The Irritating Beeping Machine (Zanussi ZWF1437)

Member Name: Kenaomi

Product:	Zanussi ZWF1437
Date:	24/08/07 (605 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Big; fairly easy to use; heats its own water; shows time remaining; can pause it

Disadvantages: Beeps far too much which is VERY annoying; a bit too big

We bought this a few months ago when our old Zanussi packed up.

Being a second (it had a dent on one side) it was discounted, and I can't remember how much it cost. We bought it from the man who came to repair the old one but couldn't (or so he said!).

Personally, I think at 7kg maximum load, this was too big even for a family of four. All too often we have put a load in, only to find it only fills half the maximum, making us feel guilty about wasting electricity and water for half a load.

This washing machine heats its own water, whereas our previous model drew on our hot water supply, leaving little for anything else while it was on. The new model is welcome in that it doesn't do that.

The washing machine door is hinged on the left and has a large release button on the back of the large handle.

At the side, near the top, it has a powder/softener drawer on the left, numerous buttons along the middle and a small LED screen on the right along with a set of small lights. For each setting, one button is used. Each time the button is pressed, the LEDs next to the settings light up in turn until you select the correct setting and stop pressing the button.

Before setting the machine up to go, you need to press the on/off button. An irritating high-pitched beeping sound can be heard which will sonn stop. It will stop even sooner if you start to press the buttons, although every time you press a button, it beeps.

The first settings button is labelled with different fabrics (cotton daily, cottons, synthetics, delicate, wool/handwash) which limits which settings you can use on the next button; this determines the temperature.

Basically, the first settings act merely as a guide for the second settings. So if you have synthetics, you can still set the first settings to 'cottons', but that will enable the use of all the temperature buttons, some of which will be too hot for the synthetics. The available temperature settings are 95, 60, 50, 40 and 30 degrees centigrade (celsius).

Once you have chosen the fabric and the correct temperature, you can choose, with the button, the spin speed (1400, 900, 700, 500 or rinse hold). We always keep it on 1400 and I don't know what rinse hold is.

The next settings are prewash, intensive and extra quick, although you can deselect all of these. I am not familiar with the former two settings, but 'extra quick', as its name quite clearly states, shortens the length of the entire wash cycle to save on water and electricity. We usually always select this setting to keep the cycle time down to just over an hour. I would imagine intensive is the opposite of this, but we just deselect 'extra quick' instead.

The next button has only two settings: super rinse and 40° AA. 'Super rinse' is self-explanatory, and I have no idea what 40°AA is (I don't think any of us know!).

Which brings us to the start/pause button. When the washing has been put in with the door closed, and the correct amount of powder and fabric softener has been put into the drawer and you are satisfied with the settings, you can press the startpause button to start the cycle.

You should have noticed by now that whenever a setting is changed, the LED screen on the far right displays the estimated cycle time, given the chosen settings. This is a very approximate time, but isn't too far off.

Next to this screen are five other LEDs with a word next to each one: prewash, wash, rinses, spin, drain. As each setting is chosen, these change to show the stages the washing machine will go through during its cycle. So if you select 'prewash', the 'prewash' light will be illuminated on the right. I'm not sure which setting causes the 'drain' light to come on. Usually only the middle three lights will be lit up. Once the start/pause button is pressed, all but the first of these lights ('prewash' if you've selected 'prewash', otherwise 'wash') will go out. As the cycle progresses to different stages, the next light will come on, then the next etc., thereby showing you whereabouts in the cycle it is.

You can choose to skip one of these stages by pressing the 'skip' button.

The entire cycle can be paused which is useful if you've forgotten something (although if the machine is full of water, I don't hink you can open it).

This washing machine seems to take a very long time per cycle compared with our old model, but that's probably because it's bigger, thus it needs more water, which therefore takes longer to heat up.

The most annoying thing about this washing machine is the incessant beeping. When it has finished altogether, it beeps intermittantly to let you know that it has finished. This cannot be turned off and drives me absolutely mad! This thing on its own means that if I had the choice between this and a not-as-good, but non-beeping model, I would choose the non-beeping model without hesitation! It annoys me that much!

Summary: Beeeeeeep, beeeeeeeep, beeeeeeeeeep. GRR!

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