Samsung Ecobubble WF80F5E5U4W

The Samsung Ecobubble WF80F5E5U4W isn’t your average washing machine, and is packed full of the latest technology. As well as Ecobubble technology to ‘froth’ detergent and penetrate fabrics faster, saving energy and money, it even works with a smartphone app to diagnose problems and errors. All the hype aside, the most important thing is washing performance. Thankfully, it delivers here, too.

POWER AND WATER USAGE

Here’s where the Samsung Ecobubble WF80F5E5U4W really comes into its own. With the Ecobubble technology working its magic, we found that the 15C Super Eco cycle was exactly that – washing clothes so economically that it provided our best wash figures so far, on a par with the 12kg Ecobubble WF1124XAC that we tested previously.

Washing at 15C, and with a spin speed of 1,200rpm, we found that it used just 0.19kW of power and 45L of water with our 3kg test load. This worked out at a total cost per cycle of 15p, which is incredibly efficient. However, this cycle retained 1.6kg of water, which is quite a high figure.

Washing on a cotton wash at 30C saw our cost per cycle more than double at 31p. Power usage was fairly high at 0.82kW, water used was average at 66L, but water retention was significantly better than the Super Eco cycle at 1.1kg, thanks to the 1,400rpm spin speed.

Increasing the temperature to 40C saw interesting results. The cost per cycle actually reduced by 4p to 27p. While power was around about the same at 0.81kW, it used quite a lot less water – 53L. It was the same story when we ran it on a 40C Synthetic cycle – it reduced again, although this time just by a penny at 26p per cycle. Water usage was 53L, but power was reduced to 0.69kW on a 1,200rpm spin speed. Despite not being the cheapest we’ve seen, these costs were generally quite competitive overall.

EcoBubble technology means very low running costs for low-temperature washes

We also calculated running costs based on the EU Energy Label, which gives you annual electricity and water consumption figures for a year’s use, based on 220 full loads using a variety of programmed cycles. From this we can work out the average cost of a wash cycle.

To get our yearly running costs, we first have to create a level playing field. We do this by working out the total yearly weight of washing, by multiplying the UK average number of washing loads (274), by our high, medium and low individual wash loads of 6kg, 4.5kg and 3kg respectively. This gives us a total yearly high usage of 1,688kg, medium usage of 1,233kg and low usage of 822kg. By dividing these weights by the washing machine’s drum size, we can calculate how many loads it would require to fulfil each. For example, the Ecobubble WF80F5E5U4W’s 8kg drum means that it requires 205.5 cycles for a year’s high use washing.

With these calculations we worked out that this machine costs £49.68 for high usage, £37.26 for medium usage and £24.84 for low usage. These costs include water, waste water and electricity based on the UK average. For an 8kg machine, that’s pretty efficient and costs less to run than some others we’ve seen, although the Panasonic NA-168VG4 is cheaper still.