Danby's DTT420 Twin Tub is an economical compact washing machine that does a great job of getting clothes clean. The model's low price, however, is made possible by an extreme and unusual lack of automation, for which the user must personally compensate.

Using the DTT420 Twin Tub is quite a bit more time-consuming than using a typical automatic washer. First, you must fill the washer with water, run a wash cycle and switch the machine to the drain setting. After draining the tub, you move the laundry to the spinner to remove the wash water and then return it to the main tub for rinsing. After running the laundry through the rinse cycle, you'll need to move it once again to the spinner for a final removal of the rinse water.

Although you can wash about 6 pounds of laundry at a time, only about 4-1/2 pounds can be placed in the spin tub. For this reason, we recommend spinning just half of the wash load at a time or, as an alternative, keeping wash loads under 4-1/2 pounds in the first place.

The good news is that the spinner in the DTT420 Twin Tub is rated at 1600 revolutions per minute. This is a very fast rate for a spin cycle and results in laundry that is well on its way to being dry. In fact, it's so well on its way that laundry washed in this twin tub will often dry in the dryer in half the usual time.

Danby's DTT420 Twin Tub not only saves on electricity usage by the dryer, but also conserves natural resources in a host of other ways. By leaving the tub full of water, for example, you can use both wash and rinse water more than once. You simply wash two loads, retaining the water, and then rinse two loads back-to-back. The only time we would recommend against this, in fact, is if you are washing diapers or if someone in your home is ill. In that case, we would recommend against reusing water that could spread contagious disease.

The DTT420 is a good choice for a small household that wants to make as little impact on the environment as possible while keeping its financial expenditure low. The catch is that in order to do this, the members of said household will have to spend a lot of time with their laundry and be willing to get their hands really wet.


Pros: The greenest way to do the laundry, inexpensive
Cons: Requires lots of manual intervention to move laundry through the cycles

Warranty
1 year