BEST Washer Dryer Combo Yet? Samsung Bespoke Laundry -Test, Teardown & Review

washer dryer combo units have become a very popular point of discussion in the United States GE and LG have had units on the market for a little while now and Samsung has come on the market uh call me a little bit jaded about these machines we've seen some problems with the other two on the market but this unit has some different technology in it that separates it from the rest is it possible that this could be Samsung's best design ever since the Galaxy S5 or is this more just like the Note 7 well we're going to run this machine for the next 3 months of simulated Cycles we're going to run it as often as we can to get this machine to show us some of the bad parts of it and see what we can find out so follow along with this video and let's get this machine running for the Samsung combo washer dryer one thing you're going to immediately have to consider is the size and weight the unit is 27 in wide just under 44 in tall and 34 1/2 in deep this means that the unit is about 5 in taller than the LG 2 in1 but it's 3 in shorter than the GE Ultra fast combo that I reviewed a few months ago for weight the claim from Samsung is 3177 lbs but to me it doesn't even feel that heavy I was able to easily pivot and move it around my tech room by myself the GE combo is an alleged 302 lb and I was not able to move it around my testing station when I had it here both are heavier though than the LG combo which is 247 lb for reference the first thing you're want to notice when you get this out of the box is that it's uh minimalistic the absolute flatness and square edges of the machine make it look like some sort of weird brutalist Soviet 1970s apartment complex the unit as mentioned though is ventless and 120 volts it only requires also 2 in of depth for fresh air exchange which is better than the LG that requires 4 in and I think the GE was about 1 in but I have tons of room to where that's irrelevant at the bottom of the unit is what I would call a faux pedestal for the soap and fabric softener this is a bit different to me the left side behind the dispenser houses the drain pump assembly which lets you clean the unit out easily which is very important for maintenance this unit has the largest drone capacity the combos at 5.3 cubic feet the GE is 4.8 cubic feet and the LG is at 5.0 but the door opening may be the smallest or at least it feels that way the drum has a lot of depth which makes reaching in for the clothes at the rear a little bit harder than the other combos at least in my op observations there's also a pop out cubby for the bleach dispenser and filter the filter is designed with the same brutalist style with sharp edges and it to me it looks kind of like a Nintendo NES cartridge there are two filters on this cartridge they easily separate that you can clean and also they only install one way back into the housings make sure you have both properly oriented but one of the biggest differences you're going to know about this unit there is no dial or button on the unit whatsoever for some of our viewers this could be a good thing but for quite a few others this is going to be a terrible feature depending on what you want out of your washer combo unit it also has Wi-Fi enabling I don't think you have to have it and you can skip over but there's a ton of features that are used with the Wi-Fi and the smart things app I found that the installation process for that was easy compared to the LG and GE apps in my opinion and the thing about the smart app system is that even though it's optional it's great it has an energy monitor a water monitor and allows you to view and test a lot of different things on the Fly there's just so many features to this that are awesome but the tablet interface matches it so there's a ton of customizability on this unit far more than the other ones on the market as I slowly go through the tutorial one thing that I would note is that since everything's done on a tablet it means that there's a huge number of options and features everything is generally customizable so you don't have to guess what features any specific Mode's going to use as you can alter them to your desires since this is a glorified tablet it looks like it's based on Android there's a lot of options that you would get similar to a Samsung Galaxy phone including the ability I think to root the system and install things like Doom but one of the interesting features here that's nested in the options is the auto openen door feature which we'll discuss quite a bit in the video of course the Wi-Fi doesn't come without problems though because this popped up at some point during the testing and I had to stop using the unit on another load because it was upd dating yay anyway the thing that many people care about on these videos is the speed claim of the wash and dry time compared to other units so we want to test this and see what you find in the real world Samsung says that the machine supposed to be the fastest combo ever I have 10.5 lbs of laundry the clothes are a mix of everyday laundry that we've found when customers have left clothes in the dryer they've sold us it's a good representation of I think what a typical laundry basket would