Samsung Ecobubble WF1124XAC review

While the average washing load is far below the capacity of the 12kg Samsung EcoBubble WF1124XAC, its cavernous drum can be of immense use. For starters, you can let your washing basket fill and then do the entire load in a single wash. Alternatively, a 12kg drum means that you'll easily be able to fit in a king-size duvet, saving a trip to the laundrette.

This model is the largest in Samsung's range to use Ecobubble technology, which uses air injected into the water to create bubbles that more efficiently dissolve detergent and improve cleaning performance at low temperatures.

POWER AND WATER USAGE

The Samsung Ecobubble WF1124XAC is an A+++ appliance, but it's the actual figures that make for more interesting reading. In particular, the Super Eco Wash at 15C is incredibly efficient. For our 3kg test load the washing machine used just 0.19kW of power and 45L. This worked out at 15p per wash, which is the cheapest we've seen from any machine. This mode reduces the spin speed to 1,200rpm, so our test clothes retain 1,5kg of water, which is quite a bit.

Running our standard 30C Cotton test saw power usage jump up to 0.53kW, while water consumption moved to 67L. With a 1,400rpm spin speed our clothes retained just 1.1kg of water, although costs to 27p per cycle. Increasing temperature to 40C Cotton increased power consumption a little to 0.65kW, although water usage and retention were similar at 64L and 1.1kg respectively. Costs worked out at 28p per wash. This is pretty competitive, although we've seen cheaper machines for these washes.

Despite the massive drum, the 15C Super Eco Wash means this washing machine can be cheap to run

The 40C Synthetic wash is one of the most interesting, as fine control of the drum usually results in higher energy consumption, particularly with a big drum like this one. Energy usage jumped to 0.81kW, although water consumption stayed level at 71L. This increased the cost of the cycle to 32p, which still is competitive for the size of the drum. The spin speed is reduced to 1,200rpm, which resulted in our clothes retaining 1.3kg of water.

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 WF1124XAC's 12kg drum means that it requires 137 cycles for a year's high use washing.

With these calculations we worked out that this machine costs £54.27 for high usage, £40.70 for medium usage and £27.13 for low usage. These costs include water, waste water and electricity based on the UK average. For a 12kg machine they're reasonable costs and the 15C wash is very cost-effective, but you can get 8kg washing machines that are cheaper to run.