Such a gentle and effective washer...
Written: Dec 03 '02
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Pros: Saving water; works well; quiet; great frills
Cons: Expensive
The Bottom Line: If you have the money and want a good washer, it's hard to do better than this!
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| owling's Full Review: Maytag Neptune™ MAH5500B Front Load Washer |
We bought our first house not all that long ago, and so for the first time we had to face buying things like a washer & dryer. We've tried (where we have the budget) to buy things for the new house that will last. This means that sometimes we buy the expensive brand and buy fewer books for a while (sigh...).
This time we bought the Neptune washer & dryer. I don't remember the exact price, but the washer was somewhere between $900 and $1,000. It was about $300-500 more than the cheaper models.
How It Looks
It's hard to find a nicer-looking washer than this. It's a nice off-white with gleaming hinges, a smooth touch-pad control panel that wipes off easily if it gets dirty, and green lights and displays that look wonderfully evil if your basement light is off when you look at the washer. It's hard to ask for more than that!
The Process
There's a nice walk-through of option-selecting at the beginning of the manual that you probably won't need after doing two loads. (We didn't.)
Step one is loading the washer. This is a little weird at first because it's a front-loading washer. Even though the tub is angled back a little, you do have to pile things in a little carefully if you have a full load, to avoid things spilling out. This is pretty easy after the first couple of times.
Step two is selecting the sort of fabrics you have. "Cotton/sturdy" is for normal jeans & T-shirts sorts of things. "Delicates" is, well, the obvious - dress shirts, nylons, lace, etc. "Wrinkle free" is for dress shirts & pants - it reduces wrinkling. "Hand wash," believe it or not, is for things you aren't supposed to put in a washer. The design of the front-loading washer, which doesn't have that big agitator-thing in the middle since it tumbles like a dryer, is much easier on clothes.
Step three is choosing the wash and rinse water temperatures. There are four options: cold/cold, warm/cold, warm/warm, and hot/cold. The manual gives a pretty good guide of which temps are for which sorts of items.
Step four is soil level/wash options. You can tell the washer how dirty your laundry is (light, normal, or heavy soil), and it will take this into account! There's a "quick" cycle, which is suggested for new or musty clothes. You can choose to do a simple rinse, also.
Step five is all the spiffy extra options. Presoak adds a 15-minute presoak cycle. The stain cycle adds more time to the wash & rinse cycles. Extra rinse adds a fourth rinse to more completely remove laundry perfumes (great for us allergy-prone people!). Max extract removes extra water (but tends to wrinkle clothing more). Delay wash actually lets you delay the start of your laundry for up to 9 hours!
Step six lets you select the volume of the "done" alarm. No more harsh buzzer for us!
Most of the time it seems much simpler than this. You pick the type of fabric, how dirty your laundry is, and the temperatures, and that's pretty much it for most loads. If you wash the same kind of stuff from load to load it'll remember your options, so you just have to press "start"!
The Cool Frills
There's a time-till-done indicator. I love that! Not sure how much longer your laundry will be? Just look at the washing machine!
There's a "pause" button in case you forgot an article and want to add it part-way through.
Although the water level never gets higher than the bottom door of the washer (the clothing tumbles through a stream of water rather than standing water), the door locks automatically to keep kids from prying it open and getting the floor wet.
The washer makes some funny noises that take some getting used to, but by and large we find it much quieter than other washers we've used. (Like the one at our last apartment which sometimes sounded like a machine gun going off in the basement.)
The door can be reversed so that the hinges are on the opposite side.
The manual has a trouble-shooting guide. It also comes with a video user's guide, as well as a general guide for how to get various sorts of stains out of clothes.
There's a light around the door when you open it up. No more feeling around to see if you've found all of your wet clothes!
The Water Saving Angle
Supposedly the Neptune washer can use as little as half the water as a normal washer, depending on the load. (You'll notice that you don't select load size - the washer determines for itself how much water is needed.) For us this is a real bonus - not for saving on water, but because we have a septic system. It's good not to overload your septic system with too much water at once. This means we can run the washer a little more often than we might otherwise.
(And yes, for those of you who will inevitably tell me that I shouldn't worry about it because you've never thought about it and never had a problem with your septic system - well, the system for this house was in failure when our engineers inspected it because the people living here had overloaded it. The leach field had to be replaced before we could move in. Thus, we're more than happy to be a little overly-careful of our septic system.)
The Very Minor Inconveniences
It's expensive. You'll need to decide for yourself whether it's worth it. Supposedly Neptune owners get "priority service" from Maytag (haven't had to try it yet), and there's a pretty darn good warranty on the thing, so you may decide it's worth it, as we did:
Full one year warranty: any part which fails in normal home use will be repaired or replaced free of charge.
Limited warranty: "After the first year ... through the time periods listed below, the parts designated below which fail in normal home use will be repaired or replaced free of charge for the part itself, with the owner paying all other costs, including labor, mileage and transportation."
Second Year: all parts.
Third through fifth: electronic controls.
Third through tenth: drive motor.
Third through lifetime: stainless steel inner wash basket.
There's also an additional limited warranty against rusting of the exterior cabinet.
The washer cycle is longer than I'm used to. We usually use cotton/sturdy with "normal soil," and it tends to take about 45-50 minutes. Not that big a deal.
Because the washer uses less water, the manufacturer recommends "he" or high-efficiency detergents, because they suds less, and too much suds can interfere with the tumbling action of the washer. Unfortunately, the only he detergents I've been able to find have been horribly perfumed. There's a Tide he, but no Tide Free he yet. You can, however, just use normal detergent in much smaller amounts than usual. We've done this with no problem - things still come quite clean.
You will need to clean certain parts of the washer now and then. The detergent dispenser (yes, there is one) will need the occasional rinsing (big deal). If you're not going to use the washer for any real length of time, you're supposed to run a cycle with bleach through it and let it air-dry with the door open (to avoid mildew, I'd imagine).
The trouble-shooting guide also mentions that you can "freshen" your washer by washing the lower portion of the door seal with a solution of bleach and water and then running a cycle with bleach, and opening up the door afterward to air-dry. You'll need this, because eventually the area around the door seal gets a bit mildewy. The occasional bleach run seems to take care of this, in our experience.
But How Does It Work?
We love it. We're using maybe 1/2 to 1/3 the detergent we used to. We're using less water. And somehow I'd swear that the comforter I put through over the weekend came out cleaner than I've seen it in years. And for once, I didn't have to try to re-shape the stuffing inside of it - it hadn't been mauled at all. The display of time remaining seems like such a small thing, but I love it. And the touch pad controls are so wonderfully easy to clean! In short, I completely recommend the Neptune washer. It's a good investment.
This is an update of a review from a little over a year ago; I'm adding new details and moving it to the right location.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 900 approx
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Epinions.com ID:
owling
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Member: Heather Grove
Location: Maryland, USA
Reviews written: 712
Trusted by: 264 members
About Me:
Too many boxes to unpack, too few shelves...
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