I get quite a few emails asking what I think of Panasonic washing machines. It’s a good question because Panasonic have a very respected reputation for brown goods. So people are naturally interested in their washing machines and wonder if they are just as good. I’m a fan of the Panasonic brown goods brand.
I currently have three of their products (a TV, a hard drive recorder, and a Blue-ray home cinema unit). I’ve also previously owned several of their VCR’s and cameras in the past and never had a single problem with any of them.
However, in the UK their washing machines were only launched in 2009, so there’s not much of a track record on white goods yet compared to other brands that have been making washing machines here since the 50s.
It’s highly likely they will be striving to carve an equally good reputation for white goods but white goods are completely different from brown goods.
Any new brand of washing machine has an uphill struggle to become established in an overcrowded market especially against names that have been producing white goods in the UK for many decades.
I can’t help feeling there are already too many washing machine brands to chose from (even though many are owned by the same handful of manufacturers) but I suppose there is always room for genuine innovation or better quality if that proves to be what’s on offer.
Panasonic seem to be pitched in the mid price range competing with the likes of LG or AEG so I would judge their washing machines against those brands and ask, what’s different about them? What are Panasonic offering that AEG and LG aren’t?
Which? have a lot of information about Panasonic washing machines which you should check out before buying.
Panasonic do have an excellent reputation on brown goods products so it would be crazy of them to produce sub standard white goods to sully their name. On the other hand, can we afford to just assume anything they make will be excellent?
Washing machines are very different to a TV, reliability is much harder to achieve because they are far more mechanical and have many moving parts.
If I turn it around and imagine what I’d think if AEG or Hoover started making TV’s it would seem pretty strange. LG made the transition well before Panasonic and sell both brown and white goods in the UK.
However, even after several years they are still very much a newcomer in white goods, and haven’t taken too much of the market from the old established white goods manufacturers.
At the end of the day moving to a completely new field of products such as moving from brown to white goods may take a good few years to get right.
After-sales service is important
An important aspect of selling white goods is a good supply of spare parts and technical information to the trade as well as a good quality after-sales network to cover the guarantee period. White goods, particularly washing machines break down much more often and need a lot more spare parts. Newcomers can take a long time to get these right, especially from a background of brown goods, and my sources tell me spares and technical information can be difficult to get for these brands.
Only time will tell, but after-sales is a vital consideration when buying appliances likely to require some repairs in the future unless you are happy to just get as long as you can out of something (with fingers crossed) and throw it away when it breaks down. My personal preference is to buy washing machines where the manufacturer have their own engineers in this country to repair them under guarantee. Panasonic are like all the brown goods brands in that they do not have their own engineers. They instead use third-party networks of repairers and this in my opinion is far less satisfactory.
Spares
Spares4Appliances is a spares company run by repair engineers who understand all about spare parts for appliances.
We’ve had the joys of an internal water leak (code not in operating instructions) for the last two weeks…first occurring one month out of warranty! Most repair companies seemingly don’t want to touch them, due to the part acquisition challenges. Guessing it’s only a simple seal / drum seal failure, but this shouldn’t happen on a £500 machine so quickly. Very disappointed.
Sorry, I don’t know if it’s a sealed tub or not Marsh. I personally am not aware of the USP of Panasonic washing machines other than the good name of Panasonic brown goods. I don’t expect they will be any worse than say AEG, but it does appear they have less of an aftersales service network including parts and technical support availability.
I have worked on a number of Panasonic machines (as an independant) and am not overly impressed..
The tubs are NOT sealed, but it is a major task to get the drum out of the cabinet – everything does come apart but is very time consuming and awkward to get to a lot of things.
As the drum is not sealed it is possible to strip it, but due to virtually no-one stocking spares for these then it’s a bit of a pointless exercise as even though the bearings will most likely be standard bearings I can imagine the seals will be specials that are not available – unless they come out OK and can be re-used
I have come across quite a lot of these with noisy / siezed bearings around 1-2 years old – usually the 8kg 1600 spin ones are the worst for this..but not tackled any bearing jobs yet – simply recommended they purchase a new machine…
The machines on a whole are well made and fairly rubust, but are let down by the lack of service back up, no fault codes from the manufacturer or any techical back up – there are a lack of spares available (as in I can’t get any pattern parts – only very expensive, limited genuine parts online) which often makes repairs uneconomically viable due to cost and availability of parts – also there are only certain parts available – not everything is listed.
The other ‘design faults’ on these are – there is poor access into the machine – especially to change the door gasket – that is a very common problem in not very old machines or to access the door lock parts that are also very flimsy – especially in customers small kitchens – they are very time consuming to work on (time is money to an engineer) – especially as you have to often ‘guess’ the fault code.
Generally speaking the fault codes beginning with ‘U’ are user errors – lack of water, blocked pipe, front filter not screwed in properly etc. and the ‘H’ faults are generally faults which may or may not be repairable by an engineer – H43 being the most common one – which is (as previously mentioned) the flood sensor in the base of the machine – indicating there is a leak somewhere internally (normally the door gasket with a small hole in ) so closes the machine down until it’s been dried up and the leak found & recified.
