The 9 best heated clothes airers to save money and energy when drying laundry

• Estimated 10p per hour of use
• Holds 20kg of laundry on 23m of drying space
• Timer settings up to 9 hours
• 1 year guarantee
• Comes with cover

If you’ve got a lot of washing, you need a lot of hanging space and there aren’t many that can hold 20kg – that’s about the same as a five year-old child. Minky’s top-end dryer can hang 3kg from each of its six angled arms, plus another 2kg on the flat top, making it a champion weightlifter in the heated dryer world.

However, don’t expect that much laundry to dry quickly. You will definitely need to use the supplied cover and you should also shift the clothes around, so that the heated bars are in contact with new parts of the clothes every hour or so. So it’s a fairly fiddly way of drying. 

Used with a smaller load, with more room for warm air to circulate, it’s more efficient. Baby clothes, socks and pants dry particularly quickly, although for towels and jeans you will still need to move them around and leave it on for at least the maximum nine hours the timer allows. 

Being four tiers tall, it’s a bit wobbly, so has been designed with big plastic feet to keep it upright. These aren’t the prettiest, but they do fold up neatly for storage. They can also be made L-shaped, so that you can use the Minky against the wall and only hang clothes on one side of it – a nice touch.

Overall, a decent dryer that’s an excellent choice for families with young children and lots of small items to dry. Grown-ups with fewer, larger items should look at Minky’s winged airer, further down this list.