About Two Years and Still Going Strong
Written: Aug 11 '04
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Pros: Inexpensive
Compact
Easy to use
Durable
Reliable
Cons: Jingle Bells!
Badly written, poorly thought-out manual
The Bottom Line: It's lasted me two years and has more than paid for itself, and I can stay in my own apartment and do my laundry. I highly recommend it.
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| jkuieck's Full Review: Haier XQBM22-C Top Load Washer |
Same story as everyone else: I live in an apartment and got sick of trips to the laundry room, hoarding quarters, etc. Found this product on epinions and found other reviews very helpful. Reasonably confident that Haier products are well-built and reliable (thanks much to the reviewer who gave the history of Haier in China). Bought from Wal-Mart for around $170 with shipping.
I'm a single guy living alone so I only average maybe 2 or 3 medium-to-full loads a week. I've had it about 2 years now and it's been totally reliable and does a good job getting clothes clean. There's basically just one cycle, and you can vary the length of the wash phase depending on how dirty your clothes are. Since there's no central agitator, I think a gentle cycle would be superfluous anyway -- the agitation is just normally gentle.
It does have a few quirks, some of which I think are real flaws and some of which are just to be expected given what it is.
The annoying "Jingle Bells" alarm is well-documented. It's too loud, it's too long, it's Jingle Bells. If you undo the screws securing the plastic control panel cover, you can pry it up enough to see the little round thing that makes this noise. I duct-taped some insulating material over it so it's much quieter and less annoying now. The wire connected to it is plainly visible, and I was tempted to just snip it but didn't because (1)well, it is what tells you your load is done; and (2)I was afraid it might screw up something else.
The spin cycle doesn't always get all the water out -- sometimes the clothes are very damp and there is standing water in the bottom of the tub. I have had to re-run the spin cycle as many as three or four times to get a load satisfactorilly dry. It happens very infrequently but seemingly at random. Happens on light loads, happens on heavy loads. Warm water, cold water. Can't find any consistent factor to explain why this happens.
Sometimes there is water on the floor after a load finishes. The supply hose connection can leak if you don't get it tight enough, but that's usually just a dribble. But on large loads, water can slosh over the top of the tub. I've learned to take this as an indication that I'm probably exceeding the machine's capacity. It would be nice if there were a warning about this in the manual, though. After two years of using the machine, I've got a pretty good grasp of how much it can handle, so I rarely get water on the floor anymore.
One of the rubber feet sometimes stays stuck to my linoleum floor when I pick up the machine and move it. It's attached to the machine with just a friction fit and it's too loose.
There is a slot on the side of the machine that is supposed to hold a hook for the drain hose, so you can keep it elevated when not using the machine. I either threw mine away with the packaging material or I never got one. I made my own out of bent wire.
The machine does not balance certain kinds of loads well. The machine shuts itself off during the spin cycle and you have to go and manually rebalance the load, same as with any other toploading washer. It's generally loads with just a few fairly heavy items, like jeans, bath towels, etc. It does pretty well even on fairly large loads if it's a lot of smaller/lighter items. To me, this is just to be expected in any toploading washer. The same thing happens if you do a small load of heavy items on a regular-sized washer. It's just simple physics: the fewer items you have, the less they can move around in relation to each other, which is what they need to do to balance the load. So if you want to just throw a load in and leave to go run errands, you might come back to find your load only halfway through the cycle (perhaps if you're used to front-loading machines, or higher-quality top-loaders than I have ever used, this will be a new thing to you, but it has always been part of my experience with washing clothes; it's one of the reasons I wanted a washer in my apartment instead of having to go down 13 floors to the laundry room in my building).
I am very very glad I bought this machine, have been impressed with its durability and reliability, and recommend it highly as a great convenience for apartment-dwellers.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 170.00
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Epinions.com ID:
jkuieck
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Reviews written: 2
Trusted by: 0 members
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