Height-adjustable dishwasher racks aren’t new, but until now they’ve been limited to the top rack — letting you raise or lower the rack to better fit your pint glasses or large stock pots. Electrolux decided to bring that simple feature to the bottom rack for its AEG Mastery Range dishwasher.
The ComfortLift rack is meant to save your back when you’re unloading the dishes. Instead of making you hunch over as you take out (or put in) your plates and bowls, you can lift the bottom rack to a more user-friendly height, somewhere above the knee, depending on how tall you are. It may not make a difference to every consumer, but it will probably be much-appreciated by back-pain sufferers.
In the laundry line, the AEG 9000 Series washing machine will feature Electrolux’s new SoftWater Technology. The company says it found that detergents work better in soft water than in hard; the tech softens the water before it pours in the machine to clean the clothes, so it should get the job done at temperatures as low as 86 degrees Fahrenheit (30 degrees Celsius). That’s a temperature that’s gentler on fabrics than scalding-hot water, so Electrolux says your clothes should stay brighter, longer.
Perhaps the most delicious development from the Mastery Range is the SenseCook, an oven that takes the temperature out of cooking. Instead, the “CommandWheel” lets you select the outcome rather than a number in Celsius or Fahrenheit. You say you want a medium-well steak, for example, and insert the Food Sensor probe, and it will do the monitoring for you. This means you can choose a more elaborate recipe and the oven will adjust itself throughout the steps.
Pricing isn’t yet available for the new line, and the European launches vary. The ComfortLift is coming this month, the SoftWater technology is due out in January 2017, and there’s no date yet for the SenseCook. Whether or not these appliances will make their way to the United States also remains to be seen.
