WE’RE all trying to save our pennies as much as possible this winter, and heated airers can be a great way to dry laundry for less.
The gadgets cost as little as 6p to run for an hour, compared to the £1.35 cost of running the average tumble dryer for two hours.
Heated clothes airers are like traditional ones, but you plug them in.
The bars of the dryer heat up, shortening the time it takes to dry the clothes hanging on it.
You can buy covers for some as well, which speeds up the time it takes to dry your clothes.
They're popular in winter as it means households won't need to put the heating on just to try clothes.
Over recent months, shoppers have been rushing to retailers including Dunelm and Aldi to snap them up.
Of course, it's important to bear in mind that there can be a hefty upfront cost of anything from £39.99 to £79.
But when taking into account the savings on your energy bills they could be a pretty savvy investment.
We put the most popular heated airers to the test to find which works best and how much they cost to run.
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These include gadgets from supermarkets like Aldi and Asda, as well as other retailers like Argos, Dunelm and Amazon.
We gave each airer a rating out of five, here are the results.
Heated Airer with Wings, £40, Dunelm – 5/5
Dunelm’s airer was a bit fiddly to set up, requiring two people to fit the clips to the right bars and stand it up properly.
It was a decent size with eight bars across its width and two wings on either side with an additional five bars.
We had to manoeuvre the clothes slightly partway through to make sure they dried evenly.
Although, the socks and the lighter materials were dry in around two hours without needing to be moved.
The full load was dry in around nine hours, including a towel.
At 220W an hour, this cost approximately 53p – or 6p an hour.
It folds up pretty small but at 144cm long it did take up quite a bit of space.
AMOS 230 Electric Heated Clothes Dryer, £49.97, Amazon – 2/5
When it comes to actually drying clothes, you’ll need to put a sheet, or something similar, over this dryer to speed things up a bit.
Without it, only the parts of the clothes touching the heat seemed to be dry – even when we left it on overnight.
Another problem we found was how cumbersome the shape of this was – it takes up so much space, so you need a relatively big area for it to go.
However, it folds up really easily and is very compact when put away.
The airer costs around 4p an hour to run, according to the seller.
It took around 24 hours to dry the full load of clothes, costing approximately 96p.
Easy Home Winged Heated Airer, £39.99, Aldi – 2.5/5
Aldi’s heated airers sell out every time they come back in stock, as their low upfront cost makes them a cheap option for the gadget.
We found that after four hours the clothes were only dry where they were touching the bars, we adjusted them around three times throughout the process.
The lighter items were dry in around two hours, whereas heavier items took far longer and needed to be moved the most.
The full load was completely dry after 10 hours, which at 6p an hour, cost around 62p.
The gadget was really tricky to set up, with fiddly clips which snapped off a couple of times.
As with Dunelm’s, the airer is quite large at 148cm long – but does fold up small for storage.
Argos Home 11.5m Heated Electric Indoor Clothes Airer, £55 – 2/5
We had a lot of the same issues with Argos’ heated clothes airer as we did Amazon’s, and we did find that it sped up the heating process when we added a sheet or moved the clothes every so often, so the bars could heat up the clothes properly.
The Argos airer also took around a full 24 hours to dry the clothes, and at 230W per hour that’s around £1.49.
We do find the tower-shaped driers are much speedier, and take up less space when they’re out.
Heated Winged Clothes Airer, £40, Asda – 4/ 5
Asda’s airer was much easier to set up than the other winged airers and the legs are already attached.
During the drying process, we found the clothes weren’t drying fully and needed to be moved twice.
It took approximately nine hours to dry completely, which cost around 56p.
Thicker items like towels and heavier t-shirts took the longest, while lighter bits like sports bras and socks took far less.
That’s because the gadget uses 230W of energy, the equivalent of 6p an hour.
JML DriBUDDI Heated Indoor Airer, £79, Argos – 3/5
This was an unusual style of drier we’d not seen before, with a – rather loud – fan attached to a tower from which you hang your clothes up.
Unlike some of the others, you have to put the contraption together yourself, and it doesn’t fold down, which is definitely a downside.
It also doesn’t hold as many clothes as the usual airers, although there’s no denying it’s quicker at drying than some of the others.
While loose tops took a couple of hours, jeans and thick jumpers took about double that.
This airer was slightly more expensive though, it uses 1200W an hour.
It took around six hours to dry the full load which equates to £1.94 in total.
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Meanwhile, we tried 11 robot vacuums so you can put your feet up – two devices beat £900 top-end models on price and performance.
Plus, we also tried a heated airer and a dehumidifier for drying clothes without heating.
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