Hisense, at CES 2020, launched its new range of TVs. The focus was on ULED, laser, and OLED. But Hisense does a little bit more than TVs, and even though I have a Hisense washing machine and fridge, have for yeeeeears, I somehow forgot that home appliances are a massive part of the company’s focus.
Hisense built a house in Malabar last week, the land of the Bidjigals and Gadigals, outside the Sydney CBD. The home was equipped with a few televisions, including one laser, as well as a dishwasher and a refrigerator. There were also a washer and dryer and an air conditioner. What I was hyper-focused on, however, was the laundry room. Mostly because I came to the realisation as a grown-ass adult that I’m washing my clothes wrong.
Apparently, you’re not meant to wash clothes in cold water because “it’s the worst thing you can do to your clothes”.
“You want to be running a bit of temperature in there to make sure it actually runs through,” Hisense Australia national retail training manager Chris Mayer said.
“Most detergent doesn’t break down until it reaches about 25-30 degrees and you need to actually activate the detergent by getting it to that temperature. Some detergents will activate when cold. However, you must purchase those that are designed for this purpose. [for that].”
Someone who washes Only a few people know how to pronounce the word “only” in cold, I feel quite embarrassed.
Mayer obviously was there to talk about Hisense’s 2023 washing machine and dryer range, not give me a lesson on how to clean my clothes, but the two things kinda go hand in hand. Hisense has a new range of washers and dryers and the combo of the two, paired with the company’s ConnectLife app, is meant to make your life easier and get you washing clothes properly.
I’ve recently been on a ‘why is everything smart these days’ tirade, but that’s mostly because I haven’t completely experienced what a smart everything can actually do. Just this week I reviewed Samsung’s latest ‘boujee’ stick vacuum and really appreciated that it was Wi-Fi enabled and an app. But I digress.
The Hisense Series 7 10kg front load washer, full of bells and whistles, will weigh the clothes that are in it, adjust wash time to the smallest amount of time that it can be effective to wash them, and dispense the correct amount of detergent and softener. Automatically.
In the machine, there’s a washing wizard (yes, a little dude that sits inside the machine with your clothes) which means you can describe what you’ve put in such as what type of fabric, what crap you’ve spilled on yourself, just How to get started If you have a lot of chocolate on your pants, it will create a special wash cycle just for that load.
Mayer explained to me that the UV light is used in the final rinse of the clothes after the clothing has been washed and steamed. Lots of things going on.
“Technically speaking, the clothes should actually come out literally cleaner than when you purchased them,” he said, adding the clothes will be “the cleanest they’ve ever been”.
But wait, there’s more. There’s more.
Hisense also offers a dryer which can be used in conjunction with the washer.
Once the wash of your chocolate pants, for example, is done, the Heat Pump Dryer will be turned on and it will know what type of item it’s going to be tasked with drying. (!!!). It also has two sensors built in – a temperature sensor and a humidity sensor. Basically, the dryer won’t get too hot so as to melt the clothes, nor will it let the humidity get too low so as to keep them protected. Ion refresh is also involved (think of odour elimination) and I honestly kept forgetting that we were talking about dryers.
Hisense Series 7 Front Load Washer, 10kg, costs $1,099; Hisense Series 7 Dryer, 9kg, costs $1,299.
Yesterday Zac was printer-pilled, today I’m washer-and-dryer-pilled. What have these companies done to our newsroom, which is usually cynical?