Looking for a tumble dryer as fed up of washing in the house drying over winter.
What heat pump tumble dryers can people recommend? Budget is max 500.
Will sit out in the garage.
Thanks in advance!

Heat pump dryers don’t work very well in cold environments. Had one in an unheated boot room in a damp Yorkshire farmhouse, it took bl00dy hours to dry anything.

If you have it in the house you’ll at least get the benefit of the secondary heat. We’ve got a Samsung something or other does well with two mucky kids and one big mucky kid and the boss.

Edit apols I’m talking condenser dryer

That is great to know robola. I was looking at the heat pump ones due to the lower running costs. I may have to rethink.

I’m not sure if ours is condenser or heat pump. It’s a washer dryer, and it doesn’t vent air to the kitchen. It also doesn’t have a fluff filter. And takes 4hrs to dry towels.

We have a Bosch Heat Pump takes forever I am sure uses more energy than previous condenser.

I have a hoover one, h dry 500. Connected to a drain pipe so i don’t have to empty it. Takes 2 to 2 and 1/2 of hours to dry towels. Seems to be able to work out the moisture in the clothes and adjust the programme time accordingly. There is some condensation but not too a lot. And it has wifi connectivity but other than the initial novelty of selecting the program to run on an app, I have never used it since.

Bosch heat pump dryer here. It’s bloody brilliant. Sips electricity, dries stuff properly and is plumbed into the drain so I don’t have to empty the condensate tray. Condenser self cleans. Think it’s second or third generation.

Was “given” to us by Bosch after our last one died in some horrific heat-pump-executes-itself-after-over-use-event, which was unexpected as it’s essentially a fridge motor pumping a mixture of propane and oil around a sealed circuit.

It may not work in a cold garage: I built a nice insulated cupboard for my beer fridge to live in out there after it shut down for a week while we were away one February. Suspect a heat pump dryer would be similarly lizard-like.

We had one, it was shite. Can’t understand how it could have been more economical cos it took forever to dry anything.
So glad when it broke after 2 years so I could buy a cheap condenser that works better.

Not sure what is so different in my user case to all the others above, but we have a Bosch Heat Pump one, and it it brilliant.

It lives in the utility room with boiler and washing machine. The condensate is plumbed in.
Unless it is summer, or a guaranteed dry day, absolutely everything goes on the ‘mixed load’ setting.

1hr28 minutes and it is dry. Whether that be 5 large towels, full sets of bedding, mixed adult/child clothes or sports kit.

There are about 20 different programmes for different load types, plus bizarrely WiFi connectivity and an app, but we just ignore this and use the mixed load setting.

I’m sure they are more economical in a warm, dry house. They don’t use brute force heating to dry stuff. They are just crap in anything other than perfect conditions. We do most of our drying on a rack in a small room with a dehumidifier underneath. Works a treat and is surprisingly quick.

We have a Miele heat pump dryer which works fine.

Apparently it takes longer than the condenser one it replaced.
Apparently it uses less electricity than the condenser one it replaced.

Both claims seem marginal as far as I can tell so I wouldn’t get too hung up on it.

We’ve got a Bosch one. Takes hours to get stuff close to dry. Turns itself off when it senses stuff is dry, but in reality they never are.

It’s extremely economical just because it’s so crap that it convinces us to not use it. Not sure that was what they had in mind though.

Maybe newer generation models are better.

A different solution but we bought a Meaco dehumidifier for drying our kids’ resusablenappies but now use it for all our clothes pretty much. Clothes onto an aider in a smallish room with the door shut, dehudifier runs overnight and clothes are bone dry in the morning. As such, we don’t have loads of clothes hanging about the house in winter waiting to dry as per your complaint. Also, as there is No need for heating it’s really economical. We only use our dryer if the airers are full already.

Heat pump dryers are condensers, but there are condensers that aren’t heat pumps. We have a Bosch heat pump one, it’s not the plumbed in type but that suits where we have it. It does take longer, but is much cooler so any fabric is safe. It uses a fraction of the power that our electric element one did, so little that it’s often within the output from our PV panels, so paid for itself very quickly. When you pour a litre of water out of the tray and think “we used to pay for enough electricity to vapourise all that”, it must be cheaper to run. (I know it gets temporarily vapourised but that heat is recovered).

@alpha1653 what you have there essentially is a condenser dryer externalised.

The heat pump only chills down the condenser which drops the dew point and makes it work more efficiently.

We’ve had one for years, it’s a John Lewis branded AEG, short of a motor (that had the rotor delaminate) it’s never missed a beat and is actually a joy to work on. It was okay to start with but plumbing it in made a huge difference to the performance.

As said they won’t work well in a cold environment though I’m not sure how cold would be too cold for this application.