I had a brief sojourn with a front-loader and quickly found their biggest limiting factor: you can't interrupt them to put more in (liked a missed sock) once they're going. People with top-loaders get used to doing this.

Our local consumer magazine, [www.choice.com.au|Choice] recently extended their review criteria for washing machines by adding rinse qualities and found the top-loaders generally did remarkably better than front-loaders at that. This meant the overal scored mixed everyone up a lot more and it was no longer a clear-cut case of front-loaders washing better than top-loaders.

Another interesting fact is that top-loaders have started appearing that are nearly as water efficient as front-loaders.

Wade.