The Mitsubishi Jet Towel hand dryer – Tried and Tested
We had a great try-out last week of the Mitsubishi Jet Towel hand dryer, and as a result are very impressed with it.
On paper, the Mitsubishi Jet Towel is extremely impressive, but as we know from our experience with other hand dryers, actual usage doesn’t always live up to the technical specification so we were really keen to try it out.
I must say, we had rather high expectations to begin with, not least because the Mitsubishi has been around for a long time and we were aware that it has had fairly continuous development (it was actually the first ‘hands-in’ hand dryer, well before the Dyson Airblade), and is installed in a lot of high profile washrooms around the UK (such as Marks & Spencers).
However, anything which rivals the Airblade needs to be exceptional, because the combination of an excellent product and the very high brand awareness of Dyson takes a lot of beating. It also means that every feature tends to be compared with the Airblade as the benchmark to beat.
To summarise our first impressions:
The build quality is very high: the unit looks robust and sturdy, yet still stylish. The design is quite angular (compared to the Biodrier Executive, for example) which some will like more than others.
The drying time is good (Mitsubishi say between 9 and 13 seconds, depending on the settings) and it certainly feels like a powerful motor. Like the Dyson and the Biodrier, the water is more ‘scraped’ from the hands than actually heated up and evaporated, and to do this, the hands are inserted and then removed from the drying area.
Thankfully, the unit has a drip tray: all the water is captured and guided in to the drip tray (capacity 800ml), and there is easy access to the route it takes so it can easily be cleared of anything which should not be there. We were very pleased to see this as we hear a lot about messy, dangerous floors around Dyson Airblades.
The Mitsubishi Jet Towel can be adjusted in 2 ways: the heater can be turned off, and the speed of the motor can be switched to either 550watts or 720watts. These adjustments are fairly easy to do, but they do need the cover to be unscrewed and removed (would have been better if they were accessible without getting out a screwdriver, in our opinion). It is in these settings that lie the most impressive features of the Mitsubishi Jet Towel, for these reasons:
Comfort
Using warm or cold air in a hand dryer which ‘scrapes’ the water off hands rather than evaporating it actually has very little effect on the drying time, (Mitsubishi agree that having the heater element switched on only reduces the drying time by a second or two) but it can make a huge difference to the comfort of the user (and therefore, it can be an important deciding factor in whether someone actually uses the dryer for as long as they need to, to actually get their hands dry). I can tell you that for some hand dryers which do not use a heating element at all, we have had phone calls to complain that it is unpleasant to use).
This also applies in the summer: if we ever get a repeat of last year’s sweltering summer, we will once again hope that we have a cold air dryer waiting for us in the washroom.
Noise
As we frequently say, all modern, high speed hand dryers make a lot of noise: it is because the motor needs to run at such a high speed to belt out such high quantities of air. However, there are some situations where the level of noise is unacceptable (we have had this problem in certain office environments, where the washrooms are next to a conference room) and in these situations the ability to turn the speed - and therefore the noise - down is extremely valuable.
The remarkable thing about the Mitsubishi, though, is that when turned down to the slower speed (running at 550 watts) it generates 58 dB(A) @ 1m – this is the lowest of any hand dryer we have tested, and makes a very big difference in practice.
Economy
Because all modern hand dryers have running costs which are well over 90% cheaper than using paper towels, we are not often impressed by electricity savings on hand dryers because they are so cheap to run in the first place. However, with the heater off and the motor on the lower setting, the Mitsubishi Jet Towel will use just 550w – almost two thirds less than the Dyson Airblade, and even with the heating element on AND switched back up to the higher speed, it is only going to use 1240w. So, generally, very impressive.
And, having said all those wonderful things about the ability to switch the heater and fan, we should also point out that there is an unheated model as well, in case you think you’ll not need warm air.
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