. You provide two of these things and the washing machine provides the agitation. In the good old days, women spent a good amount of time agitating their clothes by beating them on rocks by the side of the river. The river provided the water and the rocks. Now we modern folks use washing machines.
There are only two ways washing machines agitate. One method is to fill a tub with lots of water (top load) and employ some device (an agitator) to swirl the clothes around and paddle (agitate) the dirt out of the material. The second way is to get the clothes soaking wet and drop the clothes against some hard object over and over again (front load washer) driving the dirt out of the material. Since I was interested in buying a front load washer to replace my Kenmore top load, this narrowed down my search by 50%.
Agitation - From my observations all front washers agitate the same. They wash by soaking the clothes in soapy water and rotating them in a drum flipping the outer clothes over the top causing the outer part of the load to drop into the drum side wall while the clothes on the inner part of the load rotate and grind against each other. Each manufacturer starts the drum rotations in one direction and then reverses direction multiple times during the course of the wash. This serves to move clothes around such that all clothes move from inside of the clothes pile to the outside numerous times allowing all the clothes to experience the outer beating action during agitation. Some manufacturer come up with variations of starting and stopping the drum rotation, calling it some type of marketing hype but that is all it appears to be. If clothes are dirty, increasing the agitation time is all that is required to get them cleaner. If clothes are relatively clean a shorter agitation time will work. All things being equal, agitation time is the only variable that one has to select to clean clothes. The selection of agitation time is done by selecting your wash cycle. I wish they simply allowed you to set the agitation time rather than choose between wash cycles like "Normal Regular Cotton", "Permanent Press", "Delicate", etc. This would make things a lot more straight forward.
Soap - Soap does two things. First it acts as surfactant, meaning it makes water wetter, and second it acts to break down the various substances that have stained your clothes like wine, ketchup, oil, etc. Since the amount of suds you see has no bearing on how good the soap is working, you are always better off with a low suds detergent in your front load washer because it will prevent soap residue from building up. Hence the reason that front load washer manufactures recommend high efficiency soaps.
Water Temperature - The hotter the water the better the washing action of the water. This means that with hot water you can spend less time agitating the clothes than you will need with cold water to get the same results. Having said this, the soap brand you use can also dramatically affect this relationship of water temperature to agitation time. In the end you will need to experiment and determine what works best for you. Also clothes manufactures have washing instructions located on the clothes tag and this will dictate your wash cycle as well.
Load size - So how big is a load of laundry? There is no standard to define this. Some manufactures rate their machine by volume and others by weight. After pouring over the internet I have come to my own definition of what constitutes a load of laundry based on the inference of the various washing machine manufactures. From this a standard load of laundry weighs 9 lbs. and occupies a bushel basket in volume. A bushel basket occupies 1.244 cubic feet. In actual practice a bushel basket of laundry weighs more like 7-1/2 lbs. but 9 lbs. is what I have concluded looking all the specifications and ratings of various washers manufactures. So if the washer you are looking at claims to be able to handle 4 cubic feet of laundry then you should be able to stuff a little over 3 bushel baskets or 27 pounds of laundry in it. Actually the laundry weight will be more like 24 lbs. The reason weight is part of the load equation is that cloths can be compressed if you stuff a basket and the weight is way to limit overload by stuffing.
So how much clothes can you load into your front load washer and still get good agitation? If you stuff your clothes in tight enough you can probably fit twice the rated capacity, but then your clothes will simply get wet and go around in circles with no agitating action. A front load drum can be fully loaded meaning every square inch of the drum can be filled with loosely packed clothes. Care must be taken to load clothes in such that the only packing that occurs is from the weight of the clothes and not due to the force of your hand loading the clothes. Then as the wash cycle begins, the wet clothes will compress down to occupy 60-65% of the drum volume leaving enough room for good agitation to take place.
How clean is good enough? Once you remove all the dirt and stains from your clothes cleaning longer will only waist time and energy and increase clothes wear.
Now that I have established what I think goes into washing with a front load washer I can begin discussing washing machines. Since I did not care about steam, sanitize, heating water, or allergen cycles this narrowed down the list of available front load washers dramatically. The largest load I ever do weighs in between 14 to 16 lbs. and occupies 2.7 cubic feet which is a little over two bushel baskets. Thus the largest amount of laundry I do in any one wash is just over two loads in volume and under two loads in weight.
