BETTER THAN GE? The LG All in One Washer Dryer Combo: Test, Teardown & Review

this is the allnew LG 2in1 combo washer dryer this is a brand new machine at the market that claims that it can wash and dry your clothes in Just 2 hours LG is not a newcomer to using combo wash or dryer units they've had a lot on the market before such as their trom series and the thing that makes these kind of units very interesting to use is that they have a heat pump installed in the unit uh kind of like a dehumidifier and the huge ADV AG here isn't what's on the front of the machine which is one of the largest capacity washers on the market at 5 cubic feet but it's what's behind the unit that matters it does not have a vent like a typical dryer it only has a drain hose and then the other aspect is that it runs off 120 volts ac in the United States so you can put this literally anywhere in your house that you want to wash clothes which makes it really special to where you can now do laundry just anywhere you would like to but does the machine actually run like it claims and what's the deal with the heat pump is that going to be a liability in the future and then how do the modes work on this we're going to inspect and tear down everything today in this video so let's get started once it's powered on the unit offers a wide array of choices and options including AI powered modes for faster washing choices and I think there are about 15 options on the dial knob that allows you to make these choices but there are also additional modes and options on the right side of the panel including typical wash modifiers such as Steam dry times and additional options you can also select to only wash or only dry as well so you can do one or the other if needed when you set Yours up for the first time LG suggests a quick wash so we're going to go ahead and do that while we set up the thin qlg app it lets us manage the washing machine from my cell phone it took a little bit of time to set the app up on this washing machine but once I was done with that the options features and power of the app were extremely impressive I found the app to be way easier to navigate and use to select a cycle than the control interface on the washing machine you may like this or hate this depending on if you have a Wi-Fi signal and like to use your cell phone this system does require a constant Wi-Fi connection though which could be a problem for some people but you don't need the Wi-Fi to actually run the unit it's optional but I definitely suggest it this system does let us push options and features directly to the combo unit for my phone so I can change the features I want on the Fly and there's just too much to go over in the video in terms of all the options I want to say there are at least 40 to 50 different options that I can choose for my cell phone it also features energy monitoring which we verified independently on a kilowatt meter and found that what LG put on the screen on the phone was pretty accurate it they claim a 30% variation but we found it was about 10% overall for the first re load once the quick wash was done I tried to mix a various load of towels and smaller mixed laundry as well as one of my large coveralls that you see me wear on screen a few towels did make it into the mix which tend to be bulkier and cont tax a combo unit in my experience for the first wash we are going to use the AI wash and dry features one caveat to my tests is I only have cold water here which could affect the drying times and on this test the drying times are well trying times once the unit began the initial time estimate was 4 hours and 42 minutes ouch at least the app showed me what time it was going to be done so I could plan my videos and my life around the load of laundry and to LG's claim there are certain restrictions on what they say can be washed and dried in two hours they say a 10 lb load on energy saver mode which I don't think we use that option in this case so we'll give the unit some credit the unit ran and ran and ran and in the process of it running I would note that the AI wash did drop the total run time down from 4 hours and 40 minutes to just a little bit over 4 hours for it to be fully complete one major note was energy usage on the kilowatt meter as well as the app the unit showed that it rarely went over 450 or 500 watts but and quite frankly I'm not surprised it took 4 hours to run because that low of energy consumption would will take a long time to dry your clothes now that we have our first 4 and 1/2 hour wash and dry done I had opened it yet to check anything so we're going to open it and see uh how dry the clothes ended up being as well as the wash quality on my jumpsuit that I normally wear for my mayag uniform now one note I guess is I did throw some towels in this some light ones that may have added to the wash and dry time especially with that towel really really really dry these are bone dry here's my suit um this suit was really banged up with all kinds of just different stuff on it there's paint on it that obviously is not going to come out but overall everything else on my jumpsuits in really really good shape everything went really well it seems like on drying and I'm noticing way more uh bedding in this than I thought there or way more to in this I thought there would be so that's why the dry time was much higher than I thought and ironically the machine figured out there was a ton of tows in this I guess when it was uh sensing everything uh which is really surprising uh in kudos to LG for figuring that out so I guess we'll have to get some more clothes and uh put in this to see if we can get close to that 10 