be putting the clothes in through the smaller opening was not a big deal and once they are all in the 10.5 lbs of clothes look absolutely tiny in the Machine by comparison you could easily get 15 lbs in this without sacrificing the agitation ability of the machine in running the loads I've seen a few complaints from people that the control interface is kind of slow to run and turn on I did not have that problem on my personal unit but I can see how some people could find this sluggish we're going to start this normal wash but again you can see how many options are on the unit these modes could be changed extensively and you can even scroll from left to right to find extra things such as Rin and soak and whatnot but like every combo unit the devils in the details with that 98 minute wash and dry it's ends up being much longer once the 10.5 pound load was estimated we have 2 hours and 41 minutes which is quite a bit longer and I wasn't expecting that but the claim of 98 minutes is if you use the speed wash and dry settings rather than normal so the the machine can go faster and what does the load length look like well when we did similar tests on the GE and LG units right around the 8 lb Mark the GE combo was able to do that in about 2 hours and 2 minutes wash and dry and then 2 hours and 37 minutes on the LG unit and the note about this is that the Samsung washed for an hour which is similar to the GE here's where things get very different between the black magic of the auto door opening or the fact that the compressor is just a whole lot better on this the clothes in the Samsung dryer combo are actually dry not damp dry like the GE or LG units which is a common complaint but they are legitimately fully dry within the 2hour and 40 minute wash time that's one thing that is totally different about this machine I did 30 loads of clothes through the entire video and I never once had to remark that the clothes were slightly damp or the unit had a ton of moisture in when I pulled everything out this was a huge improvement over the other combo units and the only machine I have tested that is similar to this is the LG dedicated heat pump dryer that I did a few weeks ago which I really loved and I would watch that video if you have the chance because the Samsung's drying system is very close to that LG in my opinion even though this is a combo unit but of course as the famous doctor now would say the scales don't lie people do our post drying weight is 10 lb and 9 oz so maybe we added a sock off screen or there is some secret residual moisture moisture that I did not note but at least for my personal test I couldn't tell and with any heat pump system the lint filter is one of the most important parts of the review process it's actually the only thing I really care about on the review of this machine it took me a little while to figure out what Samsung suggests on this unit but they suggest cleaning both filters after each load the first filter you encounter has a fair amount of lint buildup and it was easily removed but the second filter had significantly less lent on it prompting me to think that maybe you had to clean it every five or 10 loads but the manual doesn't actually tell you one issue I found with the second filter is that the small particles don't want to Simply come off easily due to how thin they are I would consider getting a vacuum cleaner to remove this because otherwise rubbing it off will allow a few small particles around the cartridge housing and you may find yourself blowing on like an NES cartridge to get some of it removed and you don't want to do that we may as well throw the identical load back into the wash and test for averages over multiple times let's try the AI mode which suggests a faster smarter way of doing things but when it came down to the actual runtime it seemingly was a few minutes longer on the same load we used 20.5 gallons of water versus the 18.5 on the first load the estimated kilowatt hours on the second load was 1.6 kwatt hours versus 1.5 for the first load that we did it would suggest that maybe the extra 10 minutes was on the drying mode which ended up actually getting it further dry than what we expected it's exactly back at 10 and 1/2 lb verifying how great the dryer worked the next test is always rough for a combo system though we're going to do 12 lb and 10 oz of towels and they don't look very large in this Samsung drum and for reference this is the identical towel load that we used in the LG versus GE video so we can have an identical comparison between all of the combo units when we turn the unit on and select the tow load we get treated to a runtime of 3 hours and 38 minutes however I will tell you that when I timed every load it actually was 4 hours and 12 minutes so it ran quite a bit longer than expected here's the basic tillary I could come up with the wash and dry between the three units on the towel load the Samsung dry times came in much closer to the GE on the first run and it used slightly less electricity but yet again the towels in the Samsung were a whole lot drier than the GE and LG were in the past and now I have a little bit of proof here the load size after drying actually dropped I thought this was pretty crazy but it shows you