The new LG Twin wash

 The LG Twin Wash 

Washers from LG, Samsung, and Staber with interesting innovations and stunning prices.

 Manufacturers continue to up capacities and add features to win you over and to boost the price. On the other hand, some manufacturers skip the fancy extras and and still raise the price. Here’s a look inside three washers with new innovations recently tested by Consumer Reports, including LG’s Twin Wash.


Here’s a smart use of space, if only it weren’t so expensive. LG’s Twin Wash pairs a front-loader with a mini-washer where a pedestal might be. LG has turned a storage drawer into a 1-cubic-foot mini-washer that can be used at the same time the front-loader is running. Together they’re known as Twin Wash and rely on the same water supply. The $700 mini-washer can be paired with any LG front-loader made from 2009 on. It has six cycles, allows warm and cold wash temperatures, and an extra rinse. The mini-washer doesn’t deliver the cleaning power of a front-loader, based on our tests of 2- and 4-pound loads, but took only 40 minutes using the normal cycle. It’s meant for lightly soiled clothes.

The LG WM9000HVA front-loader is $1,800 and of the dozens of washers we tested, only the $1,900 Speed Queen AFNE9BSP113TW01 costs more. Sure, the high-scoring  LG did an excellent job getting laundry clean, was water- and energy-efficient, and has a jumbo capacity that fit about 26 pounds of laundry. Claimed capacity is 5.1 cubic feet. This washer was gentle on fabrics, relatively quiet, and vibration wasn’t an issue. But $1,800? And the normal wash time, using the heavy-soil setting, was 105 minutes—and that’s using the time-saving TurboWash. They're available at Best Buy starting in mid-October, and then widely available after December 20.

 The Samsung WA52J8700AP washer with Activewash.

Another smart use of space. Inside some new Samsung high-efficiency top-loaders you’ll see a water jet and built-in sink with ridges, a feature known as Activewash. You can use the sink’s ridges as if it were a washboard. Rub a stained shirt for a minute or two against the ridges, working detergent or pretreatment solution into the stain. No need to work up a sweat—the shirt then goes straight into the washer. The high-scoring Samsung WA52J8700AP has Activewash and is $1,000.

 Insert in the Staber HXW2404 washer.
Staber Stays Small
Bucking the trend of 28-pound capacities, Staber continues to use its unique tub design—just 2-cubic feet—on high-efficiency top-loaders. “The tub held 12 pounds of our laundry and it was a tight fit,” says Emilio Gonzalez, the engineer who oversees Consumer Reports’ tests of washers and dryers. Even though this is a top-loader, the small metal tub rotates in one direction, pauses, rotates in the other direction, just like a front-loader does. We tested the Staber HXW2404. It’s $1,700 and ended up near the bottom of our washer Ratings. Cleaning and water efficiency was impressive, but capacity was not, and this washer was noisy and vibrated.