Of all of the washer types, front loaders will spin the quickest to take water from laundry. This high spin speed, along with tub rotation—like a dryer’s—may lead to front-loaders vibrating.
As full size front loaders have evolved and makers re-engineered suspension systems, vibration now has become less of a problem. Not so with the more compact cousins: When recent testing was done of ten small front loaders, all of them noticeably vibrated more than their full size counterparts. This disappointing performance reflects in their vibration ratings; that range from fair to good.
Compact dryers and washers are downsized editions of full size machines which often are stacked inside a closet or other snug area close to living spaces. Excess vibration isn’t just noisy yet may lead to damage to the machine and the surroundings as it’ll ‘walk’ across your floor.
Vibration is usually worse on wood than concrete; therefore, in order to gauge washer vibration, for full-sized and compact models alike, they were tested on a wooden floor. Plus, as full size laundry pairs often are in a basement on concrete flooring, compact machines typically are installed upstairs in which the flooring is more than likely to be wood.
Does stacking a washer and dryer worsen or improve vibration? They were stacked atop to find out. Accoring to the engineer who oversees testing of laundry appliances, Emilio Gonzalez, stacking did not alter vibration much. He saw a little improvement with the Miele W3048 front loader while stacked with Miele T8023C, its matching dryer.
Next he used a lower spin speed upon an additional stacked washer & dryer to check if that helped to lessen the vibration of the washing. He reported that there wasn’t any substantial change with that one either. Plus, past tests of anti-vibration pads discovered they did not cut vibration by much.
In Summary
In the end, all ten small front loaders vibrated in tests. Usually, these washers vibrate the most at the end and beginning of a spin cycle. If a small washer is the only size which fits the space, and you have wooden floors, zero in on a washing machine which scored ‘very good’ to ‘excellent’ with cleaning, as well as good in tests for washing machine vibration, such as the Bosch 800 Series WAT28402UC, which is top rated and be certain the washer is balanced properly when installed. To read our opinion on other products with poor reviews read our article on Samsung’s Galaxy Note7 recall here.
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