The windows forum is the place where the window pros hang out. I would ask there.

This and Anderson 100 series are the bottom of the barrel and not very good. Be careful good windows aren’t cheap and cheap windows aren’t good.

Which windows are you getting, PI?

Pensacola, what information do you have to support your claims? Some seem to like the Andersen 100 series on the windows forum. I'm considering them for my build as well. I'd like to know why you think that, it might change my mind.

Google is your friend, spend a day searching and you’ll change your mind.

Andersen 100 is a decent product and one of the better entry products. Much better than anything Quaker.

I used the 100s. Other commenters have as well. They are certainly not "bottom of the barrel." My comments and photos of the product are in the Windows forum.

Googling is dangerous. It would be quite difficult to not find anything negative about any product that is massed produced if you Google it. Satisfied customers are living their lives, going about their daily business. They usually don't feel the need to write about how happy they are with something, unless there is an incentive. Unhappy customers will travel to the ends of the Earth and spare no expense to make sure everyone knows how bad a product is.

Enjoy your windows.

We have anderson 100 black interior/ exterior installed in our new build. We are not in the house yet so I can't tell you function wise if we like them or not.

Reasons why we choose them:

1. I wanted black inside/outside

2. I didn't want aluminum clad wood windows. We had very high end expensive ones in our last home and had nothing but problems. Replacing was expensive, the dark exterior faded and there was nothing you could do. You can't paint them.

3. The fiberex material color is all the way through the product, which might help with fading, it is also paintable so if it does fade it can be painted.

4. Hubby is a mechanical/material engineer and he approved.

5. Affordable, we could replace all of the Anderson 100's 3 times before we reached the expensive price of the windows we had on our last home.

6. Oh and I researched windows a lot and called and talked to multiple installers. Some had good things to say, some had bad things to say. For us the good out weighed the bad.

7. We wanted a large well-known company. If we do have issues/warranty they have a better chance of still being around in 10 years for a warranty claim.

Summye, can you go into detail on the good and bad things that were said? What kind of windows? Casements, double hung, awning, etc?

Sure here are a couple that I found:

Rear of the home:

Interior:

Mike,

We have a combo of double hung, and awning. I personally don't care for casement so we didn't use them. We have 1 slider that is in my husbands shop, I would say that is the cheapest feeling one.

Biggest negative was that they are associated with a lower end product. We are building a million dollar house so everyone felt we should put in the higher end aluminum clad windows but they really don't do all that well in our area, with our intense sun/ and heat/cold changes. We are in Colorado. Wood interior tends to look nicer, but wasn't the style I was looking for. After lots of research and my picky husband inspecting them we felt the fiberex material would be more stable for the intense hot/cold changes.

Putting the Anderson's in our builder fought us on it, and friends and family thought they would look cheap. Now that they are in everyone is impressed by them and we keep getting compliments. We were the 2nd house in a 30 mile radius to have black on black installed so it was a risk, others keep popping by to take a look at them.

Time will tell if they are a good product or not.

I've had them for over 2 years now. Great choice, great service. Ours are fixed, casement, and awnings. We have 2 - 8 foot sliders. No issues.

2nd photo is a house down the road.

@Samantha Radcliff What did you finally decide on? We are currently between the Quaker and Anderson 100 as well. Will see what the bids are like this week.

Ouch... looks like Anderson 100 would be about 15K more than the Quaker Manchester. I'm not sure that its worth the price difference to me.

Sam, I just quoted Andersen 400 double hungs for a 3000 sq ft new construction house. Just windows only was $15k. Are replacements that much more expensive?

I agree with JDS but the Quality (or lack there of) in the Quaker would scare me away, period.

@JDS - I'm looking into Andersen 100 and 400 series casements for my new build. Performance wise, they seem to be similar (I think 100 actually beats out 400 in some aspects), but your sill comment has me leaning towards the 400 series.

Would you always recommend the Andersen 400 series over the 100 series casements?

Ryan, please reconsider the Anderson. We too did 400 casement series and as someone who built nine years ago and had not one issue with them (which was why we did the same with this build), they are now leave ALOT to be desired. If you live anywhere by Iowa I’d happily show you the difference. They are a thin white paper over some cheap pine, so soft that I can simply take my fingernail and make an indentation (perhaps I should create a video to give you an idea). I have numerous places that we’re banged up and damaged upon install, ones that my builder refused to remove from the box without us acknowledging that he didn’t damage it, windows that were coming apart and Anderson had to send a repair guy out to fix on several occasions and my absolute favorite was them telling me they aren’t maintenance free, here’s a bottle of white touch up paint as the Anderson rep sat there and smirked. I’ve never once done any touch ups in my old house with two kids and eight years, yet here we were with numerous dings and issues with prior to even moving in. Anderson’s certainly aren’t what they were years ago, our local lumber yard even acknowledges that now. Apparently they changed production right around this time last night and considering what we spent vs what we got, add on to it what a waste it was having the Anderson rep come out, your money is spent best somewhere else. STAY AWAY FROM ANDERSONS! My sister who actually has built several houses and has always used Anderson’s is currently in the middle of the build and this is the first one that she has not used Anderson’s Bc she’s seen just how bad of quality they now have, take the warning and run.

