Well, I guess you'll get very mixed opinions on this one. If you are willing to change your habbits and get used to the slightly different operation of a FL, I would say go get one!
I am not sure about the LG Steam. People seem to have lots of problems with the LG service in case something goes wrong. That would be something to consider. I am not convinced that the steam option is that useful, but that is just my opinion. I am considering the Bosch Nexxt 500 or 700 (or maybe the newer models that will come out soon). The machines look very sturdy and I know that the company has long time experience building FLs.

Most people who are willing to learn a little bit about how to use a FL are very happy with the cleaning ability. FLs use a lot less water and energy and they get the clothes at least as clean as a TL - if you use them correctly.
You should consider vibration problems if you install the washer on a second floor or over crawl spaces. The high capacity FLs seem to cause more vibration issues than TLs. It shouldn't be a problem at all if the washer will be on a concrete slab or very sturdy floor.

Good luck with whatever washer you are going to buy!

No personal experience, but.....

Must question how a machine with a paltry 110V connection has a prayer of actually accompishing anything with "steam" in a 4.0cf drum. One the most frequent complaints with the new on-board-heater machines is the length of their cycle-times because of those under-powered heaters. Now here's one with the largest of the drums that, supposedly, genereates steam also. I'm willing to be convinced, but it doesn't seem likely to me that this is much more than a gimmick.

I'm reminded of the the consumer-variety carpet machines so many of which bill themselves as "steamers" or "steam cleaners" that, in fact, merely clean with warm water.

Will be interested in hearing from actual owners/users.

You've described a drum filled with steam. You've said its nice and it WORKS. And I guess I get the wrinkle-removal bit on "SteamFresh". Still don't understand how it helps washing performance with "SteamWash" cycle. You didn't describe that. Can you tell me how the steam feature helps in washing? HOW does it work? What does it do that regular old hot water doesn't? What's the benefit?

Not trying to be a nay-sayer but nobody yet has described this here or anywhere else other than to say "it works" after which they describe being able to "see the steam". Nobody has yet described what this adds to washing performance. All I want to do is make some sense of it.

Like asolo I don't own the washer and have no doubt the steam fresh cycle is very nice and effective in certain situations. It will be interesting to see how the new Whirlpool "steam" dryer will work and compete for this same capability. I'll also give LG credit for providing some innovation in an appliance category which is generally very static. For example, LG's adaptable controls for stacking is a wonderful idea.

However, I'm also one of the non-owner skeptics when it comes to understanding the effectiveness of the steam wash cycle. I'm glad that luvmylg finds it effective, but it still seems to be a stretch. I guess the steam could raise the water temperature slightly, and maybe that alone could improve washing results but I doubt it could improve it more than just choosing a higher temperature wash. If you've ever used a true vapor steam cleaner to remove stains from cloth you would be a skeptic as well. Our Ladybug vapor steam cleaner puts out a concentrated stream of 280F water vapor. You basically put a small attachment on the end of the wand covered with a towel and blast the 280F vapor through the towel as you blot and rub the towel over the stain. The stain eventually transfers to the towel (of course this is assuming it's not a stain that has set or set by high temps). As the dry fabric becomes wet and saturated, the effectiveness of the vapor steam cleaning actually gets worse. It's the very concentrated application of high temperature vapor steam with some mechanical action that makes it work. If you just shot the vapor at the stain from inches away it would have little to no effect. I would guess the LG steam is just over 212F and doesn't come in ultra-close contact with the clothing where it is injected into the drum. In a washing machine it just seems like the little bit of steam would either get consumed by the already wet fabric and maybe just raise the wash temperature a little bit or hit the top of the drum and condense. Maybe a different kind of reaction is happening that I don't understand, but this LG machine is certainly very full featured in all other respects and no doubt cleans well with or without steam. Really wish CR had tested the effectiveness of the steam cycle in the last test report.

Here is a link that might be useful: Whirlpool Steam Dryer

Not a problem "asolo". I am not a chemist so please forgive me if my explanation lacks articulation (smile).
I have used the sanitary and steamwash cycles. I am basing my findings with my clothes on results and dare I say it....assumption, but w/the sanitary the water temps were high and washed well....extremely well!
The steamwash I assume has a slightly elevated drum temp, over the sanitary cycle being that you are using the heated water from the machine's heater and then couple that with clothes being tumbled w/steam. I asked for some clarification on this from LG and there may be some added benefits because the steam is actually a mix of detergent and water.
I didn't invent this feature (wish I did, I would be sitting pretty right about now) and some may view it as ludicrous, but whatever one wishes to say...bottom line is it works and I am happy with it. Let me say that again; "I am happy with it".
I have no problem at all with the question you asked in your second post.
I pulled up a chair turned on the drum light and watched it during the steamwash cycle, then called LG for more information while it was washing.
The steam does not dissipate as "gordonr" implied because as the clothes tumble the nozzle continues to deploy steam. Again it does not fill the drum to where you cant see the clothes at all, but you do visibly see and hear steam, the glass is fogged up as well.
When you think about; how can the clothes not be cleaner when they are tumbled in a concentrated solution of detergent and then as they float in mid air they are blasted w/steam? Very innovative indeed and Whirlpool has already followed suit as will other manufacturers being that the LG's are so hot right now.
I tell you what I would like to know more about...and that is Samsung's cold-water/silver ionization sanitary method! saw the demo on their website, lot of fluff, hella cool though!! Wonder how effective it is.

