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I tested the new LG WashCombo and I'm never buying a separate washer and dryer again
It's not a perfect appliance, but it takes half the space of separate machines and works nearly as well.
A few years ago I stayed at an Airbnb in Europe. The apartment included a small clothes-washer, but no dryer — or so I thought. Turns out the washer was also the dryer! And what a revelation: No more dragging wet clothes from one appliance to another. But, wait, if that's a thing, why don't we have such machines in the U.S.?
We do now. The LG WashCombo is a full-size washer that's also an electric-heat dryer. And, thanks to some nifty tech, it doesn't require venting for the dry cycle. That affords a lot more flexibility for placing the unit; it needs only hot and cold water lines, a drain and a standard AC outlet. OK, but is this jack-of-two-trades a master of none, or is it the future of laundry? Here's my LG WashCombo review.
VERDICT: Packed with smarts and conveniences, the WashCombo makes a great alternative to the traditional washer/dryer pair. There's a learning curve, though, and it's on the slow side when it comes to drying.
- One-and-done washing and drying
- Runs on 120-volt circuit
- No dryer vent required
- Automatic detergent dispenser
- LG app provides easy access to controls, settings and updates
- Awkward controls positioned too low for comfort
- Drying times longer than average, especially for bedding
- Odd accumulation of lint around the door seal
A quick anecdote before I dive in. Our current 5-year-old dryer, also made by LG, had been throwing error messages for several months. The code indicated a blockage in the vent that runs to the outside of the house, so we hired a company to clean out that ductwork — but the error code persisted.
Next came an LG repairman, who tinkered and said the dryer was fine; there must still be a blockage. The cleaning company came a second time and did a second cleaning, all the while insisting the vents were completely clear.
This back-and-forth went on for a while; no fewer than five different repair guys tried and failed to diagnose the problem. (Luckily we were still within the coverage period of an extended warranty from Lowe's.) So when LG launched the WashCombo, I jumped at the chance to review it, because at a minimum it would eliminate the vent from the equation. (It relies on an inverter heat pump.) No more worrying about a blockage in the 30-foot duct run between the dryer and the back of the house, and therefore less worrying about a dryer fire — which occurs some 16,000 times annually, according to at least one report, mostly due to such blockages.
(Side note: Not to knock all these technicians — some from LG proper, some from third-party companies — but almost as an afterthought I fired up the LG ThinQ app and immediately noticed a diagnostic alert: The dryer had detected "a defect in the temperature sensor," which seemed directly tied to these errors. Sure enough, once that sensor was replaced, the problem abated. Why didn't any of the previous repair efforts include the same diagnostic tool that's available on my phone?)
Design and installation
The WashCombo is a handsome front-loading machine modeled in black steel (and also available in graphite steel). It measures 27 x 39 x 33-1/8 inches (WHD) — a couple inches deeper than the washer and dryer it replaced, but still within standards for such machines. You don't get a choice in which way the door opens, however (it's hinged on the left side), which made it less than ideal for our cramped laundry room.
Unlike a traditional dryer, the WashCombo requires neither a vent nor a 240-volt circuit. You just plug it into a standard 120-volt AC outlet, then connect standard hot and cold water lines. (It requires a drain as well, same as with any washer.) All told, the machine went from back of truck to plugged in and ready in all of about 10 minutes.
The first thing I noticed was the control panel, which resides on the front of the machine and stands too low for my comfort. I literally have to bend down to see and interact with it. There's a power button, an oversize function dial with a screen in the center, a start/stop button and a touch menu used to manually adjust things like temperature, spin speed and soil level.
This arrangement is ... not great. It's hard enough fiddling with controls when you're stooped over, but there are no fewer than 15 (out of 30 total!) wash programs to tick through with the dial; it's quite tedious side-scrolling through them all. And if you want to adjust any settings, you first need to look over to the panel on the right, tap Options (which for some reason isn't always illuminated), then go back to the dial and start turning again.
This wouldn't be quite so awkward if the controls were mounted on a rear panel or angled up for easier visibility. Adding to the annoyance, every time we start the machine it tells us to add fabric softener (which we don't use) and empty the lint filter — meaning there are two "okay" taps required before we can actually get to the cycle menu and start washing.
LG offers a pedestal that would raise the machine about 13 inches and provide a storage drawer (with laundry basket), but at $299 it's not cheap. We'll probably suck it up and buy one, as the added height will make it easier to load and unload clothes. But we're skipping the LG SideKick ($729), a pedestal that's also a self-contained mini washer. It would enable you to run a second, smaller load at the same time, but you'd still have to wait for the WashCombo to be done in order to run those clothes through a dry cycle.
