Looking for advice. I have a 11-14 year old GE washer that has been mostly a solid workhorse. It's a 3.5 cf agitator top load washer.

Recently the electronics seem to have malfunctioned. The washer will just be stuck on the hand wash setting and hitting the buttons will result in a beep and no other result. There isn't an error code. It just reads out the cycle minutes.

My first instinct was to figure that it's been a good run and look at a replacement, but after shopping around and reading reviews of what's on the market, I can't find one model that isn't a spinning box of sadness and misery. Especially the front load and HE washers.

Going back to square one, am I safe to assume that the control assembly has exceeded its life and that if I spend a couple hundred bucks on a new one, I can just drop it in, plug in the wire harnesses, and it will work like new? Is that a better bet than buying new, or am I pushing the age on this machine and need to just go ahead and bit the bullet on a simple agitator unit? Any recommendations would be appreciated.

You can certainly try a new control unit, and if you buy from this site and the new unit does not fix things you can return it. But given the age of the machine I think a basic, no frills, no electronics top loader is the better choice. Those types of machines will give you good value.

Any of the basic top loaders will do a good job for you. Good luck!