It’s not every day you get a gadget made for the local market, but with Samsung’s latest washing machine, Australians have definitely been considered.
This week, Samsung pulled a very large cloth off a very large appliance made for families with a very large amount of clothing to be washed, announcing that its latest washing machine was built and designed with research gleaned from spending time with Australian families.
In fact, according to Samsung’s 2015 research of washing machines, 56 percent of people have a need to wash in greater numbers than the 4 to 6 kilogram loads we’re regularly washing. Common sense suggests that larger families do more washing, but as it is, Australians are doing roughly five loads of washing per week.
And this is eating into our time, with the desire for a bigger washing machine playing into our upgrading needs. Most of us only upgrade the laundry machine when it’s on its last legs, but if it has the potential to save us time, an upgrade might arrive much faster than anticipated.
Samsung’s research wasn’t solely about washing loads, either, with forgotten items playing a bit part.
It’s not unusual to forget a sock or a pair of underwear here and there, and if you have a top loader, it’s fairly easy to get around this, opening the machine while the cycle is on and just adding the garment to the load.
But it’s not always that easy, and front-loading washing machines can’t quite pull that off, simply because of the possibility that the water may well be too high to open that front-door. As such, that extra garment means another wash has to be done as it is.
These two problems have led Samsung to two solutions, and while they’re not Australia-specific solutions, they are problems that have allowed Samsung’s local arm to make its way into an internationally designed and destined product.
The product in question is Samsung’s Ultra Large Capacity AddWash washing machine, a very large 16 kilogram washing machine that not only has an 8 kilogram dryer inside, but also arrives with a small door at the front that can — when the cycle is paused — open up to let you throw more clothes into a cycle that you might have missed.
An 8-inch LCD sits on the front of the machine (WD16J9845KG), allowing you to navigate washing and drying cycles with ease, with two physical buttons on the right edge.
While the power button is pretty obvious, the button underneath acts as pause, and when you press this, the cycle you’re in pauses and releases a triple-lock system, allowing you to push on the AddWash door, opening it up for your extra laundry.
With that done, closing the system up and pressing the pause button will continue the cycle, and away you go.
We’re told that some extra security measures have been thrown in such as one which stops the AddWash system from opening if the water is too high — because nobody wants a flood — and Samsung has integrated WiFi into this washing machine to tell you using an app when the washing is done or switching into drying. Android and iOS owners can use this, but sorry, there’s no Windows Phone app here.
While all of this is impressive, we’re also intrigued by some of the smaller features, like the auto-dispensing laundry liquid feature which allows you to pour in a bottle of liquid and let the machine use a weighing system to determine how much liquid it needs for the wash, with you simply throwing the laundry into the machine, setting it up, and having the appliance do all of the work.
Cycles for different drying amounts and for babies will mean you can get clothes done quickly or sanitised properly, while a night mode will operate without much noise.
Regardless of the setting, testing the machine this week, the sensor system Samsung has used to keep the machine stable means the noise appears to be fairly low, though various settings and how packed the machine is will have an affect on that.
There’s also the combination of a dryer inside the unit which we appreciate from the convergence sense, even if it does cut that 16 kilogram ultra capacity size down to 8 kilograms of laundry that can be dried this way.
A feature list this large in a machine this large is also going to come with a price tag that is almost as large, making the $2999 price for the WD16J9845KG relatively unsurprising.
If you can forgo the 8 inch LCD screen and are keen for a smaller model, Samsung will also be releasing a 13 kilogram wash and 7 kilogram dryer model for $1799, offering much the same features but with a smaller capacity and no touchscreen.
Availability on both of these are right now, however, so if you are keen to cut back on your laundry loads with a new machine, you’ll be able to do so pretty quickly.