lb limit but so far everything's really really good after filming this I had a strange feeling about the load so I went through and checked what we put in it I did notice some more towels than expected the load ended up also being heavier ended up being 15 lbs of laundry that was definitely on the higher end of what you would expect so this is atypical and as soon as this test was over I got a call from my mom telling me her May tag washing machine was broken and she desperately needed to wash clothes I figured this was a perfect way to get someone else's opinion on the LG all-in-one washer dryer one key thing though is that she wanted three pieces of clothing not to be ran through the dryer cycle because she wanted to line dry them I don't understand why she wants to cuz it's Ohio and it's like 20° outside but hey it's my mom and I have to listen this time we made darn sure that the unit had no heavy clothing in it other than maybe one sweater and this load definitely came in at 10 lb to see if we can get a lower wash and dry time but before we could run the load again the unit prompted me to clean out the filter one really neat thing is that this filter is very easy to remove and when you pull it out it cleans the lint as you remove the filter box from the housing and this is really ingenious I would note that it's a mesh filter so it needs to be cleaned with hot water every 10 loads according to the LG manual back to Mom's clothes once loaded on AI wash we get 3 hours and 6 minutes it's still not what LG promised but at least it's not 4 hours thanks to the thin Q app I was easily able to figure out when the unit stopped washing so I could pull her clothes out before the dryer started when it came time to take out the items that she wanted to line dry my mom remarked to how incredibly dry the items already were thanks to the highe speed spin on this LG unit if you've never owned a front loader in general or especially an LG unit they do a really good job of spin drying the clothes to where there's not a lot of moisture left it runs at about 1200 RPM Which is far beyond what you would see on any traditional topload washing machine a May Tag's G to doe between 700 and 800 RPM on a smaller drum than this 5 cubic foot so that's something to keep in in mind that's a huge advantage on these units when my mom came to look at the washer she also remarked how incredibly quiet the machine was in operation despite the fact that it was running and drying the clothes it did not make a lot of noise and there's even options on the LG app for overnight and nighttime volume levels which reduce fan and spin noises which is really neat now we have the second load of laundry done in this and it definitely got the mom seal of approval this one took only 3 hours which is not where we want it to be but it's significantly better but probably more importantly even in the wash and dry times the electric consumption on the dryer is significantly lower than the first load we used less than half the amount of electricity um the dryer drum still quite warm we got to put a meter in this at some point but it's I was worried about these clothes not coming out dry or warm it came out much better and nicer than the first load credit to the wash AI or the dry AI eye I was disappointed the amount of time it took didn't drop when we took my mom's heavier clothes out but it is what it is for the next test I want to go back to beding on this load I'm doing two heavy blankets six large towels and one small towel just over 10 lb I wanted to use the overnight remote start feature on this which I think is really neat once you set it on the console the door will lock so be prepared with your detergent or whatever you're using like I'm using these off brand Tide Pods we're also going to put an elitech Data Logger in the unit to see how hot the drum gets and we're going to set the load to start around 7:30 a.m. the next morning well before the time I get to work the unit ran for about 4 hours and 30 minutes which was very disappointing to me and it used about 2.2 kwatt hours of electricity and that was pretty expected for a bulky load of clothes the runtime was bad but the energy usage again was about what I would have expected it to use it used the amount of electricity I expected but it used it slowly now from the Data Logger we see how the dryer performed it ran for quite some time it took a while for it to ramp up but it ended up building a peak temperature of 126.80 f which is pretty impressive given the amount of wattage that the unit continues to use after using the sensor I went ahead and cleaned the filter again marveling at how ingenious this design was to use by the way now it's time to do the part of the video which I care about which is figuring out why the unit takes so long to dry and we got to avoid the warranty in the process to figure this out at the back of the unit there is not a lot to see but I wanted to inspect the motor anyway to see if there's anything quickly we can discern from Once the plate is off you can see that this unit has a typical LG direct drive motor which has a 10-year warranty on it they're extremely wellb built and they help the machine run whisper quiet now let's get to the core of the unit one major thing that I saw when taking this apart is the rear piece of the filter housing there was a ton of Lent on it which is not a good sign but I will tell you after rereading the manual LG does tell you and show you how to clean this as well as the condenser coils so let's continue to dig deeper into the machine and remember while I'm taking this apart if you enjoy the review and are considering buying