gordonr....picked this off from the Whirlpool Steam Dryer link you provided:

"The Duet steam dryer uses a water line from the washer to spray a fine mist on clothes."

I'm suspicious of this. "Mist" is not steam....although I can see how it would relax wrinkles in some cases.

Maybe I'm just an old fuddy-duddy but I'm thinking some of this is a bit gimmicky. As long as owners/users are describing satisfaction, I'll continue to be interested but I don't yet get it.

asolo,

I agree with you. The marketing words leave you with the impression it's not really steam but an atomized mist. It would make some sense to do real steam on the dryer side. Atleast with an electric dryer you'd have some significant power to apply to the task. Time will tell. If it really is an atomized mist and you have really hard water that could be a problem. You basically end up transfering hardness minerals to your clothing and the inside of your dryer.

luvmylg,

Whirlpool isn't doing the same thing as LG. It appears they are trying to duplicate only the "Steam Fresh" aspect of the LG. The implementation is in a dryer, not their washer. Sorry if my words weren't exactly clear. The steam may not infact disipate, but it probably goes through a phase change back to liquid rather quickly. The point is steam isn't staying steam and building up inside the drum as your observations confirm.

I really think LG was pulling your leg with their explanation...

"I asked for some clarification on this from LG and there may be some added benefits because the steam is actually a mix of detergent and water." Isn't the act of creating steam by raising the water-detergent mixture above it's boiling point analogous to a distillation process? As the components of the detergent mixture are subject to their boiling points these components will change to a gas state. It's just a wild guess that H2O probably has the lowest boiling point of any of the significant components in this water-detergent mixture (maybe a chemist could confirm this). I'd guess what is shooting out isn't what LG said, but pure water vapor. Hey, if it all works for you that's the bottom line.

Another point of curiosity. I have little doubt that steam is nothing but water. If they're attempting to flash off anything else in the mixture, the system would clog up in no time...not even considering changes in the soap at the contact-points. If you want a real treat for the nose, throw some soapy water on a hot burner and see if the fragrance pleases you. That would be soapy steam you're smelling.

Don't know. Remain curious. Interesting, especially that the feedback directly from LG was so obtuse. Actually false, I believe. I would be interested in learning the whole story.

The steam generated by the LG is not from the wash water. The steam generator is a seperate subsystem that gets it's water from the fresh water supply. You can trace the input hose back to it's own fresh water valve, piggybacked onto the main cold valve. Just watching their online videos on disassembly can show you that. That is why it takes 3 minutes or so to get the steam happening. You can hear the turbo steam generator much like a teakettle on a stove when it starts boiling. It's not really that hard of a concept to get your head around.

OK, sr712...thanks. If you are sufficiently familiar with the system, may I ask you to take me further? I got it that that the steam does, in fact, come from a separate generator. My head is around the concept...trust me about that.

What I want to know is what that steam adds to the washing equation. I'm picturing a normal sloshy load of wash going around in there and now here's this nozzle emitting steam into the already-saturated mix. Posters have said they "can see it" which I am not refuting. All I want to know is what good a dribble of steam does to an already saturated load of clothes. Can you help me understand the benefit of this?

My earlier post was written wrong asolo, I even contradicted myself later in the post where I alluded to the clothes being "tumbled in a concentrated solution of detergent and then as they float in mid air they are blasted w/steam".
The steam is fresh water. What I was trying/meant to say was that the mixture of detergent AND steam can only benefit in the cleansing process.
As far as Whirlpool goes, I know the steam/atomized mist was applicable to their dryer. The fact that other brands are using steam in whatever fashion is a testament to the fact that LG pioneered it first in their units.

I have to agree with asolo, I can't believe that the steam actually has a significant effect on the cleaning performance. I don't doubt at all that you are getting great cleaning results, but are you convinced that you wouldn't get them even without using the steam function?
I can see the steam fresh option being useful for freshening up clothes and I can see that steam in a dryer may reduce wrinkling. I just don't think that steam makes a difference in laundry that is already soaked with water and detergent.

