I’ve always thought there were easier ways to do laundry. While it’s not the two-way street solution I dream of—where I toss my clothes on the floor at the end of the day and they’re magically clean and hanging up in my closet the next morning—LG’s latest generation of smart washing machines solves a surprising number of pain points. I tested the Smart Washer with TurboWash® 360° and AI DD® Built-In Intelligence (currently $999, normally $1,299) and its sidekick, the Smart Electric Dryer with Sensor Dry & Steam Technology (currently $899, normally $1,199). That’s a mouthful, but the key takeaway is that these new models leverage both LG ThinkQ technology and AI DD® Built-In Intelligence.

While most people tuck their washing machines away, you don’t have to with this pair. They have clean, beautifully simple surfaces on their brushed metal frames. When they’re off, the interface is a simple round dial with a black face and a minimized detergent drawer on the washer. There are no rounded corners on the machine; everything is sharply mitered edges that intersect circles for the doors and dials. These machines are on the tall side, each nearly 40 inches tall. Once stacked, they’re tall enough to reach the top dial. If you’re shorter, one advantage of the connectivity of these machines is that you can use the app to tell the machines to ignore the dial on the dryer and use the washer controls for both machines. When they’re on, the digital interface uses contemporary fonts, colors, and even seasonal graphics in fairly high resolution. Turning the dial or pressing a button brings the machines to life; otherwise, there are no lights to distract you. Instead of buzzing when a cycle is complete, the machines offer a selection of classic tunes. About once a month, you’ll be sent new tunes and graphics to choose from. For the winter, I was greeted by an animated snowman playing Vivaldi’s “Winter.” While I expected to be disturbed by the noise and general cheerfulness, I was instead a little excited to have a washing machine that seemed to interact with me.

The machines pair seamlessly with ThinkQ, LG’s smart appliances app, which immediately picked up the machines, connected, and walked me through a two-minute setup. The app prompts you to turn the machines on and off remotely, and to configure your wash or dry cycle, then send that cycle to the machine. What it doesn’t do is let you start the machine remotely, even if the door is closed. You can enable “remote start” for each machine, which would allow you to do this from the physical control panel, but remote start isn’t a permanent state: you have to deactivate it to open the door after a cycle, and reactivate it after that. Essentially, this means you have to go to the machines to enable remote start; once you’re there, you might as well just start the damn thing. This is probably a safety feature, but I wish I could sign a disclaimer saying that I don’t have cats or children who climb into my machine. My biggest gripe with the app (and it's not a dealbreaker) is that while LG does integrate with Google Home and other smart assistants, it doesn't do so in a way that's actually useful. If you want to use your machines in automations, you can't. At most, you'll see them in your smart home dashboard and whether they're on or off.

Aside from the remote start, streamlined UX is at the heart of these machines, and where it’s clear that LG has worked to make doing laundry as painless as possible. This starts with the detergent: rather than adding pods and sheets or fabric softener to each load, the detergent compartment holds around a litre of detergent and fabric softener, and will dispense it automatically. So far, I’ve only had to refill it once every few weeks, and it’s meant I could put away my leaky bottles and eliminate the need for dryer sheets altogether. There’s no bleach reservoir, which would have made it the perfect trifecta. Once you’ve loaded your laundry, you can configure a wash and dry cycle with the usual specifications regarding heat, length, agitation level, drying time etc, or you can just fire up AI Wash, where it simply does the math for you. While the dryer took a little longer at times, the AI wash did a great job of sensing the load and treating it appropriately. It all comes down to throwing your laundry in, pushing a button, and walking away.