Fisher & Paykel 8kg Heat Pump Dryer DH8060P3

(thought I'd get the answer to the question out of the way before I ramble on)

I've not owned or used a lot of heat pump / condenser dryers, but think I've worked out a little bit of what is and isn't good.

First was an ASKO T783C, and that was...okay? It was actually my parents'. The best thing was that you could pull the condenser out and wash it out, something I discovered was not a thing with heat pump dryers, or at least the ones I would encounter later.

Needing to buy both a washing machine and dryer, but not really having a sense of what I was looking for in a dryer I bought Electrolux, because the washing machine I'd had previously had worked fine, but had needed to be left behind when I moved.

I knew I wanted a heat pump condenser dryer, the Asko wasn't a heat pump just condenser. If I was using a dryer I wanted it to be the most efficient.

The Electrolux EDH3786GDW entered into washing / drying service.

It again was okay in a different way.

I never needed to worry about what clothes went in regarding temperature and heat, because it never got hot. It'd always get warm, and certainly warm enough enough to dry clothes.

But it took forever no matter what setting you chose, even on the "cotton extra dry" setting, which was the 'everyday' setting we'd use on the dryer.

It would sometimes take hours and the clothes still might come out a little damp.

I'd sometimes do a washing load late at night then put it in the dryer on a timer for the next day and then after the 3+ hours it would take to dry not even a large load I might be able to do a second, but it would be hit and miss if I could do that.

Quick explanation of how all these dryers work.

Heat is generated, either through a heater coil or through a heat pump (which is basically a mini-air conditioner unit that just does heat).

The heated air is blown through the drum and your clothes, the air then goes through the fluff container and then across a condenser, which condenses the air which cools it and the water is extracted into a container you empty (or into a hose that goes into the sink).

The Electrolux EDH3786GDW also had a problem that is seemingly common with most (although not all) heat pump dryers.

With the EDH3786GDW dryer, after the fluff container the air, and more importantly any fluff that makes it through the fluff container hits the condenser.

The instruction manual for the Electrolux EDH3786GDW just states to vacuum this out with the brush attachment.

You also can't be too aggressive when doing this because you'll damage the fins of the condenser, it is these fins that gives the air lots of surface area to condense on.

Even after vacuuming this frontal area of the condenser there's still some fluff left. I eventually worked out how to get it out is that you need to stand there with a toothpick and painstakingly and carefully tease out all the remaining fluff that has sort of congealed there.

When I found I needed to get a new dryer, as the Electrolux died one day and the repair was going to be a little over half the price of new one, I elected to get a new one.

Beginning my research I looked through the big three shops that are JB HiFi Home, The Good Guys and Harvey Norman.

I didn't want to have to wait and wanted to pick it up myself, so Appliances Online was out. Plus kind of needed the dryer sooner rather than later.

Then having narrowed it down to the models they stocked I found the manufacturer's websites and downloaded the manuals for all the models of dryer they had on offer.

What I wanted, and what I hoped existed was a dryer with a secondary filter, one that sat after the fluff container (or the "lint container" to give it its proper name) and the condenser. It seemed like this would be a sensible thing for a dryer to have.

Only one in my researches actually had this secondary filter.

The Fisher & Paykel 8kg Heat Pump Dryer DH8060P3.

The Fisher & Paykel DH8060P3 was surprising on first use, especially after the Electrolux. It gets surprisingly hot. If you're there when the cycle ends and open it up, your clothes are properly hot, in the same way that your clothes felt coming out of an old school dryer.

It's got a few weird quirks, none of which would stop me from recommending it to anyone.

The presence of the condenser filter more than makes up for any odd quirks.

On the Electrolux (both dryer and washing machine) there was a way to turn off the noise it made when it finished a cycle.

On the Fisher & Paykel it's a button on the control panel that you have to disable every time you do a load, and it has two settings for the signal to sound "Damp Dry" and "End".

The outside gets surprisingly hot on some cycles, maybe I'd just become used to the terribly not hot Electrolux, but it was a surprising difference.

It does mean it heats up properly and I can get a load of washing dried in a short amount of time.