Not For Lonely Housewives
Written: Apr 02 '01
|
Product Rating:
|
|
| Ease of Use: |
 |
|
| Durability: |
|
|
| Ease of Cleaning: |
|
|
|
Pros: Cleans power, easy on clothes, energy-and-water efficent.
Cons: You have to bend over to load and unload and I drop lots of stuff.
The Bottom Line: This is a lean, mean, washing machine that cleans like crazy while allowing your clothes to better retain their shape and quality.
|
|
|
| Lambira's Full Review: Maytag Neptune MAH4000 Front Loader Washer |
I used to hear those stories about sexually frustrated housewives leaning up against their washing machines for a few cheap thrills. Mind you, I have never tried this myself, but I will tell you this: if that is your motivation for purchasing a washing machine, the Maytag Neptune, with its quiet and well-grounded spin cycle, is not for you.
I recently purchased a Maytag Neptune Washer so that I would have clean wet clothes to use in my Maytag Neptune Dryer. Sure, it costs roughly about as much to purchase a Neptune as it might to buy a kilo of uncut cocaine from a Columbian drug cartel, but the Neptune will last much longer and is much, much easier on one’s nasal passages. I must confess that with a list price of over $1,000, I would normally expect this washer to have features above and beyond the call of washing machine duty. It should have the ability to march upstairs and pluck my dirty clothes from my bedroom floor all by itself.
Alas, it doesn’t do that (although I hear they’re working on it for the new model). But it does plenty of other stuff, and quite well, thank you. The Neptune is a little different from your regular washer in that it’s a front-loader, which means that while it cleans clothes they tumble freely as opposed to spinning around an agitator. This supposedly not only protects one’s clothes better; it saves water and energy as well.
Although I have not owned any other washing machines in my time, I am something of a connoisseur of those possessed by friends, family, and the world’s skankiest Laundromats. I think this is the best dang machine I’ve ever used; in fact, I’m getting all emotional just thinking about it. Below is an overview of my experience with the machine, based on the four C’s (according to Maytag) of washing machine units: Cookies, Cake, Candy, and Cheese. Oh, sorry, those are my favorite FOOD four C’s. The real ones are Cleaning, Conservation, Capacity, and Clothing Care. Except, since I’m lazy, I’m going to combine the first and last one and add on my own fourth category, called “Miscellany.”
Cleaning & Clothing Care
This machine’s cleaning prowess is akin to that of my obsessive-compulsive Aunt Sandy. Clothes go in with stains, sweat, blots, marks, lint, spurs, blemishes, smoke, and smut; they come out clean and odor-free. (I use unscented, dye-free detergent because of my allergies.) The wash settings allow you to choose between whites, colors, hand washables, delicates, and one other thing that I forget, but it pretty much covers every option. I have used the hand washables setting for sweaters and nice lingerie, and the clothes still come out clean and unstretched.
Spin cycle controls offer a tantalizingly exotic array of options, many of which I have no idea how or when to use. The one that I do use regularly is the “max extract” option, which elongates the spin cycle so that clothes come out extra dry. When I’m doing concurrent loads, I find that the clothes that have been extracted to the max usually dry about 10 minutes quicker than those that have not.
Conservation
The washer claims to save about $100 per year on your water bill. While I can’t validate this claim, I can tell you we spent 3 months in our house without a washer. Adding the washer and doing 4-6 loads of laundry per week has only increased our monthly water bill by about $10-15 on average.
Capacity
For a white load, I can do a set of queen-sized sheets, four bath towels, and several hand towels and washcloths. For warm-normals, my intrepid spouse can usually cram a weeks’ worth of Banana Republic khakis and assorted long-sleeved polo shirts, and might even be able to squeeze in an undershirt or two. I do think that some top-loaders have a larger capacity, however.
Miscellany
The machine is a quiet, well-oiled hunk of funk. It is very nice looking, coming in white or ‘bisque’, which is pretty much white except it costs $50 more. It makes nice noises when you punch the buttons and the load is over. As I mentioned in the first paragraph, the biggest problem could be that the spin cycle may not provide the legendary sexual pleasure of your noisier, more unstable top-loaders. But the $30 you might spend on an alternate means of excitement is well worth the emotional satisfaction and cleaning power you’ll get from the Neptune.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 1000
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
Lambira
|
 - Top 1000 |
|
Location: bumble
Reviews written: 133
Trusted by: 305 members
About Me:
Finicky and allergy-ridden, I often display a holier-than-thou attitude to compensate for a boring life.
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.