Ice dispensing fridge freezers, eco washing dishwashers and fully programmable cookers… kitchen appliances come with lots of extra features, but which do you find essential and which can you live without?
Modern kitchen appliances are packed with features designed to make life easier, from holiday settings to egg trays. But what are the features people actually want and need?
We asked over 10,000 Which? members their views to sort the indispensable features from the gimmicks.
Practical features came out on top, with the most popular being a frost-free fridge freezer to save you from the chore of defrosting it. Other essential fridge freezer options included temperature and door open alarms, deep drawers and ice dispensers.
Fan-assisted cooking is a must for ovens, sensor drying for tumble dryers was rated quite highly, and a time-remaining display was deemed the most useful for washing machines.
Useful versus useless features
One theme that came out from our survey was that appliances come with lots of options and features that we use just because they’re there, even if we don’t actually find them that useful. And some settings are used just a few times and then left alone.
I don’t know about anyone else, but I generally wash most things on the same setting and hardly ever make use of the extra rinse cycle on my dishwasher. And does anyone ever use the sport setting on their washing machine? One member sums all of this up quite well:
‘I hate buying white goods with bells and whistles that cost me money but don’t make it work any better.’
We’ll ensure manufacturers listen
The least useful features included a pause wash on washing machines, holiday settings on fridge freezers, and being able to delay the start or end time on tumble dryers.
We’re sending our findings to manufacturers to ensure your voices are heard, and in the meantime we’ll be using the survey results to update our online reivews for all the kitchen appliances we covered, allowing you to filter by the features that were rated highly.
What kitchen appliance features do you find the most useful? Are you delighted by a delayed start, or is a memory function a must-have? Do you find endless options on control panels frustrating, or are they genuinely useful? Here’s your chance to rant and rave about your appliances’ features.
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