Hoover H-DRY 500 ND H10A2TCBER-80 Review

With its 10kg capacity and low running costs, the heat-pump powered Hoover H-DRY 500 ND H10A2TCBER-80 is a great choice for anyone who tumble dries washing loads frequently. There are lots of programmes to help you achieve the best results, plus a smart app providing even more choice – although the dryer needs to be set to the correct programme to use it fully. Great drying results and price make this a dependable tumble dryer.

The accompanying dryer to the Hoover H-WASH 500, the Hoover H-DRY 500 ND H10A2TCBER-80 is a smart, app-connected tumble dryer. A heat-pump model, this tumble dryer is efficient to run – although a little slow – and presents a huge range of programmes.

Well priced and offering a large capacity, it gets the balance between size and price just about right.

Hoover H-DRY 500 ND H10A2TCBER-80 design and features – It can be controlled via the app, although you need to have selected the right mode to use it

• Water tank lifts off the porthole, but it’s fiddly to get back into place
• App control requires the machine to be in the right mode to use it
• Lots of programmes to choose from

With its anthracite finish, the Hoover H-DRY 500 ND H10A2TCBER-80 looks neat and professional. If you’ve no choice but to have this tumble dryer out on display, then it at least looks good.

The appliance is home to the standard set of controls, with a dial to select the desired programme. These aren’t labelled, although the programme name does show up on the LCD. As such, you may need to keep the manual to hand at first to help decipher the symbols.

As well as the regular drying programmes, there are some special ones. Once such option is All In One, which will prompt you to remove lighter items part-way through a cycle, to avoid over-drying particular items. It’s neat, but how useful this programme will be depends on whether you’ll remain close to your dryer while it’s running and how easy it is to sort items mid-cycle.

Dedicated drying programmes for wool items and waterproofs are welcome, as is Auto Care, which will measure the load and adjust settings to the type of clothes automatically.

For each cycle, you can set a delay timer, an anti-crease mode and the drying target (iron, hanging, cupboard or extra-dry).

I’ve seen connected devices from Hoover before – on the Hoover Dynamic Next DXWH11A2TCEXM-80, for example – but this new appliance, just like the H-WASH 500 washing machine, uses the brand-new hOn app.

From the app, you can remotely control the tumble dryer and select from a wider range of programmes (each of which has a useful descriptor). You can also create a virtual wardrobe, scanning your labels to have the app suggest the right drying programme for each item. It’s a little overkill for regular items, but if you have more expensive items or specialist clothing, it may prove handy.

Once you start a drying cycle from the app, you can check on progress and you’ll receive a notification once it’s complete.

This is all great, but in order to use the app to control the machine you have to have the tumble dryer on the Wi-Fi setting, after which you can choose your programme and mode from your phone. It’s a shame that Wi-Fi control isn’t just activated all of the time. However, without the tumble dryer set to remote control, the app will still give you a live status on the current programme and ping you a notification when it’s done, so it’s still useful.

Offering a 10kg (wet) capacity, the H-DRY 500 is at the top end of what you can expect from a tumble dryer. As with previous Hoover dryers, there’s a used water tank that clips into the porthole door. Removing it is as easy as grabbing the handle and lifting, then you can pour the water away down the sink. It’s a little more fiddly to line up the tank to put it back into place, however.

If you don’t want the faff of emptying the water manually, you can use the optional drain hose instead, and connect this to your wastewater pipe.

There are two filters to clean, too. One lifts out of the door, and the other sits at the bottom of the machine, under the rather flimsy-feeling flap that you push to open. Both are quick to remove and should be cleaned after every cycle; there is a warning symbol to tell you it’s time to clean the filters should you forget.

Hoover H-DRY 500 ND H10A2TCBER-80 performance – Low running costs and effective drying

• Quite slow, but you get decent efficiency
• A quiet tumble dryer that won’t disturb
• Excellent drying results

To test out the Hoover H-DRY 500 ND H10A2TCBER-80, I put it through a series of real-world tests, starting with 3.5kg of wet washing. First, I ran the Whites programme with the tumble dryer set to cupboard dry. This programme used just 0.527kWh of power.

There’s always some loss of fibre in drying, but with this programme, the clothes were 0.08kg lighter than when they went in, giving us a figure of 109% of removal. In other words, the clothes were completely dry and just a few fibres were lost to the process. That’s an excellent result.

Next, I tried the Eco Cottons programme, set to hanging dry, which cut the power usage to just 0.238kWh. The water removal figure here was 91.67%, with 0.08kg of water left in the clothes. The clothes were very slightly damp to the touch, but dried quickly when hung up.

Impressively, I measured the cycle at just 58.3dB, with the tumble dryer exceptionally quiet. Sure, you can hear that it’s on, but it’s quiet enough not to bother.

One of the downsides of heat pump technology is that the cycles are slow. Both cycles here took more than two hours to complete. According to the manual, a full load can take more than five hours, depending on the setting. There’s a rapid option available, which increases the pressure of the heat pump – but you sacrifice efficiency for speed. As I see it, it’s better to wait longer and conserve resources.

An A++ appliance, the EU energy label states annual power consumption at 282kWh, which works out at 1.76kWh per cycle with a full load. To create a level playing field across all review appliances, I work out a running cost based on the UK average, which is 160 loads per year. Assuming load sizes of 6kg (high), 4.5kg (medium) and 3kg (low), I can work out the total amount of drying in weight per year.

Using this information, I can work out how many full cycles the Hoover would need to complete each full year’s amount. For example, with its 10kg capacity, this tumble dryer would need just 96 drying cycles to complete the high use challenge; the 8kg Hotpoint ActiveCare NT M11 82XB would need 120 cycles.

This gives me running costs of £26.65 per year for high use, £19.99 for medium use and £13.32 for low use. So, even though the Hotpoint ActiveCare has slightly lower running costs per cycle, its smaller capacity means that it would cost you more per year to run than the H-DRY 500, assuming you run each at maximum capacity each time.

The older Hoover Dynamic Next DXWH11A2TCEXM-80 has an 11kg drum and is only slightly more efficient, and it costs a little more, too.

Should you buy the Hoover H-DRY 500 ND H10A2TCBER-80?

If you do a lot of tumble drying and will be using this dryer mostly to its maximum capacity, you’ll find it an efficient and powerful tumble dryer. It offers a greater number of programmes, including better energy-efficient options, than the older Dynamic Next, and the new hOn app is great for increasing the range of programmes further.

Those who will be drying smaller loads of clothes may wish to consider a smaller tumble dryer, such as the Hotpoint ActiveCare NT M11 82XB, or one of the alternative choices on our best tumble dryer list. However, if you’re looking for a large-capacity dryer with plenty of features, the Hoover H-DRY 500 ND H10A2TCBER-80 is an excellent choice.