how dry these clothes actually are on the Samsung unit and I don't know again if this is the compressor or the auto opening door letting the moisture out so it gets a little bit more dry since we have to have the machine on 30 washes let's go ahead and throw the same load in again on AI and this reduces the load time at least on the screen to just under 3 hours and when we ran the system on the AI wash and dry the load times dropped to 3 hours and 30 minutes and 1.7 KW hours of energy usage as per the monitor so in the AI mode the Samsung actually matched the GE and this is despite delivering a better drying quality so the Samsung is actually I think a bit better on towels than either of the competitors are as noted cleaning the filter though you have to do it every load I do think that the LG was a little bit easier to clean than the Samsung unit with a little wiping tray but again the system works okay but after doing so many loads on and off screen we can see some lent developing in the housing I would note again that a small vacuum cleaner would be a great idea to buy with a hose attachment it would help clean this out and Samsung does actually suggest cleaning this out with a vacuum every 180 loads with the goal of 30 plus washes before the tear down we do need to skip ahead a little bit cleaning the filter is I think quite a bit tedious and after 10 washes we have to separate the Nintendo cartridges to clean them this is a step that people Miss on every heat pump system and also some resistive electric tumble dryers mesh filters need water ran over them supposedly after every 10 loads if you use a lot of fabric softener it can get stuck in the cartridge and you can't see that film I would note though since we didn't use any fabric softener it really wasn't that dirty and we could have gone a whole lot longer next on the tests we're going to put a queen sized comforter in the unit this is the same one I bought for the GE and LG videos it came with two pillowcases which takes up a ton of room on the drum but it doesn't weigh much I will also note one thing about beding is that the spin mode typically is slower and takes longer on some systems initially we were treated to a 5H hour runtime but after the load began it was revised down to 4 hours at this point I started to run multiple comforter loads and found that the average completion time was about 5 hours in reality which was much worse than the GE or LG units the possible reason for this is the medium spin speed on the Samsung unit and I don't think it ran that slow on the LG or GE units when I tested them so for a few loads I just decided to throw the AI Opti dry system on it and guess what the wash and dry times dropped from 5 hours to an average of 2 hours and 20 minutes this chart here shows five or six backto back loads we ran on with the comforter over and over again and their run times you can see that the AI wash and dry provided a way better runtime because of the higher spin speeds the times are so ridiculously Divergent I emailed a contact at Samsung who surprisingly was waiting for me to review this and this is the statement that Samsung made to me in the email according to the statement from Samsung the extra hour and a half on the betting mode will get it more dry but I think you could play with the AI dry to get it just as good in a much faster time so if you have problems with the bedding load I would just try it on AI and see what you think larger loads correlate directly with longer dry times one thing I did want to try when I was running different loads was just cram everything that I have in my test room to fully cap this machine out at 19 lbs of laundry as you can see here it's almost totally full I would not ever recommend 19 lbs in this unit but we may as well try it as a reminder the washer does have a ton of modes that you can select and it would let you choose a lot of different things to get the most out of this machine such as a heavier cycle or pre-o or extra rinse which is convenient but an oversized load like this will not defy physics at 19 lbs it suggests 5 hours of runtime but in reality it was 6 hours and a minute using 3.3 kwatt hours of electricity and 39.1 gallons of water if I was doing this at home I would try to keep the sizes down and probably Max it out at about 15 lb remember that the 5.3 cubic foot drum is huge for a washing machine but it's for a dryer a similar sized drum would be about 7.8 cubic feet or more kind of like that LG heat pump dryer that again I tested a few weeks ago we are now at the 30 plus wash and dry mark on the unit which took a lot of time I think it took me about three real weeks but it simulates 3 months of usage okay so we are at 30 plus washes on this machine and how do I feel about about it well I can tell you I feel very jaded about these kinds of units this is my fourth unit with a heat pump that we've reviewed in the past year and so much of this is similar to the other designs it's not radically different with a lot of the things that the wash and dry times are kind of similar to both units we saw between about 2 hours and 40 minutes and up to I think 6 hours depending on just how poorly we loaded the machines and the wash quality on this is I think very good