Amana 7.1 Cu. Ft. Super Capacity Electric Dryer Review

Just so-so

"I purchased this dryer based on the glowing reviews, but I guess I'm not as impressed as the other reviewers are. Although it does a nice job of drying the clothes, this dryer has a lot of quirky features.



For one thing, you can't just put any size load in it that you want. When the installers were leaving, they instructed me to put an old rag in the drum and let the dryer dry for an hour, but the dryer kept shutting off. The installer warned me about this and told me I might want to wet the rag thoroughly and add a few more towels to the load. As far as I can tell, you can't just set the dryer for a specific time and expect it to run that long. It requires the perfect-sized load. The manual states that if the load is too small or the load is too large, it will shut off. Well how inconvenient is that! There are times that I just want to dry one thing and not a whole load. Having to take extra time to construct each load so-so to be sure the dryer will take it is a real pain. I've found that as long as you put in an average-sized load you're okay, but if it's a skimpy load or a little too full, you'll have problems. It's up to you to figure out where the dividing line is, because they don't spell it out.



The manual also states that you have to sort your laundry by size and dry all large things in one load and all small things in a different load to prevent the load from drying unevenly. This is ridiculous! I'm already sorting by color and temperature; I would have dozens of different loads if I sorted that way. All of the convenience is on their side, not the consumer's.



Another quirky feature is that whenever you open the dryer door, it automatically turns the dryer on. I only want the dryer on maybe 1/4 of the times I open the door. The other times I'm pulling things out of the dryer or checking to be sure something isn't stuck in there. I don't want it powering itself up; I would rather power it up myself when I'm ready to dry clothes For an Energy Star compliant appliance, this seems like a waste of energy to me.



The dryer is larger than my old dryer was, and there is barely room to walk past it; in fact, it is impossible to open the door all the way. This means that I inadvertently turn on the dryer when I walk or reach past it. This never happened with my old dryer, and that was because it had an upright panel on top where all the controls were; on this one, there is no upright panel. The controls are right on the front of the machine, in the way. I would think twice about buying this machine if you have a very small or narrow laundry room, because every time you walk past the dryer, it will turn on. This also means that if you stack clothes on top of the dryer, they can easily fall off. I hadn't thought of this when I looked at it before purchasing, but it's a pain, because losing socks behind the dryer is now inevitable unless I never put anything on top of the dryer..



To be fair, for the money, it does a good job of drying the clothes--that's IF you have your load balanced, sorted, and sized properly. I actually thought about calling up HomeDepot and asking them to come and haul this dryer away so I could buy a more expensive one that's easier to use, but I will probably keep it just to avoid the hassle of returning it. It's poorly designed in many ways, though, in my opinion. For the money, if you can put up with all of its little eccentricities it does the job. Would I recommend it to a friend, though? Not any friend that I wanted to keep."