The other main fundemental floor in the design of these that I’ve found is that they suffer from ‘blocked sumps’ – the sump on these is made of plastic (on the bottom of the drum where the plunger goes into) – unfortunately these are glued onto the drum and are virtually impossible to remove without breaking them (and you can’t buy new ones) – on the ones I’ve managed to remove I’ve been able to get socks and tea towels out from inside the drum to sump hole where they have become firmly lodged – if you empty the water out of the machine and it only removes a little of the water from the drum at a time, the filter and internal pipes are clear, the plunger assembly is removed from the sump (the motors on these go wrong as well) and it still doesn’t empty properly – then there is a 99% chance that the sump is blocked and it’s time for a new washer (unless you are lucky enough to break the seal on the glue, remove the sump, clear the blockage and re-glue it back in place) – not a job for the DITY-er and is only done on the understanding that if it breakes then the washer needs replacing (unless someone can source parts somewhere).
I would not personally recommend a Panasonic washer to anyone on the basis of when it goes wrong (which it will – eventually) it is not easily repairable- if at all – if Panasonic want their machines to be recommended by engineers it will need to be a lot more helpful to the service industry, providing fault codes, technical advice and release copyright on the spares so can be marketed by aftermarket companies at sensible prices (£46.99 for door lock is VERY expensive – compared to one for a Hotpoint WF machine at around £6) or bring their spares prices down and let independant retailers stock them
Having said all of this when the machines are working they are very good washers and if they could sort a few design hiccups (they may have on the new mk III machines – not worked on these yet) and sort the service side out then i’m sure they could compete much more widely on the market with more independant retailers wishing to stock the machines & parts (as of now no-one I know will touch them with a bargepole – as the poor aftermarket (both in & out of warranty) leaves them with frustrated costomers and can well do without the hassle)
I hope these comments are useful – and are my personal opinions and findings and are meant for information only
I think Davey Boys comments says it all. When we were shown these machines at Panasonics in Bracknell the machines were stripped down to a point where the drum could be removed. We naturally then asked about bearings/seal removal and replacement. We were told that the bearing assy had a design life of ‘x’ hours and would never need replacing, so dont worry about them. We told them that THEY should be concerned about them. Obviously they chose to ignore us.
My own thoughts on this is that manufacturers in the far east are not aware of the hard water conditions in large parts of this country. When we first started having problems with bearing failures on LG washing machines we were supplied with complete tub assemblies. This did not last very long as they soon found out how expensive this solution was and we were soon supplied with the rear tub shells only. Of course, until you stripped the machine you did not know whether you needed the drum cross-piece as well.
To back up this theory I remember being told by Fisher & Pykel that all southern hemisphere countries have soft water, which caught them out with their original dishdrawers.
Thanks for your contribution Terry and Davy Boy, it’s good to get views from people in the trade too.
I bought my panasonic NA16VX1WGB from John Lewis, It cost £529, it lasted me nearly 2 years,then just before the holidays packed up with an H43 code. The engineer from panasonic came and said it was leaking badly from the drum as he watched. He said that I needed a new one. The John Lewis lady phoned to say that Panasonic were sending an engineer to fix it, not replace it. I have been without a machine since the middle of Dec. After reading other owners comments I am not very confident about the situation. I was advised to buy this machine by a John Lewis salesman, I AM NOW WISHING I HADN’T and had gone with another Siemans, my last one was 15years old. This was not a cheap machine, I EXPECTED BETTER from both J.Lewis and Panasonic.
By way of clarification, I did not mean to imply that John Lewis were slow in reacting to the problem as we did not inform them until the 3rd January, I am not complaining about the timing, just about my concerns after reading others poor reviews of the same washing machine. My complaint is with John Lewis advice and with Panasonics machine.
worried owner mrs kemp: Under the sale of goods act, they must fix your machine within a reasonable length of time otherwise I would request a refund or replacement.
I am considering buying this model and wondered if some of the previous problems may have been resolved by now. Does anyone have any information on this model please.
Frankly, my opinion on all the brown goods manufacturers who decided brown goods aren’t enough and want to be big in white goods too, is that there were already plenty of well established brands of washing machine and white goods appliances on the market. Therefore, if more brands come onto the market they need to be different enough to justify their existence.
Most appear to have decided to try the innovation club, but I believe they need to be more reliable than existing brands and/or have a superior aftersales service so that people can buy with confidence knowing they should last a reasonable time and be easily repairable. Sadly they have the innovation but not the backup of good aftersales. As discussed before, many independent repairers don’t repair them because it’s too difficult to get parts and technical information and they don’t appear to have well established, strong in guarantee service networks.
I purchased a Panasonic NA-147VB3 in November 2011. All went well until the first week in January 2012. I contacted the retailers who notified the manufacturers. After almost three weeks, the engineer fitted a replacement circuit board. The reason for the delay was a lack of parts. The machine broke down again on January 11th! After removing sopping wet clothes out of the drum and mopping up water from the floor, I contacted the retailers again.
I have spent today, the first day of my week’s holiday, waiting for phone-calls. The retailer have informed me that they hope this second malfunction can be repaired in a ‘reasonable’ time. However, they would not say what they considered a ‘reasonable’ time to be!
It is with wry humour that I re-read the letter received from the retailers on the purchase of the appliance stating, ‘ We hope we have satisfied your requirements and that we have done so in a professional courteous manner so you feel happy to visit us again in the future, and are able to recommend us to others in the knowledge that our quality, service and value are more than comparable’.
To date, I have been less than impressed with the quality of my Panasonic Washing Machine purchased from Oldrids of Boston Lincolnshire.