RE: Samsung Top-Loading Washer. The tub does rotate to fill the machine, but the water sprays around the edges, not toward the middle. I watched the entire cycle by shining a flashlight through the glass top. Water sprayed around the edges until the predestined amount was achieved. The pair of sweat pants in the middle floated, but never - throughout the entirety of the cycle - did the leg EVER submerge in the water. The gentle side-to-side swishing did, however, manage someway or another to tangle the sleeves and legs that WERE submerged to the point that it knotted them and threw the load off-balance. I’ve been doing laundry for quite a few decades now. My parents purchased a washer/dryer when i was about 4 years old and those appliances managed to wash clothes that looked and smelled clean and better yet - they did it for close to 40 years. I learned to do laundry with those appliances. My mother taught me how to place items in the machine to make sure the load was balanced and then choose the appropriate water level, temperature, and wash cycle. We didn’t struggle with unbalanced loads or tangled clothing. You set the machine, started the cycle, and walked away. When you came back, the load was done and ready for the dryer. I find it insulting that the companies engineering products now assume that I’m too freaking stupid to make my own decisions about the appropriate settings for something as simple as washing a load of laundry. I’m not so stupid as to stick my arm into a moving spin cycle and I actually parented my children to the point they knew that I would not allow them to climb into the appliances and/or drink bleach or eat detergent pods (so no need to lock the freaking lid of the washing machine). I managed to raise my children without child-proofing my house and treating cleaning products like we were housing plutonium. I taught them how to do age-appropriate chores and safely use household appliances. Fast-forward to now … Instead of cultivating an educated, self-reliant, intelligent society, we’re engineering with an attempt to make everything idiot-proof, consequently producing generations of idiots that can’t make reasonable decisions about their everyday existence. Good grief. And quite frankly I’m sick to death of hearing how environmentally friendly a company is that produces and “energy efficient” appliance that will need to be replaced every 8 years or so - the technology has existed since my childhood to produce a product that will last 20+ years. How environmentally sound is it to save a few gallons of water, yet send THREE machines to the landfill during the same time-frame that we used to send only ONE worn-out machine?!?! There is a serious disconnect with common sense going on here - I’m sick of things engineered for the lazy and the stupid. That washing machine sitting in my laundry room has delivered to me a resounding message from Samsung - and the message is … “We think you’re a blithering idiot who’s too stupid to operate a washing machine, so we’re taking the ability to make ANY decisions away from you.” We have computers in kindergarten classrooms, but society thinks adults are too stupid to learn to use a washing machine …

Well, we did it. Went and purchased a Bosch Vision 500 because Bosch offered $250 in rebates, the appliance store offered another $50, and then we had the $175 Mass. rebate. That brought it to just over $500 -- well worth it, from the research I've (now) done. Dianne, I can understand your frustration. But we knew our washer had broken twice and was on the older side. When we heard about the rebates, I knew this was something that would go fast, so it was either act fast and get one, or dither and research and not get one. I found out about it not even 24 hours before the vouchers were available because my husband mentioned it, and my assumption was that he mentioned it because he wanted to replace the washer. Anyway, it was a "use it or lose it" deal, so if we didn't use it, I knew it would go back into the pot. I just want to say thanks to those who have replied and for all those posting on this forum. If I hadn't read about the onboard heater and considered that angle, we might have found ourselves missing this good opportunity. :-)

shappy... I have the 500 series bosch set... 2+ years now... one service call almost right away to replace the pump... probably defective and since it was so new the repair guy just said... I'm just replacing it... 2nd call totally my fault... I washed to OLD rubber backed mat rugs... (backing was cracking) and the backing totally fell apart and clogged the outflow hosing... they came and cleaned it out for me under the extended warranty with no problem and other than that they've been great machines... I would easily buy them again, have a few friends who have picked the same ones, and btw... I do not have the pedestals either... bosch is made in North Carolina to design specs from bosch-siemens from Germany... I figured this was 'good' as fl machines are so common and have been in use for so long in Europe their designs should be pretty well debugged by now... and then made here is a plus in my mind... realistically the US machines are 'larger' versions of the European counterparts... and run off 120 volt instead of most of them being 220... although that is/has changed for the models currently being brought in to sell in the US market... I understand being proactive on replacing... that's what I was doing too... with 25+ yo machines in my case... there certainly is an 'adjustment' period... yes the cycles take longer, but they also have mnore clothes in them and use tons less water and power... and now the dryer is always done before the washer! and detergent?? make sure it's he, and start out using about 1/2 of what the container says... fwiw... I use Charlies powder... love it, cleans great and no soap build up under the gaskets that I can find!

