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This is not the kind of washing machine I would have purchased, had the decision been mine.
This video demonstrates the problems I see with the engineering going into modern things. It seems that not enough thought is being given to what happens under adverse conditions. More worryingly, the quality control (assuming there is any) efforts aren't catching these problems.
I don't know where the fault lies: if it's a new generation that has forgotten the lessons taught by the past, if there's too much focus on OOOH SHINY, if it's feature creep, China Pride, insufficient if any quality control, other factors or maybe even a combination of these things. Just because you can do something doesn't mean you *should*.
On the other hand, this machine does have some interesting capabilities. There are multiple hall effect sensors in the drum that I believe determine through minute timing differences how fully loaded the machine is, the variable frequency drive system employed to operate the primary motor and what appears to be a multiple-phase based balancing system. (By which I mean that a secondary driving signal that is phase shifted with regard to the primary drum motor driving signal is used to help keep the unit balanced, once it has figured out how far off it is from perfect balance. One can sometimes see these out of phase pulsations in the drum at higher spin speeds.) All this cleverness, of course, doesn't add up to much without decent engineering and quality control having gone into the design -- as I think it hasn't.
Whirlpool does deserve some credit for standing behind the machine when it broke down outside of warranty. Only time will tell from here on out. I'll be surprised if it lasts ten years.
Don't get me wrong when I say that Energy Star is a crock of hooey. I think people should do their best to use no more energy than is required to reasonably accomplish a task. At best I think the program is feel-good "greenwashing" and at worst, I think it propagates the fallacious notion that buying low quality appliances for some nebulous "energy savings" relative to an older and longer lived unit is somehow acceptable or appropriate.
As this machine has a cleaning cycle that you're supposed to run after every 30 washloads, and said cycle uses a truly amazing amount of water, I further call into question how much energy or water is actually being saved here.
Again I reiterate that these Maytag Bravos XL machines do NOT represent what I would have purchased, had the decision been mine. Sadly, I do think they're probably the "cream of the crud"...the "least worst" of a bad lot for generally available machines.
For those of you who actually read down this far, some cheezy humor: I guess you could say...a heavy load of towels was enough to make this machine throw in the towel!