Clothes dryers
Choosing the right clothes dryer pays off in the long run.
Choosing the right clothes dryer pays off in the long run.
We’ve tested vented, condenser and heat pump clothes dryers to find the fastest, most efficient, and easiest to use.
Our overall score combines test performance (how well the appliance works) with predicted reliability (how likely models from the brand are to remain free of faults) and owner satisfaction (how likely owners of the brand are to be very satisfied).
We’ll only recommend appliances you’ll love to own, that work well and keep working well for a long time.
It’s no good if a product lasts for several decades if it doesn’t work well in the first place. A disappointing product will soon become unloved and unwanted. For this reason, our independent lab testing forms an important part of our overall lifetime score.
Our clothes dryer test is based on an Australia New Zealand Standard. The test uses a standard load of cotton bed sheets, small towels, and pillowcases. This allows us to compare clothes dryers fairly and repeat the test year after year.
We test using a 3.5kg (dry weight) load, which gets a lot heavier when wet at a 90% moisture level. This is about the average amount a consumer washes at one time.
Our test includes:
Drying performance
We assess how long a dryer takes to finish the load and inspect the results. If the dryer fails to dry the load to less than 6% moisture content, we apply a penalty to the score. If the dryer fails to dry to less than 8%, we apply a further penalty.
We apply an additional penalty if the dryer doesn’t have reverse tumbling as washing is more likely to tangle into a damp lump without this feature.
Efficiency
We assess a dryer’s energy usage with our test load. A higher score indicates a more efficient machine.
It’s reasonable to expect a new appliance to remain fault-free for at least the first five years. Our predicted reliability won’t tell you whether your dryer will stop working tomorrow, but it does show which brands make models that are less likely to fail.
Satisfaction is important – no appliance should be a source of buyer regret. Appliances with very satisfied owners are more likely to get cleaned regularly and maintained well. Their owners are also more likely to seek repair for faults than look for a quick replacement.
Older appliances are more likely to go wrong, but common faults should be repairable. Repairs should be affordable and convenient – parts need to be easy to find at a reasonable cost, instructions should be available, and repairs shouldn’t need hours of expert labour.
We haven’t been able to assess repairability yet, but it’s important, so we’re gathering data and forming a plan so we can start including it in our lifetime scores.
It will be challenging. We’ll need to analyse product failure data in our reliability surveys, conduct hands-on inspections to evaluate how easy products are to take apart, and investigate which brands make spare parts available at a reasonable price.
In our annual reliability and satisfaction survey, consumers tell us about faults that have made an appliance they own unusable or mean they’ve had to change how they use it. We also ask them how satisfied they are with the appliance. We use this data to produce our predicted reliability and owner satisfaction scores.
We use a statistical test to rate the relative performance of each brand. Compared to data we have for all products (of the same type) in the survey, we rate each brand with excellent, good, average, poor or terrible for each of reliability and satisfaction.
You can compare the rating of different brands for the same product type (for example, the reliability rating for Miele and Haier washing machines), but you can’t compare the results for different product types (for example, satisfaction of LG TVs and Samsung phones).
We analyse brands that get at least 30 responses in our survey. That means there are some brands we can’t analyse because we don’t have enough data. For those brands, we assume they have average predicted reliability and owner satisfaction.
Our data is based on responses for 1,763 clothes dryers in our 2022 survey.
We've tested 21 clothes dryers.
Find the right one for you.
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