Condenser tumble dryer recommendations please!

[Ktay]

Apologies if this should go elsewhere, the ‘products’ board doesn’t look the busiest 😬

Our tumble dryer broke a few weeks ago and I hadn’t realised quite how much I relied on it. Can anyone particularly recommend theirs? It won’t get heavy use, probably a load of towels a week (sorry, I realise this is too infrequent for some ), a small load of dishcloths/tea towels plus a couple of small loads of socks etc.

We would prefer to pay a bit more for an energy-efficient one - up to about £500. Both our AEG dryer and newish AEG washing machine have died on us within weeks of each other so keen to avoid them!

Thanks in advance

I have a candy one that I got from AO, 9 kg load and left handed hinge. I bloody love it. Has a million settings but I only use three of those. Water collects in a container on the door and the small filter and big filter are easily found and cleaned. Cost 450 as far as I remember....anyway, hope you find one.

Yet another vote for the Beko heatpump dryer

Heatpump dryers are much slower than conventional ones but it's so worth the energy saving. Also they're kinder to clothes with drying at cooler temperatures

I would look at how long it takes to dry a load with a heat pump tumble dryer, some take hours and hours.

I have a Beko 9kg condenser sensor dryer so it stops drying when it senses the clothes are dry. It is a B rated one £270 ish and it takes 40 minutes to do school shirts (secondary boys sized.) It has a lot of dryness settings meaning you choose how dry you want the clothes.

I would much rather it be faster and cost me a bit more than slower and waiting for it to dry stuff. There was a thread on this in Housekeeping about people saying things took hours to dry.

My washing machine has a 1400 spin which makes a difference to drying time too. My previous Bosch 1200 spin took longer to dry due to more water being left in the clothes.

Heat pumps do take hours to dry stuff. They are much cheaper though. Our electricity bill was much lower with our heat pump - we used it a lot, 2-3 times daily (disabled child, we use a lot towels and bedding etc). However this time round we went for a non heat pump because it just took such a long time!

Are we talking actual hours? The AEG used to do a load in 1h 10, do the heat pump ones take much longer than that? I don’t often need stuff dried urgently but don’t like going out/to bed with dryer running.

Miele heat pump dryer seems to take about an hour and 25 mins after the first load. I would say the first load takes an extra 20 mins whilst the tumble dryer is heating up. I tend to do several loads per day, mostly sheets and towels, for me, the low running costs makes it worthwhile.
Probably an investment purchase most suited to homes generating lots of washing, the additional initial purchase cost would not generate sufficient savings for a couple of loads per week.
I don't notice extra electric usage in my bill and I don't notice the extra time because I dry several loads per day. ( Confession= I sometimes pop a dry towel in while the washing machine is running to preheat the dryer )

I have a whirlpool one. I chose it because an engineer friend told me that’s the brand they have to do less repairs on. It’s 12 years old now and only had 1 repair.

Thanks, that’s interesting about doing successive loads to reduce drying time.

I’d forgotten about Whirlpool - think we might have same problem with the door hinge though.

Local salesperson agreed with @fairylea that Samsung are crap at dealing with problems and said AEG are trying to improve quality of their parts but are currently a bit rubbish, hence our short-lived washing machine.

Our Bosch one was nothing but trouble from the start, and then even more trouble from the week after the guarantee expired. Eventually replaced it with a Miele, which has been perfect.

Was very fortunate to find a discounted end-of-line, ex-display Miele; it’s arriving tomorrow. Thanks for all the great advice everyone!