Too loud to use, with no discernible improvement in clothes softness or drying time.

I bloody hate needless loud noise, drives me nuts. So you can guess my delight when I discovered what a racket these dryer balls make when in the tumble dryer. Arrggh.

They promise to mechanically soften fabrics in the tumble dryer without the need for fabric softener or dryer sheets.  “Deadly”, I thought, as the tumble dryer is used quite often here and the less chemicals/softeners that are used here, the better.

The dryer balls are bascially the size of tennis balls, but are much harder and fairly rigid. They are used in a pair. Each ball has different shapes nodules on its surface spaced at regular distances, one squarish shaped, one more rounded. I presume the idea is that they bash together in the machine with your clothes in between to produce a softening effect.

I really don’t care how they work. Alas my scientific inquisitiveness was not piqued. All that rattled around in my brain was the constant “bang bang” as they walloped off the inside of the tumble dryer. It was like I was tumbling a pair of runners or similar.

I persevered and used them for a week. At this stage, I’ve had enough. To be honest, there’s been no huge improvement or change in the softness of the clothes and the noise has gotten to me. I’m abandoning them.

They are now widely available, I’ve seen them in Tesco and Heatons. They retail for about €15 as far as I recall.

Perhaps if they were manufactured from a less rigid material the noise could be decreased but this would probably impact on their softening ability. Possibly they could be more successfully used if your utility room is far away from your living quarters and the noise more muffled. 

Rated 1/5 on Oct 24 2007 by ManicMammy
Review Tags: ball, clothes, dryer, drying, gadget, household, laundry
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