Looking at the available washers I initially choose the LG WM3050. This is a basic 4 cubic foot front load washer that yielded a lot of good reviews from the likes of Home Depot, Lowes and Best Buy, but what also came out or these reviews, from those that had issues with LG, was poor customer service and a bunch of consistent nagging problems such as leaking, mold/mildew smell, and bearing and main circuit board failures. In addition I could not get a handle on the longevity of this product. Consumer reports also liked this washer's predecessor but the various forums were a lot less kind to LG and the majority of the few reviews on Amazon were critical. The warranty was also average being only one year. The 10 year motor warranty is a bunch of marketing hype because the failures that I have read about tended to be bearings, circuit boards and seals costing much more to fix than what the machine cost new.
Throughout my internet search the name Speed Queen kept coming up which got me to consider this machine. The Speed Queen front load washers have a load capacity of 2.84 cubic feet or 18 lbs. in laundry weight. This machine just makes it as far as my maximum load requirement. The reviews are almost nonexistent with under a dozen positive reviews on Amazon and the review that Consumer Report gave some 5 years ago rated it at the bottom of the list with a rating of 44 out of 100. The LG got a rating of over 70. What kept Speed Queen in the running was a hard core following in the various laundry forums, the few reviews on Amazon and the good reviews various Consumer Report readers gave this machine rebutting the rating that Consumer Reports gave. Going to Speed Queens website I learned that this machine had a commercial pedigree and used the same internals that Speed Queen put in their Horizon series commercial washer. Their 3 year warranty was unique and was also offered to their commercial customers. Further research indicated that in vended laundry, multi-housing laundry and on-premises laundry use, as told by commercial laundry owners in various forums, these washers go for years without a hiccup used in such places as apartment buildings, dormitories and Laundromats.
Wash times for the LG's using their normal cycle setting can vary from 55 minutes to over 90 minutes and is a function of load size, soil level and water temperature selection and the displayed wash times don't include the time this machine spends calculating the load size. In addition it lacked a spin only cycle. The Speed Queen took 44 minutes, in the regular setting, independent of load size or water temperature setting.
It appeared both washers would do the job of cleaning clothes well and the cost of the LG was $1000.00 less than the Speed Queen, so I was leaning towards the LG. Then I called Speed Queen to ask some questions. The lady verified that the home version of their washer was identical to their commercial washers except for the outer case and no coin box. Doing a comparison of the bearing designs between the LG and Speed Queen, a weakness of many front load washers, seems to justify the claim that the Speed Queen washer is built better. The business end of these washers is the visible drum, made out of stainless steel where the clothes are loaded in and that rotates the clothes during the wash. These inner drums are suspended in an outer horizontal drain tub by a shaft attached to the back center of the inner drum by a three wing spider arm assembly. This shaft goes through a pair of bearings at the back of the outer drain tub to the motor. The outer drain tub of the LG is a two piece plastic assembly where the bearings are press fit into the plastic back. The outer drain tub of the Speed Queen is one piece welded stainless steel. Bolted to the back center of the Speed Queen outer drain tub is a steel trunnion that houses the beatings through which the inner drum shaft passes through to the motor drive wheel. You decide which is better built and will last longer.
The Speed Queen Representative also suggested that I find a laundry mat that had their Horizon series washers and try one for myself. What a shocking idea. Try before you buy. This would take all the guess work out of how well this washer would work. And so I did. I brought my largest load and stuffed it in. I did this multiple times over the course of a month, and this convinced me to buy the Speed Queen AFN50.
Now I don't know how much better the LG would do in comparison to the Speed Queen but at least I knew the Speed Queen would do what I wanted it to do before I bought one. Because the LG agitates clothes from 11 to 41 minutes longer than the Speed Queen I have no doubt that is will clean the dirtiest of clothes better, but then again it may only be wasting energy by washing them longer then needed.
I like that my new Speed Queen ANF50 is a basic and simple washer that cleans very well with only the simple selection of water temperature and load type. It also includes the ability to add an extra rinse to the wash cycle if desired. I like that it can be paused to allow the load to soak a while or re-start a wash cycle that has been running for a while there by adding more wash time before going into the rinse. I also like the heavy duty build quality of the bearing assembly and the no nonsense approach to doing laundry. The machine runs quiet with little to no vibration during the spin cycle and the cloths come out well rung reducing the dry time from my previous washer. As of this moment I cannot comment on the other wash cycles since I have not used them yet and thus I don't know how a queen size comforter will fit, but I may post updates as I learn more. Finally I do highly recommend this washer, but you owe it to yourself to try out a Speed Queen at your local laundry before you buy. That way there will be no surprises. And if you do intend to test one, make sure you are washing in a Horizon series Speed Queen. This is the smallest front load machine they make. Good Luck Shopping!
