Not to inflame Kelly, but...
We have a Kenmore Elite E3 and I have to say we love the damned thing. We bought it at the dreaded Sears due in part to their zero percent financing thing. Yes, it was hugely over-priced at $1,500 (including the stand - which I would not do without), but having been in the banking biz, I saw the built-in "catch" in the zero-percent financing deal and we had it fully paid before the outrageous finance charges kicked in at precisely one second past the 365th day. Kelly is correct in saying Sear's finacing arm is a bunch of devious thieves - but if you recognize their tricks ahead of time, you can outsmart them. They're far too dependent upon their assumption that all consumers are "too stupid" to know the details, so you can beat then at their own game if you understand the financing thing at the get-go.
Why do we love our washer? Limited water usage was the big reason for purchase. We live in a rual area and our household water comes from a well. After two years of drought we had valid concerns for the health and well being of our well's ability to continue to supply water. Our old TL was a contractor-grade Hotpoint cheapie, whose variance between "high" and "low" water levels might have been about 1/2 cup of water - it used 48 U.S. gallons of water per load - stated as being about 15 pounds of clothing. The HE3 takes up to 20 pounds and uses a max of 15 gallons. So far (after about 3 years), our reaction has been "that thing gets out everything" in terms of soiled laundry.
I agree that the preset controls for water levels, etc. is not terrific, but seems to get the job done. I've managed to fool the fairly impressive fuzzy-logic controls by stopping a wash cycle; switching to rinse/spin; stopping that before it starts its drain cycle; then firing up a new wash cycle - this has been a reasonably successful method for getting extra water into the wash cycle - not flawless, as sometimes it will recognize that there's water in the tub and drain it - but it has worked with a fair amount of regularity. The adaptive, "fuzzy" logic can't always be predicted as it is constantly changing its own behavior.
I once watched the fuzzy logic struggle for 20 minutes trying to balance a load, pre-spin, that included a rubber bathmat. It tossed that load back and forth and aborted about six spins before I gave in, stopped the machine and hauled the bathmat out - sudenly, all was well - it could balance the remaining load and dutifully went into its insanely fast spin - highest speed looks like it could warp time into the past. I fear if I spun woolens at that speed, I'd find a machine full of wet, seriously angry sheep.
The plus on having the stand is it's large, seamless plastic drawer- in trying to fool the logic, on occasion you have to cancel the entire program to get the door to unlock. If this happens when water-level is bove the door, the open drawer handily catches the overflow of water.
We did not buy the matching HE3 dryer - ridiculously priced at $1,000. At the time the crummy Hotpoint dryer was still working - it died about a year later and was replaced with a Whirlpool from the local dealer who misquoted the price on a closeout model inadvertently giving us about $300 off the "correct" price - bought it on the spot. It was a gas model and the gas company charged us 10 cents more than the purchase price (had to be converted from natural gas to LP gas) to install it, but it's all good in the end.
. Even though the manuals skimp over the programmable functions, the same programmable functions that work on the European and Australian models work on the US Touchtronics, so you can mod the Sensitive button as it's called on the US Touchtronics to deliver not just an extra rinse, but a high level rinse too 
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