The Easylife XL heated airer could save you hundreds of pounds – but how quickly can it dry your clothes?

Design

The first thing I noticed when opening the box and tipping out the components was the lack of separate parts. Pleasingly, this airer is already assembled. All you have to do is fold it out and plug it in.

I liked that it is mounted on wheels rather than on a flat base, too. If I’m having other kids around for play dates, I need to be able to move my laundry fast, to ensure it doesn’t get dirty again. The wheels mean I can steer it out of harm’s way rather than having to lift it up and carry it somewhere. The wheels also mean I can move the airer one-handed, which is useful if I’m carrying something else, such as a toddler, cup of tea, dirty nappy or other random household mess, in the other hand.

Read more: Lakeland’s Dry:Soon heated clothes airer review

For such a large item, it’s incredibly light. Information provided by the brand specified that it weighed 4.6kg, which is not much for an airer with 30 heated rails.

All rails are made from strong lightweight aluminium, which is non-corroding and made to last. Although it comes with a two-year guarantee, this airer looks like it will last a lot longer.

Drying power

It’s a lot simpler to use an Easylife XL heated airer than it is to use a tumble dryer. While a tumble dryer has a whole dial full of heating and drying options, the Easylife airer just requires powering on at the mains and the setting of an auto-drying time.

The timer has two options – two hours or four hours, and it will automatically shut off after those times (for safety reasons and to avoid overheating). Fire safety wise, I feel more confident using this in my home than I do a tumble dryer, because dryers have far more elements that could malfunction and start a blaze.

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Using the Easylife XL heated airer, you’re looking at two hours for shirts and four for denser items. Given that the airer costs just pennies to run, compared with pounds for a tumble dryer, I’d say it was significantly more convenient, cost-wise, to use the airer.

Space

The Easylife XL heated airer is a tall item, measuring 147cm, which means it’s bigger than all my children. Thankfully, it’s very stable, supported by four side castor beams, which gives me reassurance that, should any child jump on it, the airer and the clothes will survive.

The wheels can be locked in place, so there’s no danger of any child using it as a toy horse. It does take up more width than some other heated airers – such as the Lakeland dry:soon drying pod – but that’s because it has five times as many clothes-hanging options.

If you want an airer that can hold 15kg of laundry rather than 12 items, you have to accept it will take up more space. But that’s not to say it’s super bulky. It has a cuboid shaped design, as opposed to some dryer’s winged shape, which means it can be left in a corner and forgotten about until your clothes are dry.