the thing that are different about this machine that are very important to look at from a homeowner or a technician standpoint there's two or three things that really stand out to me the first thing is as weird as it sounds is the fact that it automatically opens the door when a load is done although you can turn that option off if you would like to in the UI or the smart things app it's awesome because it allows fresh air to get in the machine I don't know if this is one of the secrets behind the clothes being totally dry with you pull them out but whether or not the clothes come out really really well and I love this feature because it makes sure that the machine is more dry than it should um so if you are considering the GE or the LG combos by comparison this machine does a way better job of getting your clothes fully dry you don't have to get it out and shake it it's much closer to the full-sized LG heat pump dryer review I did uh just a few weeks ago and I really liked that unit the other thing about this design that we're you're going to have to tear down and really figure out is the coil wash system this is the biggest problem with the other combo machines on the market that makes me question their longevity and that's what I really care about is if you're going to like this machine 3 years from now this does have a condenser coil wash system on it we've seen it run during our tests uh you can hear the water shoot in to clean the coils sometimes at the beginning of the washes but I don't know how clean the coils really are so we're going to run a load through this with the product care cycle let the machine wash itself and then see if the coils are really clean because if they are it will help this machine last a whole lot longer than the competitors because the GE was very questionable in that regard the LG combo machine was not as wellb built as the heat pump dryer which had the best system I've seen so far so let's go through the clean system and then tear this down and see what happens one thing that it's worth mentioning is that the UI and smart things app do both stress the product care cycle to be used about every 40 loads it's a very very long cycle taking about 6 hours to do whereas the LG and GE units I think are between 2 and 3 hours there is also a drum care mode which they suggest you run every 40 loads which is much shorter at 2 hours but what's the difference the self dry product care mode simply runs a heater to warm up the cabinet and dry the machine out preventing the buildup of mold in the unit whereas the much longer selfclean cycle it will run water heat the water up soak it and it will clean everything inside the cabinet hopefully allowing the machine to live a whole lot longer at least the spider bracket in the back which is a common point to failure on Samsung designs but with the unit cleaned it's time to move the system in place for the disassembly one of the things to look for on this disassembly is that there is a clear condensing wash system that is more notable than either of the other combo systems that are on the American Market although the LG does have a coil wash system on its combo I didn't find any good sort of chambering system to show that it was extensive and that it did more than just spray water on one side of the coils there are a ton of parts in this unit that we have to take out for us to peer inside but it shows you how blindingly complex a combo unit is with a little bit of work we can quickly access the condenser cleaning system chamber here's what it looks like on camera and you can see the tiny holes in the unit on how it would operate to clean the coils but of course having never taken this unit apart and just guessing at things it took quite a bit of work to remove everything blindly it took me about 25 minutes and quite a few hidden screws later we now have the entire top off to get to the Real review so we've gotten into the unit where I think things really matter we have run well over 30 loads on this we've accounted for no less than 100 hours of wash and dry time on the unit and this is what we have to show for the results of what the wear patterns look like on this I'm not excited or surprised by heat pump technology or combo technology is this better or worse than the other designs on the market from GE and LG what are the differences and what are the benefits and I will tell you straight out of the gate this is the best designed heat pump system of the other combo units on the market after having tore everything down the biggest concern that I have with any combo machine having owned the GE having owned the LG and seen you know thousands of comments from people is the lint buildup which is a major issue on any heat pump system and how the process is to solve the issue um on this you have the Nintendo cartridge that you take apart I'm sure I've edited in the video about this this is okay it's not the greatest I think it could be improved uh the mesh filters I think do a decent job but it's very dusty in the room when I clean these I call it a Nintendo cartridge because I want to blow on it to get some of the dust and that's probably not the best way to do it so I think there's some user error on the lent buildup on this system