After seeing the adverts on TV for the, “amazing dryer balls” I decided to buy a pair and try them out. They claim to soften fabrics, reduce creases & wrinkles, cut down on lint and save up to 25% on tumble dryer running costs. These are big claims for something costing only around £10.
The hard plastic balls with knobbly bits are designed to “physically break down the stiffness created by water drying in fabric”. You simply place both dryerballs in with the laundry and use the dryer as normal.
Softening clothes
The makers claim that there is no longer any need to add a softening dryer sheet or use fabric softener in your wash. However, even without using dryerballs there is no need to use fabric softener because tumble drying itself softens laundry. It could be that these balls enhance this effect although I didn’t notice a difference in my towels test.
Noisy
The first thing I noticed during the test which wasn’t too unexpected was how noisy the balls are. They make quite a racket bouncing around in the drum. So much so that after the minute I decided to open the door and make sure they weren’t damaging my drum. The noise does die down a little after a while as they heat up and soften a little but they are likely to be quite annoying if you have your tumble dryer in the kitchen.
Listen to dryerballs.mp3 (NOTE: The first several seconds is the dryer without dryerballs inside, then there’s a pause followed by the sound of the dryer with the dryer balls inside. The whole clip is only about 30 seconds)
My experiment is in no way scientific. I simply did the following -
I took a moderate load of towels, put them on a 30 minute cool wash with full spin, then put them inside my tumble dryer without the DryerBalls. The dryer started up with an estimated time of 160 minutes. I monitored the load and started checking for dryness after a few hours and found that they were dry after 165 minutes.
I then removed the towels, left the tumble drier door wide open to cool down, I removed one of the towels for later comparison and placed the rest back in the washing machine on the 30 minute cool wash and spin.
I then placed the remaining towels in the tumble drier and placed the two DryerBalls on top of them. Switching on the dryer displayed the same estimated 160 minutes drying time.
This load appeared to dry in 150 minutes, about 15 minutes quicker. This is nowhere near 25% but it wasn’t far off 10% quicker. It may well be that other fabrics give better results (or maybe worse results) I simply decided to test using towels which are clearly one of the more demanding fabrics tumble dryer has to deal with.
I did not notice any difference in the softness or fluffiness of the towels. I tried a blind test on my wife and she could see no difference either.
I am naturally sceptical about how such a simple idea of a couple of knobbly balls thrown in the tumble drier can offer so many benefits but a rough test did appear to show a reduction in drying time which will clearly save enough money to pay for these balls many times over in the long run.
UPDATE: Sept 2011
I just noticed that Which? tests showed they didn’t work either. Which? carry out many tests and reviews and are a great resource for all consumer related product research. ( Why take out a Which £1 trial? – what’s the catch?)
Andy,
in my opinion the load dried quicker because you had a smaller load. You took a towel out! What percentage of the initial load did this towel represent? To have a real comparison you should have dried exactly the same amount again!
P.S. I can see your website is improving considerably. Well done. I keep coming back to it when I need advice regarding repairing washing machines!
Contacted you a year or so ago, when I pointed out some links were not working. Keep up the good work!!!
Hello Peter: Many thanks for your contribution. I’m fairly sure I did. I didn’t mention that in my article though and frankly, now you have mentioned it I can’t be 100% certain that I did indeed replace the towel. I would need to do the test again ideally.
I fell for the hype and the promised reduction in drying times. What a waste of money, they do not reduce drying time at all nor make the clothes softer without conditioner. Useless
I bought some dryer balls last year. I live in a bungalow and found the noise was absolutely unbearable! in addition I didn’t find they made any difference to time or softness. When you have a long drying load such as towels, which take two hours, it is a nightmare to have the crashing and thumping going on. I tried to make sure that they were inside the towels but they didn’t stay there.
In the end I contacted the supplier who gave me a credit to choose something else from their range which was better than nothing
I remain sceptical about the benefits of these balls. They are very noisy and put lots of dimples in my drum.
I’ve been using these balls for about three years now and I’ve definitely found they reduce drying time. I haven’t noticed any difference in softness though, and I only use them on items such as towels and sheets and they seem to crease clothes (many of which I just tumble dry and put on hangers with no ironing).
I bought two dryer balls in the pound shop, and always use them.
They make a real racket for a minute or two, and then seem to calm down.
I really cannot say if they actually do anything- only use them in hope that they do as tumble drying is SO expensive.