LG Steam Direct Drive (WM14445FDS) Full Review
Posted: 14 March 2008 by Adam Vaughan
When it arrived, everything about this washing machine intuitively felt like it should be the opposite of green. Brown, perhaps. It's large, with a monster 8kg capacity. It cleans using steam in addition to water, which takes a lot of electricity to produce, as we saw on our Wattson the last time we boiled our Eco Kettle. It has colourful but wantonly unnecessary blue LED lights.
And yet, and yet… it's actually very planet-friendly. LG claims it uses 35 per cent less water and 21 per cent less electricity than "traditional washers." We found it's very good, but not quite as good as the hype. Read the small print and you'll notice LG's comparing the Steam Direct Drive to average UK washing machines.
We compared it instead to super efficient models by Bosch and Whirlpool that also come in at £600 and have an 8kg capacity. The reality is that the savings are more like five per cent less water and around ten per cent less electricity. That's still very impressive, mind, even for an A++ energy rating, which is the best a washing machine can get.
That would all be for nought, obviously, if the machine didn't clean our clothes. Happily, it does a good job -- we tried all the washing cycles and it passed with flying colours. One feature we really liked is a 'Crease Care' button that adds 20 minutes to the cycle but effectively irons your clothes so you don't have to. Surprisingly, it works well enough to render further ironing unnecessary.
All the standard features you'd expect are present and correct, from a good spread of of modes to a time delay and child locks. One other neat function is the 'Steam Refresh Cycle', which is designed to steam clean up to three items that have been hanging around too long in your wardrobe. It works well, but watch out for kids when it's on, as the door gets very hot when you're running it.
Other bits we liked: the electronic chirupping noises it makes, the ease of use and the relative quiet when it's running. Size-wise, this is obviously a big machine and at 600mm deep you may find, like we did, that it doesn't sit flush with your kitchen worktop.
The tech behind the machine is clever. It ditches traditional brushes and belts for a 'direct drive', which is essentially a drum that spins itself, rather than a motor connected to a pulley system. The result is a quiet machine and -- although we weren't able to test it long enough to find out -- less maintenance due to fewer moving parts.
At a corporate level, LG has a fairly comprehensive sustainability report, as you'd expect for a massive global electronics firm. The report doesn't include recycling figures for its washing machines in the UK, but it does have for Japan, where figures are rising for the percentage of machines recycled. Overall, it's doing okay on green and ethical initiatives as a company. Greenpeace's Greener Electronics guide scores LG a seven out of ten, congratulating it for elimination of chemicals and the launch of phones free from brominated flame retardants, but pointing out it could do better on recycling.
We've marked this particular product down for its ethics score, though. We were unable to glean any info about the working conditions of the people who assembled it, or the conditions for the people who supplied the components. At a company level, however, LG has a clean ethical record and doesn't invest in any unethical practises to our knowledge.
A slightly steep price and that one ethical hole aside, this machine gets our thumbs-up for its eco energy savings -- and for virtually rendering Ironing Sunday obsolete.
Quality
Value
Ethics
Green