Features and operation
This machine has a 5-cubic-foot capacity, definitely larger than what I encountered in Europe but the same as the washer it replaced. So it's roomy enough for family-size loads, and even for big items like comforters and sleeping bags.
In addition to different modes for bedding, permanent-press, swimwear, jeans and more, LG gives you nearly 20 options for wash speed, remote start, detergent level and so on. Weirdly, out of all these there's no "de-wrinkle" cycle, which is nice when you've let the clothes sit a while and you want a quick-warm up before pulling them out to fold. In any case, be prepared to spend some time with the manual to get a full grasp of all the options.
For the most part I just wanted the standard Wash+Dry cycle. However, I wasn't sure whether to choose that or "AI Wash+Dry." The former is intended "for mixed loads, cotton or linen," while the latter is "optimized for laundry contents." We tried both on various loads of clothes; it was hard to tell any real difference in terms of overall cleanliness or dryness or cycle time.
Make no mistake: LG's use of "AI" here would have been dubbed "Smart" just a couple years ago. There's no ChatGPT-level artificial intelligence behind the scenes, nor would there be. And if there's a "smart" mode of doing your laundry, why would you ever choose the "non-smart" option? Only if you want to manually adjust settings like temperature and load size.
Similarly, I wasn't sure whether to choose AI Wash+Dry or Bedding when tossing in our king-size flannel sheets. I went with the latter, only to discover it's a wash-only cycle; I had to start the dry cycle manually. Curiously, the sheets weren't fully dry after that cycle was complete. Needless to say, the WashCombo has a learning curve, and it can take some trial and error to figure everything out.
That said, if you stick with one or two modes most of the time (which we typically do), it's certainly not complicated.
One major standout here is LG's ezDispense system for liquid laundry detergent and fabric softener. Just slide out the dispenser drawer and fill one or both reservoirs; then you're good for as many as 18 loads before you have to add more. It may sound like a trivial thing, but I love it. Not only do you not have to move your clothes from one machine to another, now you don't even have to add detergent (except once in a while).
As noted earlier, we don't use fabric softener, and therefore initially left that reservoir empty. Quite by accident, I discovered (within the LG app) that you can "link" the two reservoirs and fill both with detergent. That not only eliminates the pesky startup message, but also boosts capacity as high as 31 loads before needing to add more.
What if you prefer to use pods or detergent sheets? No problem; you can bypass the dispenser and just toss one of those items into the drum.
How does it perform?
Obviously there's only one question that really matters when discussing the LG WashCombo: Does it do a good job washing and drying clothes? As a washer, it's great; everything we threw in came out clean, including a considerable amount of stinky gym clothes and a shirt covered in orange baby food (which is notoriously difficult to get out).
As a dryer, it's a bit on the slower side. LG claims the WashCombo can complete a wash/dry cycle in two hours, but in my experience a typical medium-size load took 2.5-3 hours — most of that devoted to drying. On several occasions I also noticed that the dry cycle would indicate it had, say, five minutes left to go, but then I'd check a few minutes later and see that the countdown had actually increased.
That's not a huge deal — as long as the clothes come out dry, I don't care if it takes a little longer than a standard vented dryer. But here's the thing: If you empty the machine right after it's done, you might notice the clothes feel a tiny bit damp, not bone-dry like out of a regular dryer. If you let them sit for half an hour or so before unloading, that trace of dampness typically disappears.
There was one oddity that emerged soon after we started using the machine: Lint started to accumulate just inside the door, around the rubber gasket:
According to an LG representative, this isn't normal, and in fact the company dispatched a repair person to investigate the problem. Alas, he took one look and said, "That's normal for a combo unit." If so, I consider it a design flaw, as this should end up in the lint catcher, not around the door. Whether it will prove problematic over time, I'm not sure.
Thankfully, a quick wipe with a damp cloth was all it took to remove the lint, but that's not a chore I appreciate having to do on a brand-new appliance. On a positive note, there's no mildew smell, a common complaint with front-loading washers (and one that also requires occasional wipe-downs).
Should you buy it?
There's an argument to be made that separate laundry machines are better because you can process more loads more quickly: While the dryer is drying the first one, you can start another in the washer. In a crowded household where laundry is a near-daily chore, that might be preferable.
In my house, where it's just the two of us and we run just a few loads each week, I'm never going back. For starters, I'm overjoyed to reclaim a dryer's worth of space in our relatively tiny mudroom. I'm also glad I never again have to move wet clothes from the washer to the dryer, nor measure out detergent every single time. I especially like not having to worry about lint accumulating in the duct-work and potentially causing a fire.
In an ideal world the WashCombo would dry clothes a little faster and have a control panel that's angled up for easier visibility. The weird lint buildup around the door needs to be dealt with as well. But those gripes aside, I'm happy with the machine and would recommend it to anyone who'd benefit from an all-in-one design.