My favourite tumble dryer of all time was a White Knight. Known as a cheap brand but while it lasted I thought it was excellent. They also had the first A rated tumble dryer while all other brands were still D rated. Things have come along a lot since then. Most dryers are now a days C rated but it is pretty easy to find A rated ones too.

My next dryer was a HotPoint as White Knight no longer did that model or the next version up from it. Within a few weeks I had a rust stain down the front. I complained to them but they refused to do anything about it. Eventually they offered to come and check it but I had to pay their labour charges which were substantial enough to consider a new dryer. So when something else started to fail, I tried to see if they would offer me a discount in lieu of fixing it and they refused. Customer service for Hotpoint was atrocious. So I used the money that would have covered labour charges to buy a Beko. It wasn’t quite the dryer I wanted but I had 3 young children and I could not afford to stay without a dryer and made a quick decision. It was cheap enough to say that I could change it at any time. This was a good thing because 2 years and a week after I bought it, the heater failed. Do they have timers in machines to have them fail after a set period of time? Sometimes it feels like it.

This time I decided to spend some time researching it. It was a whole new ball game. Besides vented and condensers there are also heat pumps. These are what contributed to the better energy rating overall. The problem is that this introduced a whole new price range. Tumble dryers start from as little as around £100 to as much as £1500.

So where did this leave me?

I found a site that allows me to compare energy ratings (which is a bit easier than manually working each out). However a simple way is to look at the rating and the lower it is, the less it will cost to run. If like me, you run a couple of loads daily, this can be pretty substantial. If on the other hand you use it occasionally then I would aim for the lower price even if you have a worse energy rating.

My Beko worked out at around 40p a go. The range of dryers currently available seem to run from as low as 15p a load to as much 75p a load. Yet the 15p a load costs nearly a thousand pounds and the 75p a go in under a couple of hundred. So if you are only doing an odd load, then it makes sense to go with cheaper model and more expensive load rate. In my case, the opposite was true. Yet I was loathe to spend a £1000 on a dryer. So after some research and some sums I came up with 2 models, both in the £500 range.

A Bosch and a Samsung Tumble Dryer

Buy Bosch WTW863S1GB Sensor Condenser Tumble Dryer, 7kg Load, A++ Energy Rating, White Online at johnlewis.comBuy Samsung DV70F5E0HGW Condenser Tumble Dryer, 7kg Load, A++ Energy Rating, White Online at


The Bosch costs £509 and comes with a 2 year guarantee.  The Samsung costs £519 with a 5 year guarantee and £40 cashback. John Lewis also will price match with 28 days and I have seen it at £499 at Boots Appliances. The Bosch works out at 19p a load and the Samsung at 20p a load. However I thought the 5 year piece of mind was worth the extra penny per load running costs.

I did not think I would fork out £500 for a dryer but I decided that opposed to buying a dryer yearly and spending a couple of hundred a time and a higher  cost per load, I thought this works out to being £100 per year and a lower running cost. So hopefully I should be saving over all. Also the Samsung has an app, and I am hoping this will encourage my dear hubby to help out with the laundry!!!

I will review it once I receive it as I have just placed my order for it. 🙂

Time to catch up on laundry just in time for Christmas!