Panasonic NA-140VX4 review

If you’ve got a large family or regularly have bucket-loads of laundry, a washing machine with a 10kg drum could be the perfect fit. It lets you tackle all of your laundry (or larger items) in one wash, saving you both time and money. That’s the theory here with the Panasonic NA-140VX, which uses cutting-edge technologies to help save energy and water to reduce running costs.

Its 10kg drum, means you can wash huge loads or individual items with the NA-140VX4

POWER AND WATER USAGE

A washing machine can seem like good value on the surface, but when you take into account the costs to run it, quite often this can hit your wallet hard. That’s why we test every machine for the amount of power and water it uses, calculating the costs in real terms so you’ll know exactly how much it will cost you in the long run.

We always begin our tests with a 30C wash cycle using our 3kg test load of mixed washing. In this cycle the NA-140VX4 used 48L of water and a low 0.36kW of power. That gave us a cost per cycle of just 19p, which is competitive, particularly for such a big machine. Running at its default spin speed of 1,200rpm, we found that water retention in our clothes was just 1.1kg.

Keeping the same programme, but upping the temperature to 40C, we found that water consumption stayed similar (50L), but power consumption jumped to 0.6kW. This meant that the cost per cycle increased to 23p, which is extremely competitive and one of the lowest costs we’ve seen at this temperature. Again, the washing picked a 1,200rpm spin speed, so our clothes came out retaining 1.1kg of water.

Synthetics 40C was our next test cycle. This used just 46L of water and kept power down, using 0.5kW. This gave us an extremely competitive cost per cycle of 20p. Spin speed was again 1,200rpm, but this time the clothes retained 1.4kg of water.

Whenever a machine offers an energy-saving cycle, we always test that too. The NA-140VX4 here offers a 15C cycle, so we ran our load on it to see how it fared. The cost per cycle was just 13p, with power usage incredibly low at 0.14kW and water usage at just 39L. Again, the spin speed of 1,200rpm left 1.1kg water in the finished cycle. Another great performance, and the cheapest Eco setting we’ve seen to date.

This low running costs are largely down the efficient way that the machine measures the load, using just the required amount of water and power for that particular load.

We also calculated running costs based on the EU Energy Label (see how we test washing machines for more information). Using our calculations we worked out that this machine costs £44.83 for high usage, £33.62 for medium usage and £22.42 for low usage. These costs include water, waste water and electricity based on the UK average. We were very impressed with these figures from a machine with such a big drum.

WASH PERFORMANCE

Our lab tests place heavy emphasis on cleaning performance. We use strips embedded with stains commonly found in your laundry to see how well each of the machines cope 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.

The Panasonic NA-140VX4 comes with an exciting Stain Master feature which promises to tackle your everyday stains with gusto, automatically combining the right temperature, washing power and soaking power to beat the stain.

Our results showed how the 40C cotton wash was more efficient than the 30C wash, as we’d expect to see, removing more of the stain in each sample. We found that the 30C wash left a fair amount of the blood/milk/ink sample behind, with the end result looking rather blotchy.

The 40C wash (top) did better than the 30C wash (bottom), particularly in our blood/milk/ink test

Interestingly, we found that the 15C cycle performed better with most of the stains, which would be good news for running costs and overall efficiency. Even the blood sample seemed lighter than in both the 30C and 40C, though it did leave a line of the stain running through the centre of the sample.

The 15C wash was good, although it left a line in our blood stain sample

40C Easycare had a very similar result to 40C cotton and we couldn’t tell the two apart to decide on which was a better wash.

Overall, we’ve seen better cleaning performance in other machines, but we’ve also seen a lot worse. Suffice to say, this isn’t a bad washer, giving an average performance that didn’t quite have the oomph to blow us away, despite the Stain Master feature.

We often find Panasonic’s washing machines are very quiet, not giving off too much vibration on spin settings. Despite having such a large drum to spin, the NA-140VX4 is pretty good too, with sound quoted at 53dB for the wash, and 71dB for the spin cycle.

EASE OF USE AND FEATURES

Simplicity is the word when it comes to the NA-140VX4’s controls. A good basic layout makes this machine a delight to use. A single control dial makes it easy to select the wash cycle you want to use. There are plenty to choose from, with special modes for Shirts, Bedding, Baby-care, Delicates, Wool and Denim.

Clear controls make it easy to use all of this washing machine’s features

A clear LCD display shows you the time remaining, the wash temperature and spin speed. You can use the dedicated buttons to manually adjust the wash temperature and spin speed for any cycle, while you can also set a delay timer.

We like Panasonic washing machines for their ease of use, and the build and general quality is of a high standard. Buttons and dials are tactile and feel robust when handling.

CONCLUSION

All in all, this washing machine is good choice, available for a decent price and with low running costs. It doesn’t quite have the same standard of wash performance that we’ve seen from previous models, though. For better cleaning and low costs, the 9kg Samsung Ecobubble WF90F7E6U6W is a better choice.