Miele dryers
I have the TOL M Touch TCR780, which was a warranty replacement for a TCR860 which had a warped drum. It still makes the ticking noises, although I was assured it wouldn’t as it supposedly has a “Silent” drum (in reality it’s no different to the TCR860 I had before or the one my mum has). I’ve had to learn to live with it as an irritation - although one could argue it’s not something you should expect from a “silent” dryer that retails at the price that it does. It only seems to be a phenomenon with the later models - older Miele dryers (including earlier T1s) will still tick but only faintly and not as audible throughout the house like the newer ones.
The TCR780 is however an improvement from the previous TCR860 in terms of control of the drying temperature. My TCR860 got to 65°+, even on Gentle tumble and would shrink laundry if you weren’t careful, which was never a problem with my previous T8860WP Edition 111 dryer (which had the separate fan and equal drum reversing, why I got rid of that I don’t know
). The TCR780 uses the cooling fan a lot more to dissipate and control the heat inside, so is a bit more forgiving. It also has the DryCare 40 cycle which limits the temperature to 40 degrees and basically runs the cooling fan for the whole cycle. I’ve noticed it’s gentler on jeans and elastic - although I have still had a couple of t shirts shrink when using that setting. I tend to use automatic plus for the majority of laundry and it dries evenly - although I do have all the drying levels adjusted to max in the settings menu.
One huge benefit of the Mieles is the filtration and the ease of maintenance - so simple to clean the foam filters on a cold 30 min cycle in the washing machine. When I worked in the industry we once did an experiment where a Miele with foam filter was compared against a self cleaning condenser, and after an extended period of so many uses (can’t remember the exact figure) the BSH condenser was heavily clogged with lint whilst the Miele was spotless from being protected by the additional foam filter.
The bed linen cycle isn’t bad and is certainly an improvement from the first generation of T1s which had a tendency to tangle lighter weight bedding on particular. The only glitch on the newer models with the HygieneDry level is that if you select extra dry on bed linen it will still do the Hygiene stage and over dry laundry, so the highest level you can use is Normal plus. Because of this it will still occasionally leave damp patches. I find whilst not tangling into a ball it will still crease/wrinkle bedding quite badly if you don’t dry the duvet cover separately from the bottom sheet (though again this will happen in any dryer). Because of this I tend to just dry bedding overnight on the clothes horse, which is more efficient still than using even a heat pump dryer.
In fact in the majority of circumstances I prefer to air dry laundry either on the horse overnight or on the line weather permitting. It’s better for the clothes, creasing if any just falls out and is also free, especially important with the price of energy nowadays
. Although we are lucky that we don’t have allergies and have a fairly well ventilated house for laundry to dry quickly inside. I only really use the dryer for towels or if I have a lot of washing to get through at once, so one could argue I don’t really get the value out of the Miele
.
I personally always thought it was little silly how the majority of BSH dryers here even still don’t reverse, luckily the next generation of Series 8/iq700 ranges due out have the bed linen cycle. Another machine to watch are the Haier I-pro machines - granted you aren’t getting the German engineering but they reverse evenly and they have launched a new model which is only 59dB. They are fairly solid too as they are based on the F&P machines, and have a 5 year warranty which is more than the 2 you get nowadays from Miele and Bosch.
I haven’t owned one but I have used a friends AEG 9000 series dryer a few times and it’s certainly a nice machine, very quiet, doesn’t tangle or crease much at all and is the gentlest dryer in terms of heat that I’ve used, very similar to the Edition 111 Miele where clothes are barely warm to the touch. As others have said though it is a shame it doesn’t have as strong filtration, and my partner had reliability problems with an AEG Protex heat pump a few years back.
Before I forget - Miele dryer drums are 120l regardless of capacity. The washer drum volumes are 64l for the SoftSteam drums (all 9kg and older 8kg), and 59.5 for the traditional honeycomb drums (7 and most newer 8kg).
Jon
. I do find the overall performance of the Miele far superior, since it has higher airflow rates things like pockets/cuffs/waistbands/ hoods of hoodies or pockets and waistbands of joggers (which I dry all inside out) come out perfectly dry, whereas they’ll still be damp from the Beko since the airflow is much less, I think the Bosch is slightly in between. I do also have the Mieles dryness level set to Max for cotton cycles. Mine also made the exact same ticking noise, after arguing with Miele they did replace the whole brush piece but obvs it came straight back, it doesn’t bother me anymore since the performance makes up for it. Both Bosch and Miele are over a year old and their evaporator fins are still spotless, but I’ve had to flush the bekos through with water multiple times through it’s life to try and keep it clean (both mine and my partners families models are starting to smell of damp now from clogging of lint)
