Indesit IWC6105 review

WASH PERFORMANCE

To discover the cleaning performance of the Indesit, we put it through a series of tests using our stain strips. View our gallery to see all of the cleaning examples: dirty cloth is at the top of each sample; the clean one is at the bottom.

The Indesit’s cleaning performance was very interesting. The 30C cycle actually performed better than the 40C cycle, with the 40C cycle struggling to remove the blood from our strips, and leaving behind much of the staining.

Blood stain removal using the 40C Cotton cycle wasn’t very impressive

The cotton sample soiled with blood, milk and ink also came out better on the 30C wash. We couldn’t, however, fault how well both 30C and 40C cotton cycles dealt with the red wine stains, virtually removing all trace.

The 30C Cotton cycle coped well with our red wine stain

Red wine came out pretty well in the 40C synthetic wash, too, but this cycle didn’t fare brilliantly with the blood, milk and ink sample, and there were still spots of staining left on our blood sample.

Performance-wise, this machine clearly did better on some cycles than others, and we were surprised to find it was the 30C cotton cycle that came out on top.

EASE OF USE AND FEATURES

For a machine that costs £194, you couldn’t expect it to be anything more than basic. The IWC6105 is certainly that – there are no bells and whistles in the form of digital dials here. Instead there is a large manual dial to set your cycle, of which there are all your usual cycles, plus a wool cycle and silk cycle, as well as one for jeans and also specific cycles for sports clothing. Two other smaller manual dials set the temperature and spin speeds. Red LED lights let you know which part of the cycle the machine is currently running, but there is no way to tell how long there is left for the machine to run. There is no prewash to speak of, but there is a button that you can press for an intensive wash, although this only works with certain programs.

As the price suggests, the Indesit IWC6105 felt quite cheap, it was also comparatively noisy when spinning, when we could feel the sides flex. We felt that, although the price and cost per cycle was very good, we’d generally rather spend more to get better wash performance.

CONCLUSION

This budget washing machine certainly appears a bargain on paper, but you’d need to consider whether you could live with the downsides. While the performance results weren’t bad on a 30C cotton wash, it was quite noisy. If you’re in the market for a budget washer, it might be worth spending a bit extra to get the Indesit IWE91481ECO, which is still very well priced, but has a larger 9kg drum.