I have the current SQ. I knew what it was before I bought it so I am not disappointed but it has pluses and minuses. It is a very rugged machine. Unlike so many of the FLs out there, this one does not have to be perfectly balanced to go into spin; its construction can take some vibration in spin. It is brilliantly engineered to shut off the pump during the surge spins to avoid air locking. The pump comes on again as the tub slows when there is plenty of water over the pump intake for positive pump outs. More importantly, the tub stays in the distribution speed between the surges so it does not have to redistribute before each surge spin. My Duet would usually go into the initial phase of spin prety well, but the water spun out of the load (because the speed ramped up too quickly) quickly overwhelmed the pump which tripped the flood sensor. The whole machine, except the pump came to a stop while the water slowly drained out. It then had to rebalance, which proved a very difficult task involving many attempts. It is possible to slowly ramp up without overwhelming the pump with too much water; my Miele W1986 does it beautifully, but the software in the Duet was not sophisticated enough.
The Speed Queen has many good points, but now it is time to make you aware of its shortcomings. First of all, its controls are little more than those of a coin-op machine with a couple of wonderful additions. A 24 minute, plus or minus, wash is too much for many things. It can be rough on fabrics. There should be something to allow cycle modification. Second, the surge spins are totally inadequate for removing enough water from the fabrics, especially heavy fabrics, for good rinsing. A FL uses a very small amount of water. Rinsing is a process of diluting the amount of detergent in the load. The best FLs, like the W1986, spin at very high speeds between the water changes for cottons. That means less water from the previous fill is carried over into the next rinse. If you ever stop the SQ after one of these surge periods and set the control to SPIN, you will see, if your machine drains into a tub, how much water is retained in the load. If you cannot see how much water is spun out, you could stop the machine and reach in and squeeze the load to get an idea of how wet they still are. In commercial installations like launderettes, carrying over this larger amount of water in the load before each rinse makes the washer use less total water because it does not have to resaturate the load for each rinse. It is not as bad as the commercial top loader that just drains part of the wash water out and then fills for rinse, but it is a similar principle. It also reduces total cycle time since it does not have to allow for a couple of minutes of higher speed spins between the water changes and that is also important to a commercial laundry operation. If any or all of this bothers a user, they can always do like I do and time the wash for a period shorter than the maximum, then turn the dial to OFF, then turn it to SPIN and let the load go through a real spin. Then start each rinse manually by setting the timer to RINSE & SPIN. No one machine is best for everything. This one is good for many things, but it could have been made better, like many other machines, if they were not designed under the shadow of stupid energy regulations thought up by bean counters and if SQ was interested in offering a thousand dollar machine with features comparable to other thousand dollar washers.
