Giantex Portable Washing Machine

So we’ve had our Giantex for a few weeks now, enough time to run quite a few loads. I picked this out to replace my beloved Haier that I’d picked up used some four years ago and which had held me in good stead until recently when it began to have spinning issues. When the significant other offered to go halves on a brand new machine, I decided, well, why not.

So here we are, with this Giantex. The day of arrival, and unboxing. The first quirk to note was that the bottom panel wasn’t screwed on. Now my sweetheart is handy enough but getting all the way down on the ground is difficult so this was definitely a me job. Fortunately, I’m handy enough as well with a screwdriver, but to be honest, this was something that could have been done prior to shipping.

While moving the machine to it’s home, we noted a few things.
1. The outer casing of the machine is plastic and somewhat flimsy, unlike my Haier. It feels like a good push would break through that plastic. Being in a very small, cramped space, and both of us being bigger people, and having a 12-year-old in this same cramped space, I’m waiting for that day to come.
2. No wheels, which was a minor disappointment, but thankfully the machine is lightweight. Light enough that even I can lift it, and my limit is somewhere under 50 lbs on a short distance. Basically, if we need to scoot it out of it’s designated corner, I can do so.
3. The hose that connects the machine to the water line. It’s SHORT, and THIN. I did initially hook it up, but it stayed on the machine for about two minutes. We realized right away that it did not reach our sink, and decided to see if the hose from the Haier would fit. It did, and since the Giantex was going right where the Haier had been, and the hose was long enough, the Haier hose (which is pretty heavy-duty, but does have a leak on the sink end) went on the Giantex.
4. The u-shaped holder for the drain pipe doesn’t fit over our sink the way it needs to in order to hold the drainpipe in the sink. That, however, wasn’t a huge deal. We used some pipe cleaner to tie the drain pipe to the water hose so that the drain pipe doesn’t come flying out. I’d rigged up something years ago with the Haier which didn’t have anything at ALL to hold that hose in the sink so not a deal-breaker.

And we were off. Ready to do our first load.

After several loads, we discovered this machine does have one annoying quirk, and THIS is where I deducted the star. It’s nothing that would make me return the machine, and it’s something my SO and I handle decently, but when my 12-year-old does wash, she doesn’t pay attention to the sounds very well and misses it.

The main cycle we tend to choose is wash/rinse/spin. Because we’re not hooking to a dedicated washer dryer hookup, and because of how our stupid sink reacts to water pressure, we HAVE to turn the water off when the machine is full. I knew this going into purchase because I’ve needed to do it with the Haier as well. That’s not the quirk. The quirk is this.
The machine on this cycle needs to be filled three times. Once initially, once at 17 minutes to go, and once at 9 minutes to go. It seems to fill and starts to agitate. So you think, good to go, on your merry way. Only to come back by a few minutes later and notice the counter hasn’t moved.
The machine wants a LITTLE MORE WATER.
That took me a good minute to figure out why we’d paused. Now, this mainly becomes an issue when it’s NOT noticed the machine has stopped for more than like a half-hour, and you get the E-4 error code (happened once to my SO because he’d gotten called outside and missed the sounds, and happened to the 12yo not paying attention to her wash.)

If it weren’t for that, and the plastic being flimsy, I’d have gladly given this five stars. But four stars is good enough. It gets the clothes clean, I’ll give it that much. Once I got used to its different sounds and its cadence, it’s settled in as though it’s been around all along. All I hope now though is it holds up as long as my Haier did. Time will tell on that though, and I’ll update if anything happens to change this review.

Edit to add:
We are now about three months into having this machine. In this time, we had to move apartments, and I’ve changed the setup a little as our new place is basically completely backwards from our old one, and the machine had to be situated differently.
It is now hard-wired to the sink via an adapter setup that allows me to switch between the washer hose and faucet (Available for about $10 on Amazon, but you’ll need a second adapter because the outlet for the hose isn’t quite the right size, purchased for less than $5 at Home Depot.)
I had to extend the drain hose because the new placement left me just a little short. Again, easy enough to buy an extension at Home Depot. Also. You can’t “Replace” that drain hose. I tried initially before I used the ‘replacement’ as an ‘extension’, which was a lot cheaper than the extender kits.

The downside. For some reason the machine, if you have the water to the high setting, will overflow. I don’t know if it’s a bad sensor on it or not. We’ve compensated by using the medium water setting, which honestly gets to about where the high used to. But it’s something to keep your eye out for.

All said and done though, it’s still doing a good job of getting our clothes clean!

I bought this one because I saw lots of reviews that mentioned that this product lasts a long time. I did need an extra part to be able to connect it to my kitchen sink but once I got that I started using it and am very happy with it, the hose has a little hook we connect to our drying rack so it stays in the sink while draining water and cycles only last a little over a half hour! I do wish it had some wheels because we have to store it on the other side of the kitchen when not in use but that isn’t the biggest deal in the world. I have only used once but so far I would 10/10 recommend this item it’s going to save us a lot of money not having to go to the laundry mat and we have a baby on the way so this will help tremendously in that department. If I have any issues in the future I’ll come back and mention them here 🙂

 I want to give this machine 4.5 stars but that isn’t a choice. Overall, the machine is great but it definitely had a learning curve for me and I am usually very handy. I also have a few concerns about some of the other reviews, which I relied heavily on with making a decision to purchase this unit. It came packaged securely and was easy to assemble the bottom panel. Like other viewers, I did vacuum out all the loose Styrofoam pieces so they wouldn’t later end up inside the parts of the machine somehow. As soon as I unpacked the machine and got it ready to install to my kitchen faucet with the 

Danco 10512 Garden Hose Adapter, 55/64-Inch 27 Female x 3/4-in GHTM, Chrome

 which I purchased based on another reviewer suggestion, I found this 10512 adapter did not sit very deep and securely into the water inlet hose. It fit perfectly onto my faucet but due to a smaller end that goes into the hose and the way the hose is designed, it was almost impossible to connect to the hose. So off to the local hardware store I go to find a more suitable adapter. This adapter Danco 10513 

Danco 10513 15/16″-27M / 5/64″-27F X 3/4″ GHTM or 55/64″-27M Multi-Thread Garden Hose Aerator Adaptor, Chrome

 (see photo) works so much better and seals tightly to both the hose and the kitchen faucet.