ROFL....well we will never know! It is a feature that is not used that much. Extremely fortunate to have it available as an option for superior cleaning. Oh well.....off to work I go!

Seemed like a simple enough question to me. Apparently a clear answer will have to wait.

You say: "Extremely fortunate to have it available as an option for superior cleaning." You also say: "What I was trying/meant to say was that the mixture of detergent AND steam can only benefit in the cleansing process."

Neither of these statements tell me anything. I'm still picturing clothes sloshing around in the drum with water and detergent and, now, the addition of steam -- which I can't imagine doing much more than instantly condensing into water again. I'm trying to understand what, exactly, this fog adds to the cleaning process. That's all.

If anyone knows, I would appreciate their posting it.

I acknowledge the machine cleans well. I'm not saying its a bad machine or anything bad about it at all. I just don't see what possible improvement the steam brings. Would love to be enlightened.

Why shouldn't it be possible to know if this feature has a positive impact on cleaning? A properly designed experiment would certainly be a good start. CR would be the kind of organization that could do this. Have a standardized set of "clothing" with some calibrated "stains". Run the same "load" through the machine using different settings including the steam wash option and examine the quality of wash results.

No one denies the machine does a good job (with or without the steam option), but it would be nice to know the effectiveness of a steam wash. I'm guessing it was a feature designed by the marketing department as a way of further leveraging the steam fresh feature (although the LG marketing stuff makes it look the other way around). An explanation for the effectiveness of the steam wash isn't intuitive. As mentioned previously just adding some steam to already wet clothing doesn't seem all that significant. Other than some slick flash videos and animations LG doesn't even provide any carefully crafted (i.e. best possible case) examples showing it's effectiveness. If it was shown to be of little consequence, I would view LG's motivations a bit different than others on this board and rather than applaud LG for their innovation, I'd look at their future claims with even more skepticism.

LG certainly isn't alone in marketing features with little to no supporting data proving it's effectiveness. The market eventually weeds out products with exagerated claims, but that can take years.

FWIW, I don't believe LG is the first vendor to use steam in a washer/dryer either. From what I understand the Swiss vendor V-Zug has a steam-fresh type product on the market as does Electrolux in Germany.

LOL, I wrote "The fact that other brands are using steam in whatever fashion is a testament to the fact that LG pioneered it first in their units". I knew after I hit the "submit" button that it was going to come back and bite me that I did not say "the first in the USA w/this feature, but it was too late, it was already sent! This is getting way to serious for me, they should put a "FrontLoader Trivia" category on Jeopardy. I can't speak on features, units, performance, brands etc over in Germany, Korea and the like. To be honest could care less as they will not work in my laundry room. Very curious at this point. Asolo and Gordonr do either of you use Fldrs or Tldrs? What brand did the two of you decide on? Any second thoughts on your decision. I will say this, if things didnt work out for me w/the LG's my next choice (it was a very tight decision too) would have been the Bosch Premium

I've had Duet 9400 for 27 months with good experience. Bosch and/or LG were my second-tier choices. "Steam" option not available at that time.

Admit I'm maybe a bit anal. However, am interested in various of the new features as they are offered. Probably need to get out more.

"Admit I'm maybe a bit anal". I ABSOLUTELY disagree with that statement! chuckle, chuckle
Nothing wrong with being anal, as long as you are nice about it (lol) and you have been. I wish these washers were set up at a home expo show or something similar w/reps onsite to demo/highlight the features of these washers! The only way you can make comparisons is to buy them, keep them for less than 30 days and take them back and buy another brand and start over, until you find what you REALLY like! This site is phenomenal, but it's nothing like demoing the product for yourself.

OK, here's a possible explanation as to how the steam helps to clean better. The 110 on board water heater does the best it can do to boost temperature, but it's still only 110 and can only do so much. You're not getting a couple of gallons of water to near boiling temperatures with 110 unless you take half a day. Now, add the steam generator. It raises the temperature of a small amount of water to 212 and releases it into the wash cavity. That 212° helps the internal water heater out to raise the temperature of the drum, and the contents of that drum. Higher temperature washing equals cleaner clothes. Plus, it sounds really cool. ;~) LG could have probably gotten the same cleaning results via upgrading the size of the internal water heater, but it wouldn't have had the steam available for the Steam Fresh cycle, which is what most people who purchase the machine actually end up using the most often. So, I don't think the steam washing is exactly useless, but I don't think LG has done a good job of explaining the science behind it. But then, about half of all Americans think the sun revolves around the earth. Science just isn't our forté, but hype certainly is.

I'm no physicist, but your explanation is just silly. Same power supply. Same water supply. Same drum volume. There are ZERO benefits as you've described them. Whether the power goes to the water-heater or the steam generator, the net result is exactly the same -- a given amount of heated water. Period.