this LG 2in1 washer dryer unit use the link in the description or the product picture on the YouTube video I get a small credit if you end up buying one and I use the money from the GE Ultra fast combo unit to actually pay for this so I could do the review at my own expense that way LG or no manufacturer influenced my opinions on the unit the nicest thing I can say about the suppliance as a technician when taking it apart is that it tears down like it should I did not have any manual or guide or support from LG on how to do this but it wasn't hard to do or at least so far but in order to really get to the heat pump unit you have to remove the front of the machine which I was not a thing fan of but at least it wasn't super hard if you are a technician the good news is that if you've ever fixed an LG washing machine and had to take it apart this operates fundamentally the same as any other unit despite the heat pump two screws in the dispenser two on the lid switch four on the top of the frame and then finally the door boot wire and then the two screws on the drain pump housing and that's it to take the front off with the door off you can see at what is at the bottom of the unit which looks like any other LG unit and this one does have a DC voltage drain pump which is a new Wrinkle in LG units that I've taken apart most use vac but otherwise this is quite familiar finally to the last bits of the heat pump system I had to remove the front bulkhead which was not hard but it was nerve-wracking because I've never done anything like this before and there probably are few techs that have outside of LG and I'm sorry if any LG tech is watching this I probably didn't do this the right way but at any rate here's the part that you're paying the $2 to $3,000 for fully shown we can start making some observations about what really makes this unit different and special for consumers and that is the heat pump system right here you have the compressor in the back you have the evaporator and condenser coils in the front and then you have a blower motor that runs to circulate air through the entire system this is a radically efficient design that uses very low wattage to accomplish the drying of your clothes this is powered by an LG e 072 ma compressor it is an R134 refrigerant compressor in a rotary configuration this is very important to me because LG has been known as not always having the best compressors on the market for the refrigerators but since this is a rotary compressor it may not be privy to some of the complaints or issues that the other types that LG has on the market another thing that's interesting is is the size of this entire system it is rather small the compressor only runs on 300 watts of electricity according to the online documentation that I found uh it's a three-phase 280 volt DC compressor which is a little bit unique in the market I think the evaporator and condenser coils are quite small so it's definitely on the lower end of sized units especially if you compare this to the uh G e Ultra fast 2in1 combo which has a much larger system by comparison this is probably 1/3 to maybe 1 quarter of the size why would LG have such a small system in this and the answer is well size this unit is not very large this is essentially the same size or very close to their standard 5 cubic foot units that are on the market in the United States this will fit anywhere in your house but it's doesn't have as much power as some other units would have now to its credit there is a nice resistive heating element underneath the tub that can be used for sanitization cycles and I suspect it may run in the normal drying mode to help operate this not only on a heat pump mode but a condenser dryer mode that is where you run a heating element and then circulate a lot of air through a condenser that is a lower temperature and then it coalesces all that water to go to the drain pump and then out and essentially on this unit I think it can use both things in our kilowatt testing we saw this Peak at about 600 watts of electricity which would make me suspect that it went way over the capacity on the compressor which means that maybe there's a heating element involved in the process of heating one bad thing about this unit that I don't like is the fact that as far as I have seen LG only has a one-ear warranty on the compressor when you get the machine you see the large 10-year stamp on it for the motor and I am not happy that they only put a oneyear warranty on that compressor and another thing that I don't like about this is the evaporator fins here up at the front if you look at it there is already some lint that has bypassed the filter and has got stuck on the evaporator and then also during the initial tear down the rear plastic housing that goes into the filter was clogged with tons of Lent this is something that was easy to take apart but I am concerned that degradation of air flow will increase rapidly to higher and higher drying times which is a very common complaint of the older LG systems that did not have a heat pump in it it's also a great concern on the GE units and accessing this evaporator system is not as easy I think as the GE units because of how the housing is mounted it's Direct it goes directly down and then takes a 90° angle and the fins on the evaporator are quite small and I would be concerned that they would be prone to damage if you have to clean them but that is only speculation on my end as a technician what I wish LG would have done is put a three or fiveyear uh warranty on this unit like its competitor General Electric has that would inspire a lot more confidence in me as a technician that