I was going to protest the "for Men" title, and suggest that if 58% of British men can't understand how to use a washing machine then that's an unflattering reflection of gender imbalance in household chores; "men just need to learn how to do it."
But then I saw the pictures, and remembered my time living in London and traveling in Europe, and how confusing I found the washing machines and their universe of iconography (every single machine has different icons).
I grew up in New Zealand, where we had a locally designed Fisher & Paykel washing machine [1]. It had a few settings, but there was one default called "regular" that invariably did a good job, so I always just used that - I would literally turn the machine on and press "start". It figured out the water level for itself.
Now that I live in an apartment block in the USA I use a shared commercial coin-operated Maytag washing machine. It probably has even fewer options than the Fisher & Paykel. My wife and I take turns doing the washing, and the only settings we ever change are "warm" (underwear, socks, towels) or "cold" (everything else). That's it, and it works perfectly.
I don't know why feature-creep plagues European washing machines but it reminds me of late 90s / early 2000s PCs with their byzantine terminology and myriad acronyms.
But then I saw the pictures, and remembered my time living in London and traveling in Europe, and how confusing I found the washing machines and their universe of iconography (every single machine has different icons).
I grew up in New Zealand, where we had a locally designed Fisher & Paykel washing machine [1]. It had a few settings, but there was one default called "regular" that invariably did a good job, so I always just used that - I would literally turn the machine on and press "start". It figured out the water level for itself.
Now that I live in an apartment block in the USA I use a shared commercial coin-operated Maytag washing machine. It probably has even fewer options than the Fisher & Paykel. My wife and I take turns doing the washing, and the only settings we ever change are "warm" (underwear, socks, towels) or "cold" (everything else). That's it, and it works perfectly.
I don't know why feature-creep plagues European washing machines but it reminds me of late 90s / early 2000s PCs with their byzantine terminology and myriad acronyms.
[1] like this, but not the exact model: https://i1.ytimg.com/vi/O6SmbWnGlvA/maxresdefault.jpg