Hooked the machine up and ran a short wash with a tiny bit of liquid detergent and a quick rinse to get the pungent smell out of the machine (hopefully). The drain hose u-shaped elbow device that is meant to hang the drain hose over the sink was useless on my kitchen sink because my sink is not at the very edge of the counter top but sits back a little further. The u-shaped elbow is not very large allowing it to hang into my sink as designed. Therefore, I removed the u-shaped elbow and just tied the drain hose to the water inlet hose with twist ties. (see photo) I will eventually try to find something to easily clamp/unclamp the drain hose to the water hose when in use or just use a zip tie to hold them together to ensure the hose doesn’t go flying out of the sink when draining and spinning.

Everything looked fine, so I grabbed some laundry. Some of the other reviewers may be exaggerating a little about how much you can actually fit into this machine and expect it to be cleaned properly. I was able to fit maybe a 1/3 to 1/2 of a load that would fit into a normal older style top loading machine, which is fine for me since I am single. Then starts the issue of water flowing onto my floor and I was not pleased with that. My floor is tile so it was really no big deal except that it was a lot of water and pretty inconvenient. This didn’t happen the first time I ran the rinse cycle mentioned above so needless to say I was concerned. After some tedious troubleshooting, I figured out what the issue was. I have really strong water pressure and if the water pressure is on too strong, the water tends to go into the machine too fast and erratic and drip onto the lip of the top of the tub. (see photos) The lip is not very thick and the water was filling up the drain hole at the top of the tub faster than it could drain back into the tub, hence overflowing onto my floor. I think Giantex could make this lip around the top of the tub a little thicker/higher to avoid this from happening so easily. After resolving this issue by turning my water pressure way lower and allowing the machine to fill slower, all was good.

The clothes washed great and the rinse and spin cycles are wonderful. The clothes came out damp and not sopping wet. I then tried to wash my queen size sheets and found that I really only felt comfortable washing the flat and fitted sheets together with no pillowcases or even better yet, wash the flat sheet separately with 2 of my pillowcases and the fitted sheet separately with my other 2 pillowcases. It just seemed to be overloaded with the entire sheet set in the machine. I think I read someone saying they could fit a quilt into this machine, but I don’t see that happening. I ended up doing about 6 additional loads and everything works seamlessly now. I haven’t washed towels yet so I am not sure how many bath towels will fit in a single wash. However, I did run a second spin cycle on one load and the clothes came out even more dry than before, which would probably work great for towels or heavier items that take a long time to dry.

Lastly, I also purchased this appliance dolly, 

Stalwart Adjustable Sized Telescopic Furniture Dolly Roller

 which I read fits perfectly. Au contraire mon ami! The smallest this dolly would go was still almost too large for the machine to set on without falling through the middle. I have a very small apartment and need the dolly to be exactly the same size as the washer. I took a hacksaw and shortened all four rods to the length needed to allow the dolly to shrink and fit snugly under the machine. Now all is great and the washer on the dolly fits snugly in its resting place and still fits under my countertop.

Overall, I am extremely happy with this washer after doing about 7 loads of laundry thus far. My suggestions would be to do more research on the adapters to fit your specific faucet because it would appear the provided water hose will not fit any sink in the USA – maybe if you are hooking it to a regular washing machine/laundry hookup, it would work fine. Also, do not turn the water pressure on full blast unless your floors need to be mopped and then you can just kill two birds with one stone. Haha! Additionally, if you want to purchase a dolly, try to find one that will shrink to a smaller size more suited for this machine unless you have a hacksaw to shorten the poles on the model mentioned above.

Very much a happy camper with my little R2D2 washing machine (see photo) save the few insignificant and minor design flaws. I hope this washer lasts a long time and makes me proud.

The product itself works beautifully. I spent many, many hours trying to find the perfect small (and inexpensive) washer! Clothes are dried to 80% and simply hang dry. Can’t beat it! Easy to use, simple, straight-forward. A screwdriver comes in handy to put the metal plate on the bottom, but I screwed in by hand and used scissors to tighten up (all I had on hand😬) and it worked fine.

It has a built in drain pump which is so important to have the leftover water drain out of the washer into the hookup rather than into a bucket or bathtub.

My only complaint is with the hose. I was expecting this to be the case based on other reviews. It was not the correct size to connect to my water hookup. I bought a typical washing machine hose from a hardware store and connected to the washer and hookup but water leaked. I cut the (white) hose (pictured) that came with the washer and cut the (black) washing machine hose I purchased elsewhere and connected the two using a connector and hose clamps to keep the connection watertight. I’ve used this washer approx 15 times in two weeks on light, medium and heavy water settings. It has worked beautifully and no leakage from hose at all.

The most I’ve fit in one load is three pairs of jeans or five T-shirts or a combo of the two. You should be good as long as you don’t fill beyond the ring.

The washing machine isn’t loud either! It truly is the perfect one! Works just like a normal washing machine (with the added bonus of the spinning cycle almost drying the clothes) but so inexpensive 😁.

Hope this helps!