they've done right by the consumer on this if you end up buying this system I would highly suggest that you do purchase a 3 or 5year extended warranty on this because if there is an issue I predict this is where it's going to be because otherwise LG does actually have a fantastic reputation on all the other parts in their system the only part that's questionable is the new part there so this is a little bit questionable but I understand why they designed it the way they did because of the size concerns also I suspect this model will be available all throughout the world um it will probably use a different refrigerant I've heard uh some people say that it uses r290 r290 is propane and I would have suspect that the European models of this and maybe the Asian models would use r290 as well but unfortunately Hank Hill is going to be very depressed knowing that this uses 134 instead of 290 one other thing about the tests we've done with drawing time now that we've said all this is that the room that I'm doing all these tests in is a little bit chilly it is not optimal for laundry and we are only using a cold water wash so we're going to go ahead and put the unit back together reassemble everything and take it to another less glamorous part of our shop that is warmer and has access to warm water so we're going to do some additional washes and see if that changes the wash and dry time at all or if LG's claims about the 2our wash was definitely on the a questionable side for an average load of laundry on these final two tests I did set some stains in on clothing but when I showed my wife what I was doing she told me that I let this sit too long and she turned out to be right about most of it oops we have another 10 lbs of light and mixed laundry here shirts Rags a flannel shirt and a few other pieces along with the far too long set in stained shirts I put a GoPro camera in film but due to the shape of the door glass and the size of the load the filming quality wasn't that great other than a few shots of how well the water sprays on the clothes ends up doing a great job of spraying water in to wash the clothes and I will have a dedicated video on how the wash operation Works soon with a little bit less clothes for easier viewing using the AI wash and dry we finally got the time down on the unit to just under 2 hours at this point it's clear that ambient temperatures and potentially water temperature do play a part in the dry times however I will note that it did have to run a little bit longer than the initial estimate it ended up taking a real world time value of 2 hours and 15 15 minutes on my barbecue covered stain on this Erp shirt that wasn't set in quite as long the LG washer did a great job removing the stain on the kimchi shirt I wasn't so lucky but I'm quieter than sour cream so I really didn't do any pre-treatment on this which will offend every South Korean that is watching this and I apologize on the flow meters the LG unit used 1.9 gallons of hot water and 13.3 gallons of cold water for the wash I didn't use any special modifiers like extra rents the would have added more even though that was an option that you can get on the machine or the app after the load was done I washed the air filter as well as cleaning it as per the LG manual you want to actually clean this with hot water every 10 loads and you want to do that on any dryer regardless if it is this type of heat pump dryer or a standard unit the last set I wanted to do is a queen siiz comforter set and I'm adding two twin-sized blankets as well this is without a doubt a terribly large load for this unit I'm selecting the bedding mode and it puts the system only into a wash mode for 1 hour with a medium speed spin dry once the wash was done we switched to the dry only mode and let the unit make the decision on the run time which was 2 hours and 43 minutes however when we got done with that load the items were not fully dried even though the unit said that it was I ended up having to manually set it for another hour and a half to run to get the bedding dry for a total wash and dry time of 5 hours but before you get mad at this time note that the drum that the drum was absolutely packed full of bedding and that creates two problems for a unit the first one is that when it's too full it prevents the fan from properly blowing air to circulate moist air throughout the unit to run it to the heat pump to dry the clothes the other unit is that the bedding was dry on the first pass at the front of the unit and not the center or rear and that is because the sensors likely saw that the front was actually dry and called for it to finish the load and this again is a problem that happens when a drier drum is too full lastly the LG washer dryer has a capacity of 5 cubic foot for the inner wash basket if you compare this to a similarly large Standalone dryer like this Samsung it has a 7.6 cubic foot drum which is significantly larger and could have handled this quite a bit better on hindsight if I had just ran the three-piece queen comforter set it would would have probably done a fine job in dried within 2 and 1/2 hours but I wanted to stress test this which some people may end up doing inadvertently and that's why it would take so long to dry now that we've gone through all these different tests about a dozen different washes uh would I recommend this LG combo washer dryer yes I think there's a lot to like about the specific LG WM 6998 combo washing machine the washing and drying times on this weren't quite as good as advertised but for a combo washer dryer they were still very good because I have used the old tra series before and this works