Panasonic has always aimed for the highest efficiency with its home appliances, and the 8kg NA-168VG4 is no exception. In fact, it's way more efficient than its A+++ rating already suggests, proving to be incredibly cheap to run in all of our tests.

POWER AND WATER USAGE

Across all of our tests, the NA-168VG4 proved to be very consistent in its usage. Washing our 3kg test load using the 30C Cotton cycle used just 47L of water and required only 0.47kW, resulting in a cycle cost of just 20p. With the spin speed set to 1,600rpm, our clothes retained 1.3kg of water. This isn't bad, but we'd expect perhaps a couple of hundred grams of water less.

Switching up to the 40C cotton programme, resulted in similar water consumption of 49L, and power increased by just 0.07kW to 0.54kW, due to the having to heat the water to a higher temperature. Water retention was slightly better, with our clothes holding 1.2kg of water.

We were particularly impressed with the low 0.67kW of power for the EasyCare wash. Typically, this kind of wash uses considerably more power, as the drum is started, stopped and rotated to cater for more delicate garments; a cotton wash generally spins the drum more consistently, requiring less power. Panasonic defaults to an 800rpm spin speed (you can override this), which means clothes came out with retaining 1.4kg of water.

This washing machine is A+++ rated, but it's far more efficient than even this suggests

Panasonic also has a 15C wash, which is an efficient way of cleaning clothes that are only lightly soiled. As you'd expect, this saves a lot, with our 3kg wash costing just 16p. This is thanks to low water consumption of 40L and very low power consumption of just 0.31kW.

These figures are certainly cheap, but to find out how the machine performs over a year we used the figures from the EU Energy Label (see how we test washing machines for more information). These showed us that this washing machine costs £43.45 for high usage, £32.59 for medium usage and £21.72 for low usage. These costs include water, waste water and electricity based on the UK average. Any way you cut it, this washing machine is exceptionally efficient and excellent value.