Samsung is (as usual) making bold claims that, on the face of it, don’t appear to stack up about its new Ecobubble range of washing machines. Claims being made include that these machines save 70% of energy on a cool wash and that the wash performance is as good as a 40˚C wash.
As usual though, there is no evidence whatsoever to back these claims up.
While in Berlin we were trying to get photos of this new system but we got told by Samsung representatives on the stand that we weren’t allowed to take photographs. But, even with all the marketing stuff you would expect on tap at such a prestigious show, there was still no real explanation of what this Ecobubble washing machine did or what the point of it was.
Samsung were keen to sell it though.
As you can see from the above photo of the entrance to the whitegoods hall at Berlin, Samsung were being serious and spending serious money promoting this Ecobubble line of washing machines.
Although not a very good photograph, we did manage to snap a picture of one entrance to the Samsung stand where the Ecobubble washing machines were, as you can see, being heavily promoted.
Sorry for the blur, we were having to watch out for the Samsung bouncers who were not happy about us taking photographs.
Thankfully there are now some press photographs available for this machine, one of which you can see below.
It’s a typical looking Samsung pretty much.
But what this Samsung washing machine has is (as much as we could figure out) is an additional pump in the base that spins on wash to produce more bubbles. Quite what these bubbles do and how was, at best, poorly explained. In fact, we really couldn’t see any point to it at all and could find more potential problems than solutions from this. But, like we say, there was virtually no explanations available from a technical standpoint, not unusual for Samsung.
The small amount of information we have got seems to indicate that the bubble generator (pump) dissolves detergent into the water and injects air into the drum to create foam from the beginning of the cycle.
Samsung claims that the bubble technology allows detergent to penetrate “˜deeper into clothes up to 40 times faster than conventional washers’ and offers added protection for delicate fabrics.
On the Ecobubble Which? washing machine expert Vivienne Fitzroy said: ‘We’ve seen other machines that save energy on cold wash programs, such as the AEG-Electrolux L645850LE Super Eco. But these usually have limited cleaning power and often need special detergents, so aren’t always a practical choice for everyday washing.’
“˜If the Eco Bubble machine lives up to its claims we’d certainly be impressed. To find out, we’ll be putting it to the test in our expert lab in the coming months and will post full test results”
It would appear that Which? are just as skeptical as we are on the very grand claims being made by Samsung.
Samsung also seem to have copied Miele’s Honeycomb drum (well, pretty much) and called it a “Diamond Drum”, read, cheap knock off of the Miele. Whether it’s any better or worse is not currently known but by the initial impressions, don’t expect it to be revolutionary.