much better than those and the common complaint on the last generation WM 3998 was the dry times are ridiculous again although they were a little bit more than that advertised 2 hours they weren't super bad but what makes this unit really really nice isn't just the features on it it's really the LG thin Q app offscreen I ended up using this app far more than I thought I would especially compared to the GE smart HQ app that was for that unit I liked using it more than the interface and I think that it offers a lot of distinct advantages that most homeowners are going to like if they use a combo washer dryer let's be serious a unit like this isn't going to run as fast as a washer and dryer pair ever will if you have the room for a washer dryer I definitely suggest the LG wash toer washer and dryer stack unit because it will run so much faster than this but that app allows you to do a lot of remote control stuff from your phone that allows you to start loads whenever you want so you can be at work or asleep that will give this unit some advantages another huge thing with this unit is how shockingly quiet it is both in the dry mode and the spin mode I did not hook up any sort of deciel meter to it although I will at some point but this thing runs so quiet it shocked me and when my mom watched the unit in operation she was stunned too coming from a mayag topload washing machine additionally LG is probably the most reliable brand of washer dryer on the market that is not named Speed Queen and of course they don't have a washer dryer combo like this and never will for those that care this machine was actually assembled in South Kore Korea where there are issues though on this machine I think is the undersized heat pump that could present some drying issues which I think we ran into on further inspection on this machine I think the secret on why the heat pump is so undersized by comparison to the GE is that it's using that heating element to run like a condensating dryer would in addition to a heat pump to condense that water quicker faster better this makes for an interesting tradeoff and a small smaller unit but is more susceptible to low ambient temperatures like we had here increasing the dry times and a few other issues but the heating element does give you additional benefits such as a sanitization cycle the other concern on this unit is the compressor I believe the rotary compressor in this is a good idea I think it's better than some of LG's other compressing systems but I would feel far more comfortable if LG had offered a three or 5year warranty on it instead of the one one year that is on this unit by comparison the GE Ultra fast combo 2 in1 unit has a 5-year warranty and I question why they offered that when they're both very close to the same price I would highly suggest getting a extended warranty no matter what on a unit like this just because it's new technology and you could run into problems finally at the very end of this is this unit a GE killer is this better than the GE Ultra two in one combo unit yes I think this actually is a little bit better than the GE but not extremely so I think that the app is the biggest difference between these two machines and the flexibility that that offers could allow it to overcome some of the weaknesses such as the slightly longer washing and drying times it's a much bigger Advantage than I thought it would be when I started doing the video and running all these loads of clothes but I think that it can't be understated however GE could always introduce new upgraded iterations of their smart HQ system that would make them even but the fact that you can push commands to this machine from your phone is very very useful that's probably going to run when you're not around build quality wise I like LG over GE LG has a much better reputation for their units but the GE is made and assembled in China this is made in South Korea I think build quality on the parts at least is a little bit better however the GE heat pump is a much larger system and a more probably robust system and they backed that with a 5-year warranty so there are some advantages on the GE so don't think that you have to throw that away because this is so much better honestly a lot of it would probably come down to price I bought this for $2,000 on sale I bought the GE for $2500 on sale I would get honestly whichever machine is a little bit cheaper and get that warranty regardless however you don't have to take my word on which unit is better if I can go out and find another GE ultrafast 2in1 combo maybe we can just bring it in the test room and run these units side by side in the marathon and compare every single feature line for line and see which one really truly comes out better or at least would be better for you and that's it for the video I hope you liked and enjoyed this video make sure to subscribe because if we can find that GE unit we'll do some tests in the future also if this video helped you just make a decision to buy this if you click the links in the description and the YouTube shopping stuff at the bottom it does help me earn some money back because I did pay for this machine out of my own pocket and business expense but I hope you have a great day and see you [Music] soon [Music] oh that was a lot easier to find than I thought it would be

Channel: Bens Appliances and Junk

Views: 411,378

Keywords: LG washer dryer combo, WM6998HBA, LG ventless combo, lg combo washing machine, 2 in 1 washing machine, combo washing machine, GE ultrafast combo vs LG combo washer dryer

Id: mqnhrHYlFXc

Length: 29min 12sec (1752 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 25 2024