Compared with paper towels, almost any hand dryer saves money, even in a washroom seeing only a handful of uses a day. The saving is in what you stop buying, storing and emptying.
Buying the wrong one costs money in a different way. Nothing in this price bracket is built for more than roughly 100 uses a day, most carry a return-to-base warranty rather than an on-site one, and several take 20 to 40 seconds to dry a pair of hands. In a busy washroom that means a queue, or people walking out without drying at all.
Running cost follows directly from that dry time. A 1800W dryer running for 20 seconds uses four times the electricity of a 900W dryer running for 10. Over a few years that gap is wider than the difference in purchase price.
Cheapest to buy
The JETBOX Junior is the lowest price on the page and, at 60dB, among the quietest, but it takes around 30 seconds. The Blue Dry Junior is the same trade-off with a 2 year warranty.
Cheapest to run
The Dryflow Connect draws only 500W, the lowest here, and carries a 3 year warranty. The Handy Dryers Orb is 900W with a 10 second dry time, so it uses the least electricity per pair of hands, and its 5 year warranty is the longest on the page.
If speed matters most
The Stream Hygiene Mini Jet moves air at 111 m/s and dries in about 10 seconds, at the cost of 78dB. For faster units across the full range see high speed hand dryers, or our quiet hand dryers if noise is the constraint.
