Thread Number: 78498  /  Tag: Modern Automatic Washers
LG WM3500CW
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Post# 1025103   2/19/2019 at 14:30 (1,864 days old) by easy (Boston, Mass)        

Does anyone own this front loading washer and if so, what is your experience with it?
It offers 5 wash temperature options - I know that some temps are not available on all cycles. Does it dumb down the temperature selected (esp hot) or do you get what comes out of the tap?

I been offered one of these at a great price but just want to know what others have to say about it.





Post# 1025116 , Reply# 1   2/19/2019 at 17:27 (1,864 days old) by appnut (TX)        

appnut's profile picture

This model doesn't have an onboard heater.  You'll never have much beyond tepid water.  I won't own a front loader without an onboard heater.  


Post# 1025177 , Reply# 2   2/20/2019 at 06:26 (1,864 days old) by henene4 (Heidenheim a.d. Brenz (Germany))        
I mean you could, but why would you want to?

Without knowing how good the offer is as in knowing exact corner stones I can only guess which of my thaughts is the actual reason I would highly discourage you.

You know, a great price could be anything below MSRP depending on what kind of person you are.

You could be talking new or used; you could have friend working at a retailer or a friend mooving cross country leaving everything large and bulky behind.




The WM3500 is the most basic current gneration front loading LG washer out there.

No heater, no recirculation.
Sure, nice large drum, 10 decently well chosen cycles with usefull options and it does look pretty good for what is the simplelest current FL offered under the LG name.
As any LG it will probably perform good enough to never cause any kind of doubt - as long as every time you hit start you dash out of the room and never peak. Ever.
Oh, and is WiFi connectabel, so, I suppose that is at least no negative and that should keep resell value up



But given your primary questions and concern was the wash water temperature situation I have a small 2 stage procedure that should pretty clearly point out if this washer is capable of actually true hot washes.

First I just wanted to make sure you understand why even if the machine would fill with pure hot water you would still end up with rather mediocre wash temperatures.
A normal TL washes lets say 16 pounds of laundry in 20gal of pure hot water for about 15min maximum.
This washer washes the same amount of laundry in 1/4th the water per fill for at least 20min or more; depending on setting the mainwash could probaly extended well over an hour on the Heavy Duty cycle.
Do you think the latter qualifies as a wash in hot water?

Next, quick solo field trip through the depths of google for you:
Do me a favor, visit LGs homepage and navigate to the category for frontload washers.
Now look for the WM3500, go on its product page and zoom into a view of the control panel.
Take a really good look at those 5 temperature selectios you mentioned you have there.
Plot twist: By now EVERY LG frontloader has 5 temperature selections.
So go ahead, explore around and look at any of the other model on the page you want to look at.
The WM3500 is the odd one out there and that pretty clearly tells you how good this washer is at washing in hot water (semi, at best, that is, if even).




Now, onto the whole good price thing:

I can think of no realistic situation in which this machine would be a good investment for a washing machine enthusiast and of only one verry slimm edge case where it might be a not-terrible idea for a person less keen on the whole appliance buisness (I know, hard for us to imagine around here, but not sitting in front of a washer for hours is actually the norm, not the other way around).




So let's first assume your friend would sell you a brand new machine.

Most online sellers list the WM3500 at about 800$.
That alone should be a red flag for such a simple machine.
The cheapest option I found was 725$ shipped and that company even had a 50$ cash back rebate. You could even apply for that cashback online, so verry advanced cash back processing without all the paper stuff and postage stamp nonsense.

So we can failry certainly assume this model will never retail below the 600$ mark.

The more eyebrow evaporating thing however is that from what I think to remeber to have seen every single online shop I checked had the WM3700 listed basicly exactly next to the WM3500.
Usually that would be nothing extraordinary; the bigger brother of the machine in question is pretty simmilar to the simpeler one, however they added an internal water heater and thusly a steam option, a santize cycle, an allergy cycle and lastly changed the temperature selection to ditch the semi warmm medium setting for an Extra Hot setting right at verry top. (Oh, and I think they fancied tihe door up to look allchromy).
These upgrades are verry common first additons when going from the verry entry level of a machine to the next higher trim level; adding these things isn't terribly complicated or expensive and drasticly increase versatility and results for a FL.



So I quickly had like 7 tabs of different retailers open at the same time.

One listed the lower end one at 730$ and the other one at about 800$.

One had the simpelerer one for 800$ and the upgraded one for for 880$ so fars so good.

Then I went on the bestbuy website and was somewhat confused to see 2 white LG FLs listed with only oike 10$ price difference... I took about 5 seconds to realize the WM3700 was cheaper here then the WM3500.
And that was the case on basicly any other site as well; never more the 20$ differnce, more often then bearable for me the higher end one was cheaper and one site at one point had the audacity to list the WM3500 as more popular...

The next step up were the models with TurboWash and heater (WM3770).
Prices fluctuated here a lot, but 950$ seemed to be the trend for the white version.
To my excitment I actually found the followup versions of to those (WM3900 with the new TurboWash 360) listed on several sites and prcies were only slightly above the "old" iteration.


So, at that point I was OK with the full package LGs being close to 1000$, but of course I had alternatives to find.

I just couldn't let thought of a FL without heater being sold for the same price as the white version of ELuxes 527 washer liner here.

My basic thought was that if someone insited on buying an LG upselling the 70$ or so for tne heater was easy and made a lot of sense.
But in my head for what ever resason something kept telling me the TurboWash wasn'T always that expensive...



Well, TurboWash might have gotten more expensive, but twin syster AcellaWash didn't.

Kenmores eqivalents of these 3 are currently on sale for 560$, 650$ and 700$ at Sears (thank god there is no inversing, spending more actually means more features).
They are a few years older design wise and certainly don't look as good as the LGs, they lack WiFi connectivity and such newfangled things and are - at least for these 3 lower onces - somehwat less feature laden and a little weirder phrased (like, I immediatly know what a Towels cycle should do, but kids clothing could either be super intensive for heavy soils or genle and quick for less long worn clothing to prevent fun kids tshirt prinst from wearing out).

So every option I looked at was a better value then the WM3500, either it had the same level of equipment but was appropialty priced or it was priced like the WM3500 but appropiatly feature laden.




And then came the more fun thought cause it is more likely that that the WM3500 in question is actually a used machine.

So, first of, if it still has warranty that is superb for resale value.

However, I just don't see this machine being good to resell.
Like, if you payed 800$ new for it, you don't really sell it of for 100$ withe the model not evnen being 2 years old.
If you pay so much for a washer you don't sell it on for so ltllle so soon unless you know it is just not worth anymore money.

I could see such machines retailing for 600$ with sales of 499$ and then getting sold on after 3 to 5 years for 100-200$ depending on condition (perhaps the extended warranty is still valid).
Basicly someone comming from college buying his first set of appliances for hist first own flat with the little money he had for that and then getting something more classy after he payed hi student loans of.

And I mean its a perfectly boring machine. As long as you don't overtask it it will perform fine.
On the used maket these probably go to college kids who need a simple cheap washers or like big familys as the new throw-away machine (one proper good washer for the stuff you like and one machine to be tortured until its demise).

But as collector there is no reason to pay 200$ for such a boring machine to operate machine if I can have some early 200ß0 gem that dosen't work for like a tenner.
The 190$ and days of work are then used to get the machine either to a better then factory new state or to horribly fail at everything with every solution just revealing more problems until you either cut it up for parts or create something like the PC operated Rapiddry...



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