Andersen makes 2 different windows and calls them both a series 400 window. One is a Woodwright 400 and the other is a Tilt-Wash 400. Odd name because both have the tilt-wash feature. They both have the same vinyl clad wood frame with a great sill design, which is very rare in modern nail-fin windows. The Woodwright has a Fibrex (sawdust & PVC composite like the 100 series) clad wood sash. The Tilt-Wash is said to have a "clad" sash but its only a PPG epoxy paint.

Don't consider the Andersen 100 unless you put a sill under it and you like the flush look of glass even with the face of the house, a feature that completely eliminates this window from consideration for me but I live in New England where such things are reserved for strip malls.

IMO a better window is the Marvin Integrity Wood-Ultrex fiberglass-clad wood window. The All-Utrex Integrity is similar to the Andersen 100 and is unacceptable IMO..

JDS - they no longer offer the vinyl clad in the 400 series. In fact, this was the very reason we went with the 400's, when they initially put our PO in, it had the 400's in the vinyl clad. But then I came here to Houzz, ended up redesigning our house and by the time we came back to signing on the dotted line, it was a couple months later, and they changed their product and no longer offer the vinyl clad (this is per Anderson). If you look at their spec sheet for the 400 series, it no longer has that listed. It's a pine board underneath with some paint/plastic layer on top that you can literally take your nail and break through and expose the wood underneath. We were beyond upset to find this out, but as such, they refused to do anything because their order form didn't state vinyl clad, their specs didn't show it, and our lumberyard didn't catch it. In the end, we had emails showing that we requested vinyl clad, but we got the Fibrex, which apparently is what they are offering as a "superior" product to the vinyl clad. The Anderson rep that came out claimed they had all sorts of problems with the vinyl clad which is why they did away with it supposedly, yet we never had any issues with our old place and after eight years they look better than our new ones.

I don't sell Andersen but the website shows 400 Tilt Wash as having a vinyl exterior. I remember the catalog saying the same in years past. I will make a phone call tomorrow to confirm.

@millworkman please report back with what you find. I'm curious about the 400 casements.

@JDS I don't see anything online about 400 series Woodwright casements. Is your comment regarding double-hung windows?

@BK Iowa Is vinyl clad the same as vinyl wrapped? My Andersen quote for 400 series casements dated October 2017 specifies vinyl wrapped:

400 Series

Unit, White/White - Vinyl Wrapped, R Handing, High Performance Low-E4 Glass, Finelight Grilles-Between-the-Glass, Colonial, 2W3H, White/White,

3/4" (Includes 6 9/16" Factory Applied White - Painted Complete Unit Extension Jambs)

I just talked to the senior sales associate at the largest Andersen dealer in New England. He says there have been no changes to the Andersen 400 Casement windows or the 400 Tilt-Wash Double Hung windows so you have either misunderstood a salesman's comments or he/she is pulling your leg.

The 400 Woodwright Double Hung was upgraded to a better balance system that tilts more easily.

Some time ago some or all of the vinyl clad sills were changed to Fibrex cladding but I doubt that is of any consequence; Fibrex is just vinyl reinforced with wood fibers.

The reason the Andersen 400 windows are unlikely to change is that the scraps of the vinyl frame cladding and the wood shavings and sawdust from the wood parts is used to make the Fibrex for the 100 Series All-Fibrex window series. This is a manufacturing innovation Andersen likes to brag about. IMO they will change only when PVC is banned from window construction.

He says the 100 series are half the cost of the 400 series with a very small feature set (dealer code for developer - builder grade). They generally compete with Vinyl windows mostly for replacing old vinyl windows and are also used for light commercial construction. I used one once in a shower.

I recommend establishing a quality level first and then contacting dealers for Marvin and Andersen and compare windows with similar feature sets. I think you will find the Marvin Integrity fiberglass window is the best deal.

Who are you talking to? Stay away from Home Depot.

I was investigating this as well JDS and found basically the exact same info from my source.

