Budget appliances are Indesit’s forte, and with such good prices across the range of washing machines, it’s often the brand for anyone looking for a bargain. The IWE91481 is one of Indesit’s mid-range washing machines, which means it should have better performance and lower running costs than the brand’s lowest-priced machines.

The Indesit IWE91481ECO has a low price for a 9kg machine

POWER AND WATER USAGE

Our first test wash was with a 3kg load on a 30C cotton cycle. Water usage with this Indesit was fairly low at 35L, as was power usage at 0.48kW. These figures equated to a cost per cycle of 17p, which is actually very good. That was on a spin speed of 1400rpm, which retained 1.2kg of water in our clothes – quite high compared with other more expensive models that we’ve tested.

On the 40C cycle, the cost per cycle jumped quite significantly to 32p. This cost was the result of a 69L water usage and 0.83kW usage of power. Spin speed on this cycle was 1400, but water retention was slightly more than on the 30C cycle, at 1.3kg.

Surprisingly, the cost per cycle reduced to 30p for the 40C synthetic cycle – usually we’d expect the cost to increase as more power is often needed to control the drum more finely. While the spin speed was 800rpm, the power did indeed increase to 0.95kW, but water usage dropped to 56L. Water retention was even higher, in fact the highest we’ve seen across all the washing machines we've tested, at 1.7kg.

Our test also calculated running costs based on the EU Energy Label, which provides the annual electricity and water consumption figures for a year’s use, based on 220 full loads using a variety of programmed cycles. From this we can work out the average cost of a wash cycle.

We also work out yearly running costs based on the EU Energy Label to give us something to compare all washing machines with (see how we test washing machines for more information). This showed that this machine costs £59.96 for high usage, £44.97 for medium usage and £29.98 for low usage. These aren’t the best results we’ve seen, but overall costs aren't bad at all.