Panasonic NA-168VG4 review

WASH PERFORMANCE

Having the best wash performance isn’t going to be much use if the wash quality isn’t very good. Fortunately, we found it to be excellent at all tested temperatures – view our gallery to see all of the cleaning examples: dirty cloth is at the top of each sample; the clean one is at the bottom.

The Cotton 30C and Cotton 40C cycles produced very similar results, with the higher temperature cycle just slightly ahead for some tests.

At 30C we found that there was a slight stain left over from our blood sample

We found that most of our blood was washed out, although the 30C cycle left a stain where the cloth wasn’t quite evenly washed. Cocoa staining was decent, with an even removal across the test strip and trace amounts of the staining left. Red wine removal was excellent, with all but the slightest bit of staining remaining on close inspection.

The 40C Cotton wash (bottom) managed to remove more of the blood, milk and ink combined stain than the 30C Cotton wash (top)

The combination of blood, milk and ink came out cleanest at 40C, with large areas of the cloth coming up stain free. At 30C, the cloth was visibly cleaner, but left darker patches of staining. Similar results could be seen on the same type of cloth stained with carbon black and olive oil. Using the 40C EasyCare setting, wash performance was almost as good as the 40C Cotton cycle. Only minor differences remained, such as slightly less red wine being removed in the wash.

We also ran the same tests on the 15C wash, which Panasonic recommends for lightly-soiled garments. In our tests this wash produced decent results, with good cleaning on our cocoa, blood/milk/ink and red wine stain strips, although the Cotton and EasyCare cycles managed better results.

At 15C, red wine removal was surprisingly good, although this wash is best suited for lightly-soiled garments

Blood and carbon black/olive oil stain strips were noticeable worse than on the other cycles. However, for lightly-soiled garments, this efficient wash is still useful.