Samsung Ecobubble WW9000 review (WW10H9600EW )

We put all of our washing machines through a series of tests to find out how well they clean clothes and how power and water usage differs by mode. Our tests use a 3kg load of clothes for all machines, which means that we can compare results across all machines, regardless of drum size. We started with a standard 30C Cotton wash, where we measured water usage at 32L, and electricity at 0.22kW. That gave us a very-low running cost of 22p per cycle. Moving up to a 40C Cotton wash, there was an increas in running costs, with electricity usage jumping to 0.29kW, although water usage was still consitant at 33L. This gave us an increased, but still impressive cost per cycle of 14p. Both of these cycles show how well the machine can accurately determine how much water a wash needs.

Moving to the 40C Easycare cycle, we saw costs jump to 30p per cycle. This is because water usage increased to 58L, and electricity increased to 0.88kW. This kind of jump isn’t unusual, as the Easycare cycle often has finer and more controlled drum movements, which means that you don’t get such a benefit of momentum, and controlling a drum this large can be tricky. Still, for the size of machine, 30p is a reasonable cost.

Moving to the Super Eco mode, which uses EcoBubble technology to wash clothes at just 20C, we saw the cost per cycle go to 16p. Electricity costs were the lowest that we’d seen, as the water doesn’t really have to be heated, but water usage was comparatively high at 50L. 

These kinds of costs are a useful comparison for our clothes, but they don’t fill the machine up, and every washing machine is at its most efficient when it’s full. To get true yearly running costs, we use the manufacturer-provided EU energy label figures. From this we can work out yearly running costs that are comparable across all machines (see how we test washing machines for more information). Using these figures we worked out that the WW10H9600EW costs 23p per cycle to run. Based on our caculations that gave us yearly costs of £37.47 for high usage, £28.10 for medium usage and £18.74 for low usage. 

That’s even lower running costs than the impressive 9kg Samsung EcoBubble WF90F7E6U6W. Now the 9kg machine actually has lower per-cycle costs, but the larger 10kg drum of the WW9000 means that it can wash the same amount of clothes using fewer cycles. Again, it shows the importance of really loading up a large machine in order to get running costs down.

Samsung EcoBubble WW9000 wash performance

While cost savings are important, how well a machine washes is also high on our testing agenda. We use strips embedded with common laundry stains to find out how well each of the machines deal with removing them. View our gallery to see all the cleaning examples: dirty cloth is at the top of each sample; the clean one at the bottom.

Cleaning performance was very similar to that of the WF90F7E6U6W, which is to say that performance was very good across the board. The programme you use has an impact on quality, depending on the stain, though. For example, we found the 30C and 40C washes to be generally very good across the board, working well on most stains, although they didn’t get out quite as much of our tough blood stain as we’d have expected, as you can see by the 40C Cotton sample below.

However, the same cycles did a brilliant job on the cocoa stain, getting the bulk of it out of our sample cloth. Moving to our red wine stain, we saw very good results, particulary using the 40C cotton wash, where most of the stain came out. Considering that this is one of the hardest jobs for a washing machine, we were very pleased. You can see the sample strip, using the 40C Cotton wash below.

This is another Samsung washing machine to have the company’s Ecobubble technology. It uses bubbles of air to disolve detergent with air, which is designed to improve cleaning quality at low temperatures. It certainly works well, with the 20C wash the best of the bunch, overall. Using this mode, our tough blood stain was much more evenly attacked, with the bulk of it coming out, as you can see from the sample below. It also put in a great performance across the rest of our stains.