Waiting.

The steam makes the window foggy so you can't see what's really happening inside. No one really knows what's going on, because of that.

Thanks for that!!!! Ah! Love a mystery!

I think the steam is just for fogging up the window to hide the proprietary technology being used to make the clothes really, really clean and bright. We'll probably never know .....

asolo, while you may think it is "silly" to suggest, it's well known that cleaning items with warmer water provides better results than colder temperature water. Removing dirt from clothes is a process whereby energy input (tumbling, agitating, etc.) together with a carrier (water, dry cleaning fluid) move those dirt particals on down the line. More tumbling action provides more energy in a cycle, which is why front loaders clean more effectiely in the first place. They transfer more of that energy into the carrier to remove dirt. Warm water has more active, agitated molecules which provide more surface interaction between the molecules of the items being washed. That is why warm water washing will always do a superior job to cold water washing. Using a 1000 watt heater to heat the water in the drum will only provide 1000 watts of heat. Supplementing that 1000 watt heater with another 1000 watt heater that genrates steam provides an additional 1000 watts of energy transferred to the water molecules which then also transfer that energy into the clothing which stimulate better cleaning. As I said, just upping the original heater to 2000 watts would have provided the same energy transfer, but would not have provided the possibility of the steam only cycle.

live_wire_oak,

The LG washers like all other non-commercial large capacity washers in the USA operate off a 120V 15 amp circuit. With this design you cannot get more than about 1500 to 1600 watts of power out of the circuit. The motor/electronics used to operate everything else in the washer might take up to 500 watts or so of peak power (motors need a surge of power to get going and then use less to keep going) and maybe up to 250 watts of steady state power to operate. The power budget only allows about 1000 watts for the heater. When the LG machine is making steam it's not heating the water so the net additional energy being added to the tub is the same.

re: "But then, about half of all Americans think the sun revolves around the earth. Science just isn't our forté, but hype certainly is."

live_wire_oak, this was well said!!!! But then this is a subject for a whole different forum.

luvmylg,

We have been using FLers for the past 14 years. The first 13 of these years was serviced by an Asko. A truely wonderful machine in most respects (far from perfect, but still very very good) that churned through 10 to 15 loads a week without complaint until the end. Until the end it's only fault was a broken impeller where one of our kids play items got stuck and broke the impeller. This was half our fault for not checking his pockets and half Asko's fault for not having a good screen which would keep stuff away from the impeller. When the machine broke (electronics board failure) it was right at a time when we really needed a bigger machine but also didn't want to give up some of the nice cleaning aspects we got from the Asko. Bigger Miele machines were also being heavily rumored so we decided to get a serviceable, but temporary machine until Miele announced their product. At the time Home Depot was selling out their stock of Danby's at $300 (plus a $50 energy star rebate). I must say for $250 the Danby has been one great machine. It doesn't have anywhere near the quality and design of the Asko, but it has still been a very good performer. It has an internal water heater which will heat to 200F (very long cycle) and has controls which are simple and direct enough that you can get it to do pretty much anything you want. Now that the Miele W4840 is out, we will most likely get one of these once I finish reconfiguring our laundry room (moving the dryer to improve venting, and moving the washer location so a big machine will fit). So far most of the W4840 feedback on this forum has been good, but I'm also considering the Bosch Nexxt as well if some current info on this forum regarding how the Miele uses it's internal heater turn out to be true. Who knows, might also consider LG machines as well if Miele drops off the list. I like the solid heft of the Miele compared with other machines out there. I hope it's determined that Miele uses the internal heater in all cycles.

live wire oak said.....".....while you may think it is "silly" to suggest, it's well known that cleaning items with warmer water provides better results than colder temperature water."

I know that. I don't know anyone who doesn't know that. So, steam adds more heat to the water. Agreed. All of the machines with an on-board heater can add more heat to the water without doing so via separate steam generation.

Still waiting to learn what benefit steam brings other than more heat to the water.

I suggest the explanation lies in quantum physics. The steam water molecules are interacting with sub-atomic dirt particles in some unknown way. We have empirical evidence by the clean clothes. The LG scientist are diligently working on the theory. Patents are pending.

I am certain there is no uncertainty in my analysis that LG will certainly be able to explain someday. Meanwhile, enjoy your steamed clean clothes.

crooks101 -

Your brilliant!!! I was thinking it was some kind of nano-layer interaction triggered by a thermodynamic refractive textile tessellation but quantum physics is a much better path. Remember the Heisenburg Uncertainty Principle in quantum physics? LG engineers have harnessed the power of uncertainty beyond anyones dream!

Just thinking.....if had a life, I wouldn't be spending my time reading what you nilmrods write or worrying about steam in washers. Might be wonderful new world!