Zanussi ZWJ14591W review

On the face of it the Zanussi ZWJ14591W seems like a bit of a bargain. It’s an 8kg washing machine with an A+++ rating, all for a rather low price. On paper that’s an excellent compromise between efficiency, price and wash capacity.

POWER AND WATER USAGE

Of course, the energy rating figure only tells part of the story, but it’s actual energy and water consumption that makes the real difference. In our tests, we saw that energy consumption was a little higher than on some other 8kg machines.

Testing using the 30C Cotton cycle, we measured power consumption at 0.67kW with water consumption of 49L .The combination meant that there was a combined cost of 24p, which is a little higher than we’ve seen on some machines, but certainly not too expensive. A 1,400rpm spin speed meant that our clothes retained 1.2kg of water. Again, not bad.

Moving up to the 40C Cotton cycle, we measured power at 0.72kW, with water consumption a similar 47L. This gave us the same combined cost of 24p per cycle. Water retention was better in this cycle, though, with our clothing retaining just 1kg of water.

It’s usually the synthetic cycle that causes machines problems, with the finer drum control requiring more power. In the case of the Zanussi ZWJ14591W this wasn’t the case and it increased energy consumption to just 0.79kW for the 40C Synthetic cycle. Water consumption was better, though, at 39L. This gave us a combined cost of 23p for the cycle.

This washing machine has consistent running costs at all of our test cycles

Working out yearly running costs gives us a good figures to compare different washing machines. We do this using the EU Energy Label (see how we test washing machines for more information). For this machine we got costs of £53.56 for high usage, £40.17 for medium usage and £26.78 for low usage. Overall, running costs are consistent across all of the cycles we tested. While it’s possible to buy a 8kg washing machines with cheaper running costs, you’ll have a higher up-front cost that will take years to pay back.