JDS - what I can tell you is that we sent over our list of must haves to the lumberyard (which we had in an email) and requesting vinyl clad 400s. Due to us re-doing the floor plan our build got pushed back eight or so months. From a material perspective, all specs stayed the same. Then in May when we came home from work one day, we found most of the windows installed with the exception of a few (which our builder had texted us due to cosmetic damage). We immediately noticed how cheap they appeared as well as cosmetic damage on several of them which were installed (not huge cosmetic issues, but obvious ones none the less). We immediately reached out to our building supply company who reached out to Anderson bc he was expecting vinyl clad. He contacted Anderson, who informed him that the product was changed a few months earlier. We did verify that the boxes they came in were marked 400, we assumed at first they sent us the wrong series. We went back and forth for a couple of months, trying to figure out if we were going to tear them out and get a different product or how exactly we were going to handle it. In the end, Anderson would only warranty product, which we weren't happy with, again, we made it very clear that we wanted vinyl clad (in writing) with our material provider. The lumber yard decided rather than to take them all back, to extend us a labor warranty should we have any issues with them, they will take care of the labor (again, still not happy, had I realized this was the case we would have never ordered Andersons). Regardless my sister has built several houses and has always went with 400s. She does casements, I do double hungs. She's four or so houses in the past ten years, this is our second. We just moved in Oct last year, she is currently drywalling and on target for a May move in. She spoke with another local lumber yard (we went with different lumber yards due to bids), this owner has always steered her to 400 series, he now is no longer steering her that way due to the changes. Not sure about the outside, but I can tell you the insides are certainly not vinyl clad. It's a thin almost wall paper coating or a thin paint over pine board (is what the Anderson rep stated while he was here looking at our windows). The fact that I can take my fingernail and break through the surface (with very little force) and expose the wood below to me is a HUGE problem. I have boys that play with toys on the window sill, not to mention if a window heaven forbid is left open and rain comes in, I can only imagine how these things hold up. Again, eight years in the old house and my windows have ZERO issues, they literally look brand new. Our new house has cosmetic damage on nearly EVERY SINGLE WINDOW. Again, our builder refused to even pull some out of the box because he didn't want to be blamed for the damage. Our big windows (probably nine feet wide) had issues with the bottom frame coming apart and the Anderson rep had to come out to fix them. When I showed him the areas which had cosmetic damage, he just basically stood there and smirked. So that's two local lumber yards (that do hundreds of houses every year) that didn't realize that the specs changed and one that I know of for sure that no longer steers people to the 400's. Tomorrow when it's light out, I'll try to remember to post some pictures on here of the cosmetic damage. I wanted maintenance free, when I spoke with the Anderson rep, he claimed that maintenance free included having to paint your newly installed windows...apparently that's acceptable to Anderson. To me, maintenance free is my old windows, where I didn't have to do any sort of upkeep on them and they still look amazing. Oh and one other thing, they changed the lock mechanism on them to some cheap thing, I certainly don't think it will hold up nearly as well as the only one. My old windows felt tight when you locked them, you knew it was a good solid seal, these are more easily locked with little to no effort. Also the way the lock mechanism catches, I have huge concerns that it last with time (assuming it's opened semi frequently).

"Not sure about the outside, but I can tell you the insides are certainly not vinyl clad."

Are you speaking of the sash or the frame? The sash has never been vinyl clad, since the inception of the vinyl clad frames the sahs have been a polyurea painted finish. The frames are in fact vinyl clad and as JDS states the sill is now fibrex as oposed to vinyl clad wood. I know a lot of people who build regularly and use the 400 series and have no issues, as well as many people who have the current windows.

Millworkman-when you say current windows, do you know of any that have installed within the past eight or so months? Bc apparently that's when the change took place.

I do believe so yes, but I will ask again to be certain.

What part of the window am I looking at?

A lot of misinformation here. You can check the current website for the facts.

https://www.andersenwindows.com/windows-and-doors/windows/single-hung-and-double-hung-windows/compare/.

KSC - regardless of what the facts are, the fact remains that Anderson’s are certainly not what they once were. There’s a reason we’re unhappy (when we were perfectly happy with our previous 400’s), there’s a reason our local lumber yard is actually steering buyers away from 400’s when for years it was his go to product and there’s a reason our new windows that are less than eight months old look ten times worse than our nine year old ones. Hard to argue those facts.

Something is obviously wrong. Andersen has not changed the 400 series windows. Are you sure you purchased "Andersen" windows? I ask because you continue to call them "Anderson" windows. Perhaps you are the victim of a bait and switch scam.

The interior sash of any wood window would be painted; only an all-vinyl window would have vinyl on the interior.

The photos appear to show the "extension jambs" which are not part of the window; they're added after the window is installed.

I live in the Hamptons and my husband is a premier build, building multi-million dollar homes. His father was and my father were both GC's. All 3 would prefer installing an Andersen every time over the window architects spec. today. If there isn't an issue with the cost, lead time, install issues or the functionality, there is usually some sort of issue that ensues not too many years down the road. The look is important, I get it, but functionality rules. Here in East Hampton, NY the local color use Andersen on their homes. Hands down the favorite.

It’s hard to compare Andersen 100 series to Quaker Products. The Andersen 100 is a Fiberx (fibered composite ) material.. I don’t recall Quaker offering anything in that league.. in my opinion the Andersen 100 is an excellent product and also has the color options that are poplar for today’s new homes.. i feel is the better fiber window available., compared to Pella Impervia or Marvin Integrety..

Andrrsen 100 Great Choice!!