Consumers reports rated him highly because he made no noise after was dead. Also used no water or power.
Bill D
My 103 year old Mother still has a working Harvest Gold Maytag top loader that was bought new in 1974. She had to go into assisted living this past Fall, but the people we found to rent the house are still using that washer.
We have some front loaders, and do at least one load a day, and many days, multiple loads. They typically last 6 to 8 years for us, so we favor price over brand, and bells, and whistles. Current one is LG, and I like the ease of cleaning the strainer in it. It has given absolutely no trouble. I forget the brand of the last one, but it finally started popping an error code EF. I told my Wife that it was telling us that it was Effed Up.
That was an interesting article, along with the (ex-)dealer Youtube reviews. It seems that SQ really screwed up with their mods to the 2018 top-loader washer to get it more highly rated in Consumer Reports. From watching the videos, you can see why.
I'm glad I have my 2016 SQ top-loaders, which perform phenomenally well. If you want new, supposedly the Ipso and Huebsch (sp?) are built to the old SQ standards.
My congratulations to Bill , he used the "double whammy" well . But my own review of CR would make a good movie!
And it's for sale.
Speed Queen. My set are workhorses that have never neeeded a repair in the 15 years I've had them. Old fashioned Top Loader washer that actually fills with water. If I lived in a different part of the country, I'd feel differently and probably have a Front Loader.
For the life of me, I can't figure out why CR is still in business. Every couple of years I'll take a look, forgetting how bad it is. Shame on me for wasting my time.
First front loader was a Whirlpool Duet set. Washer locked the door at less than 2 weeks of age and we had a loaner washer for 2 months. The spider broke in it at around 8 years of age. Lifetime guarantee for the part, but a huge job to change. Bought an LG front loader and it's been great. It's a step down from Jim's model. average 4-5 loads per week. The Duet dryer failed and I got the first one I could find in stock. (Gas) If you have gas available they are much more economical than electric. Any no issues with our LG front load washer.
Frank, they once gave a radio top marks because it would not kill you if it fell into the bath tub with you.
We recently replaced our 30+ year old Maytags with ~20 year old Maytags. We are blessed with having Norm (not that one), who is an old appliance repair guy who runs Normans's Used Appliances in the town next door. He buys up cosmetically good old appliances and then thoroughly refurbishes them mechanically and re-sells them at a cost 1/4-1/3 of what you might pay for new junk. Our kids have both bought washers, dryers and dishwashers from him and all of those are going strong years later.
Norm is pushing 70 from the wrong side, so I don't know what we'll do the next time we need a washing machine. (BTW, he won't touch Samsung, says they are unrepairable due to lack of parts. He'll tell you if you want reliability go with mechanical controls, the main reason that machines become unfixable is problems in the electronics where no replacement parts are available. Apparently a lot of the mechanical parts for the myriad brands made by Hotpoint have been basically unchanged for most of the last 50 years and are still readily available.)
Our last set was Maytag Neptune. They worked very well, for a while. After 5 or 6 years the washer quit because the main control board failed. A new one was over $200. It was a common enough fault that the interweb was loaded with repair solutions. A capacitor and resistor had to be replaced. Cost was less than $2.00 and it took about 5 minutes to solder the new parts in place. A couple of years later it started sounding like a jet taking off when on the spin cycle. Again Maytag's only solution was to sell me the entire drum assembly for the modest sum of $650.00 (parts only). I bought 2 top quality bearings and seals for about $50. The labor to install them was about an hour & a half.
There were other minor issues as well, among them, those stupid wax motors that control the door lock failing. I had enough & got rid of them.