Front Load Washers are Where it's At

by Marissa Zumbo, June 2022

Washing machines can generally be divided into two categories: washers that load from the top and washers that load from the front. Top load washers are the most common, and they tend to be smaller, less expensive machines, built for everyday home use. Front load washers come in a wide variety of sizes, and are commonly built for industrial use and applications.

At Big Waves Laundromat, we greatly prefer the FRONT LOAD WASHERS for their wash quality and efficiency, and that is why our stores have such a variety of them.

  • A Better Clean: Our high performance front load washers utilize gravity friction to clean, which is more effective and more distributed throughout the drum than top load washers are able to deliver. Top load washers rely on agitation friction, which really only applies to the clothes that happen to be in the middle (where the agitator is located). The result is that our front load washers score much higher on their ability to remove dirt, grime, and stains from your laundry.

  • Faster Spin: Our front load machines spin almost twice as fast as most top load washers. This means that more dirty water is rinsed out during every cycle and that your clothes come out of the washer much dryer, which means that you won’t have to spend as much time (and money) drying your clothes!

  • Higher Fill Capacity: Simply put, you can fill front load machines with more laundry than a top load machine, without compromising the clean. Top load washers cannot handle very full loads because there's no guarantee that the clothes packed on top will ever fall into the “wash zone” where the clothes are actually getting wet and being agitated.

  • Less Time: Because gravity friction is so much more effective, the standard cycle time on our front load washers is 23 mins. Whereas the standard cycle time on a top load washer is 33 mins.

  • Quieter: Front loaders tend to have more anti-vibration sound-dampening features, so they’re less noisy than top loaders.

  • Lower Water Usage: Front load washing machines only fill up the very bottom of the drum with water, and the clothes spin around, falling in the water at every rotation. Whereas top load washers fill the entire drum with water in order to “reach” all the clothes. In total, top load washers use, on average, about 250% more water than front load washers.

  • Greater Energy-Efficiency: Front load machines let gravity do a lot of the work, so they use a lot less energy. Plus, the drum is not so full of water and therefore it takes less electricity to spin the machine. Top load washers fill completely full of water, making the drum very heavy, and therefore, requiring more energy to spin.

What Front Loaders Provide:

  • Adding Clothes: Adding clothes once you’ve hit start on a front loader, or stopping the machine mid-cycle, isn’t usually possible as the door locks to prevent leaks.

  • Price: Front load washers, especially the high performance models like those at Big Waves, are naturally more expensive than basic top load washers. As such, the price to run a front load washer at the laundromat is also more expensive.

Cons:

Front loaders clean your clothes better, use less water, are more energy efficient, make less noise, and have a higher fill capacity. Front loaders do tend to be more expensive, but if you compare what you get for the price, we would always recommend spending the extra $0.50 for a front load machine; the improvement in quality is worth it.

In a Nutshell

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Sources Cited for Article:

https://www.usnews.com/360-reviews/home-goods/washing-machines/front-vs-top-load-washers

https://www.designerappliances.com/blog/top-load-vs-front-load-washers/

https://www.thespruce.com/top-load-washer-vs-front-load-2145868