Auto Dosing Machines - Perfect or Pain?

[Gromotion]

Hi all

Interested to hear the views of those with auto dosing washing machines...

Are they perfect?

Or do you have pain points with them?

If you had the choice, would you buy again?

Look forward to hearing your views. 

 

 

[Whitegoodshelp (Andy)]

Hello there and welcome. I think andyr12345 will have a strong opinion. We've already discussed this topic a few times in regard to his Samsung washing machine.

Personally, I've always been very sceptical of them. My first thought was that they are a clever way of earning extra revenue by supplying the detergent. But, presumably you can buy other types of detergent from 3rd parties, although I wouldn't be surprised if they have something in their terms and conditions that invalidates guarantees if you do.

Another problem is that it introduces more complexity, and more parts to fail, more places to leak. So such a system undeniably reduces reliability. My main problem with them though, is that from my experience, liquid detergent is rubbish compared with powdered detergent. It's also more expensive.

Unless something has changed that I've not been made aware of, liquid detergent does not contain the type of bleaching agent that is necessary to help kill bacteria etc.

As an engineer, I first noticed the major issue of washing machines becoming infested with gunge, grease, slime, and black mould, which seriously shorten their lives. It only seemed to affect people who used low-temperature washes and liquid detergent. Prior to liquid detergent being invented, this was not a problem.

I suppose the convenience of having the washing machine automatically dispense the correct amount of detergent is something of interest to many people. It's not necessary, but nice. But it's solving a problem that never really existed. I mean it's hardly much of an inconvenience to just put some detergent into the drawer.

But that aside, these washing machines aren't able to accurately put in the correct dosage. They still have to rely on the user telling it whether to "auto dose" in small, medium, or large quantity. I suspect many people will not alter the dosage according to the level of soiling and amount of laundry. So they could still end up not using too much or too little.

 

[Whitegoodshelp (Andy)]

Having said all that, I don't have an autodosing washing machine, so hopefully you'll get more replies from people who do.

[andyr12345]

Hi all, on the whole I have been happy with our 'Auto Dosing' Samsung WW90T534DAW washing machine. 

Extremely good value at around 500euro - you could pay that and more for a machine without the autodosing feature and all the other features of the machine . 

i mean for the money you get a 'smart' machine (it connects wirelessly to the Internet and your phone) you can control it from anywhere with your phone. If you worked out the time and wanted the washing to finish just at time as you come in from work you can , just load it up in the morning and then in the afternoon tell it to start washing from your phone (yep I know the score used to be is dont start your washing machine if no-one was in the house because of floods and the machine catching fire - I dont think that is too much of a risk these days .. maybe?)  

So , lets have a look what my machine has : 
Wi-Fi connected,
steam feature,
bubble soak,
a plethora of cycles (more than you need more than likely) and if you cannot find a right cycle you can download one from the phone app and send it to your machine,
AI programmes that 'learn' your washing habits,
Quiet Inverter brushless motor,
Ecobubble feature that dissolves the water and soap detergent quickly even in low temperatures to remove stains (works like that oxyclean liquid stuff)
..... and then on top of that an Autodose Feature . 

I know you are normally talking quality with a brand like miele (well in the past anyway) but can you imagine trying to purchase a miele with all those features at around 500euro - no way! - so thats where you got to hand the baton to Samsung for bringing out an affordable washing machine with all them features. 

The way I look at it is (and then thank you Samsung for thinking of this) is that even if you (for some reason) didnt want to use the autodose features they not only have made it so that you can use third party detergent and fabric softener if you dont want to use autodose or the autodose system breaks (it works on a pump system) not a problem , they give you a middle compartment where you can add powder if you really like , or specialist liquids (like for wool or colours) - just turn off autodose feature in the washing machine menu. - the machine will carry on working absolutely fine if the autodose feature should break. You wont get an error and the machine will carry on working just fine. You could even if you wanted to is just toss the pods in with your wash (ones with detergent or ones with built in fabric softener instead of using the autodose system. 

I have just found out recently that although the machine weighs the washing to find out how much detergent it should measure for every wash, taht there is in settings a setting for Low/Med/High dosage which you are supposed to set (well no thats wrong, you could leave it on med just fine in most cases) so if its heavily soiled you apparently should set it to 'high' but as I say, set  to mid on the whole does the job. You can even set it to off (some outdoor waterproof wear I think denotes no detergent to keep it waterproof) however , say you set the outdoor waterproof cycle either on the machine (or app) it will automatically turn off the detergent dose automatically for you anyway . so thats taken care of. 

We have had our machine for a year in Feb 2023 and boy it has half saved us a load in detergent ,i really reckon we must have been overdosing (putting in too much detergent) when we had a our previous washing machine which wasnt an autodose one or weighed the clothes at the start of the wash. 
So, so convenient to fill it up once in a while with liquid detergent and fabric softener  and not fill it up again for some time later until a message pops up on dash telling you to fill it up with either soap detergent or fabric softener. sometimes it feels like ages until we fill it up again , but the official blurb is up to 20 washes I think . - i dont know what other people are like as well but when we were putting the dose in manually on our old machine we nearly always managed to miss the soap compartment drawer and it would dribble down the front of the washing machine staining it - its lovely and neat and clean just pouring it into the auto dose compartments  . 

as you might tell i like the autodose feature - but even if the autodose feature boke/packed up tomorrow I still would be very happy with the machine - I would just use powder in the middle compartment or toss in pods and it would still bev a great machine with a load of neat features even without the autodose. 

If you need any more questions answered please ask away and I will try answering them for you.