We have owned a Miele since 2002.
The Miele gets my clothing cleaner than my old Kenmore top loader. This is in spite of the fact that with the Miele, I have switched to detergents that don't contain bleaches or brighteners.
The Miele has an internal heating element, which allows you to use very high water temperatures for whites and clothing that you need sanitized (such as the toddler's pants when his diaper didn't quite do the job.)
The Miele uses very little water when compared with top loaders. This is important to me because we live in a house with a septic system/leach field, so reducing waste water is desirable. Running the Miele also doesn't drain your hot water heater, so you can shower without fear of running out of hot water.
The Miele safely cleans "hand wash only" items such as silk and wool. I've even cleaned some "dry clean only" sweaters with good results. I can clean delicate pieces of clothing and things like sleeping bags in the Miele that I could never wash in a top loader with an agitator.
The high speed spin cycle gets the clothes quite dry, and reduces dryer times significantly.
The 1926 model is is smaller than the offerings from some American brands. The front loading Kenmore He3T in particular has significantly greater capacity than the Miele. The Miele 1926 will wash a queen-size comforter, but it won't fit our over-stuffed king-size comforter. The Miele is perfectly adequate for large size laundry loads, however, and easily accommodates our family's laundry needs. (We have a family of six; two adults, three grade school kids, and a toddler, so we go through a lot of laundry.) That said, the Miele is not ideally suited for people who do laundry in huge batches only once a week or so. The long cycle times and capacity of the Miele are better suited to folks who put in a load of laundry every couple of days, rather than trying to get all of the week's laundry done on Saturday morning.
The Miele has lots of nice features, such as a delayed start, full control over spin speeds, water temps, and cleaning actions. The controls are well thought out and easy. The only inconvenient thing about the Miele was that it wouldn't plug into the standard wall plug that was in our laundry room. Luckily, we had an electrical box close by, and it took an electrician only about 40 minutes to install a new 220 volt outlet for the Miele. Most homes only have one 220 volt outlet (for the dryer.) I think that if you have a Miele dryer, you only need one 220volt outlet because the dryer plugs into the washer, but I am not really sure on this point.
So far, we don't have any real complaints, and are quite happy with the Miele.