Let me be the contrarian here. If you need to cut back somewhere, the fridge is an obvious place to start. It's easily replaceable at a later date, and, as others on GW have observed, the fridge is the appliance that gives you the least bang for your buck. I see no conflict in buying an expensive range and keeping an old fridge. Our kitchen renovation ran well into six figures (not including appliances) and we spent another $14K on a Wolf rangetop, M Series oven and CSO, but decided to keep our 3 y.o. KitchenAid dishwasher, and 25 y.o. Hotpoint fridge. Both my wife and I think the kitchen looks quite nice this way. I'd be happy to post a picture if someone could tell me how to do it (I click photo and click on the picture, but nothing seems to happen). In any event, our new kitchen layout precluded re-using our old Thermador range (even though it was in perfect shape), so cooking appliances were the obvious area to devote to our rapidly-dwindling resources. My wife didn't think it was worth the extra $1,000 to get a CSO instead of a double oven, but I ultimately convinced her it was worth a shot. She still prefers the M Series, so the CSO is "my" oven and the M Series is "hers". The dishwasher decision came next. I would love to get a Miele Pro Series DW at some point, as it can do a load in 25 minutes, but at $5K it's pretty pricey. Our KitchenAid runs fine, so we decided to re-use it, but have a 220V receptacle installed under the sink. So, a future upgrade to a Miele will be pretty simple. Finally decisions had to be made about a refrigerator. Our fridge space goes into a cubby in the mud room, so we're lucky in that we can accommodate either a counter depth or a full-depth fridge. Neither my wife nor I could see the point in spending $8K on a SZ or other high-end fridge, when $2K will provide you with a fridge that works almost as well and has more storage space, so we ruled out a counter-depth pretty quickly. There were 2 main reasons why we decided to keep our old fridge, at least for the time being. The first is my concern about noise and reliability. Our 25 y.o. Hotpoint is very quiet and has had exactly one service call in 25 years (by contrast our 3 new Wolf appliances have had a total of 7 service calls in just 4 months). My perception is that newer appliances just aren't built as well as they used to be. We have to keep our GE washer & dryer under maintenance contracts, as they seem to crap out at least once a year, whereas our old Whirlpool ran over 20 years without a problem. Also after reading reviews of even highly-rated refrigerators, I get the impression that new fridges are much noisier than the old ones. Someone told me that this is because the new energy-efficient compressors make a lot of noise. On second thought, maybe I shouldn't be too concerned about this, as the fan on our Wolf M Series sounds like a jet engine once the oven gets hot. Most of our meals are spent with that thing howling in the background. Maybe the biggest reason for keeping the old fridge though, was due to a simple matter of aesthetics. My wife doesn't like having too much stainless steel in the kitchen, and all of the better full depth fridges only seem top come in that. Our old fridge is a nice cream color with black accents on the handles that perfectly matches our Kohler Biscuit sinks. The closest you can get to this color nowadays seems to be a "bisque" color, that is monotone and way too yellow for my taste. So we decided to keep our old fridge in the hope that something more to our liking comes out before this one decides to kick the bucket. We took a 3 week vacation during construction and left the fridge powered off and closed, which was a big mistake. We almost decided to chuck the fridge when we came back and discovered it was full of mold. It took almost a full day of scrubbing with Clorox, but it ended up looking almost new again. The same thing happened again, when the carpenters took the fridge out for the floor refinishing. They took the doors off this time and covered the fridge in plastic. We returned to find the worst of both worlds - the fridge was full of both sawdust and mold. In the end, both my wife and I are happy with our decision to keep the old fridge. We know its days are numbered, but will be sad to see it go.