just from what I've done you can see a fair bit of lint buildup inside the mouth of the housing as well as before it gets to the mesh filter generally that should be okay because through the different front washes and things it could blow in and you could trap it and clean it on the coil side we have absolutely no frontf facing lint whatsoever which is a miracle because on the GE and LG units we saw notable buildup on less numbers of Cycles I have used this machine I don't want to say more than the LG and GE combined but it was close I use this a lot more there is a little bit of buildup right here at the very top which and all honest would be difficult to get with a vacuum cleaner but it's the least of the three that we had again despite using the most but overall this is excellent and a lot of the reason for this is you have this nice little distribution plate here that goes into the housing it goes into the distribution housing which is right here and it distributes over the full length of the coil system this is great this is absolutely great this is what GE should have done this is what LG should have done I know LG has a oil wash but is absolutely not as extensive as this at all um it's removable it's cleanable it was easily accessible during the tear down more than the plate on this which was hard but not much different than the combo units and what powers this whole design is the Samsung rotary compressor it is a ux9 BC 3055 fjd compressor what does that mean it's a three-phase DC inverted compressor just like GE just like LG G it's good it's not the kind of compressor that the refrigerators use that have had more problems it's R134 in the United States which is really good the tubing and brazing quality here the construction looks really really good I am happy with that it is a 5500 BTU compressor so it is actually the most powerful on the market for the Combos and this is kind of surprising given the wash and dry times we saw on this machine I would theorize the reason that the wash and dry times are longer is it's trying to actually get the clothes more dry than the competition in the talks that I've had with Samsung which for some reason they reached out to me which is very surprising they said they wanted a more dry load of clothes in the competition and it definitely does that I think at having a longer wash and dry time and of course the coil cleaning factors in would I actually suggest this yes I think it's worth considering purchasing especially given the competition however it does not come without some caveats we can't say that everything's perfect on this uh the biggest issue really with it is one it's a combo it will always be slower no matter what than two units but two the warranty is a concern which it's a concern with the other combo units and speaking of the warranty it only has one year you get a one year parts and labor on everything 3 years on the drum and then 10 years or 20 years on the brushless DC motor uh the reality is the motor will never fail they're excellently built but it's not ever a concern where the concern on these systems typically rely on is going to be the heat pump system and then the control board which looks like a Samsung Galaxy tablet which is a nice system of course but let's face it one year is not that great but if you're going with a combo I would definitely suggest this over the competition and right now I looked at the cost of all the systems this is actually the cheapest on the market so you will save a little bit of money to purchase an extended warranty if you decide to go this route so I think this machine offers a lot of advantages if you are in the market for a combo all-in-one unit this unit is available for most of your major big box stores already uh lowe.com has it samsung.com has it I will have a link in the description to some various places that you can purchase this unit from and if I had a choice I would talk to whoever is making the sale to you at the location and see if they will service this unit that would be my determining Factor regardless of the make and model they may have more text of one brand over the other and I would say that would sway me ultimately in any certain direction although I think this one technically is superior finally if you decide that you wanted something else that is not a combo unit like this I still recommend the WK X LG wash toer Samsung now has their own version of the watchtowers that look like they would be very good as well I don't know what the model numbers are the one I saw was sa a d d89 which didn't make any sense because I only saw the dread movie in 95 with Stallone and the 2011 one with Urban which was really really good and again I would stress two units are always going to be better than one because this takes on more problems with having everything in one unit but if you have the space I definitely think this is a good ide idea to go with so that's it for the video join me next time when I try to figure out how the heck to put this back together because it was a daunting task to take apart have a great day

Channel: Bens Appliances and Junk

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Id: vao_KqCzLUE

Length: 26min 10sec (1570 seconds)

Published: Mon May 27 2024