We have had our Miele T1 heat pump dryer for a while now, and I can recommend it. I was surprised that Miele actually had a heat pump dryer that was affordable (not cheap, just affordable). It takes about the same time to dry a load as our old F&P that we had from 1975 to about 2019. We had a cheap Westinghouse after that and it was just nasty - the door was so hard to close my mother was usually unable to do it! Then it only lasted 3-4 years before it broke down badly enough that we said good riddance to bad rubbish and got the Miele.
Like all dryers, the T1 will ball up fitted sheets and fitted matress protectors on occasion - maybe one time in three. But our previous dryers did that too. It is just the nature of fitted sheets to do that. I have yet to work out a way of putting the sheets in that will prevent this.
The T1 has three filters to clean. There is one pull out one inside the door and one in the slot where it pulls out from that have to be cleaned after each load, similar to the ones in the door of our previous dryers. These are no problem. The third filter is in the air intake for the heat exchanger. It prevents the heat exchanger from having to be cleaned all the time, but the filter is a nuisance to clean manually - you have to run it under the tap and rub off all the accumulated powdery dirt, then squeeze it out and refit it. If squeezed out properly, you can then immediately run the dryer while it is still damp. Cleaning it seems to take 10 minutes or so. It lives inside a little door on the bottom left on the front of the dryer. I have got quite tired of having to do that as you only find out it that it needs cleaning when you try to start a load and still get a red "clean filters" indicator. It only happens every 10? or so loads (depending on how long they take and how much outside air was needed for the load). Recently I re-read the manual and found that it is possible to just drop the filter in the washing machine on warm, no detergent, low spin. This is called "regenerating" the filter, and works well to clean it fully, but probably should not be done too often or the filter will get worn out. After doing that, it takes significantly longer before it needs cleaning again. I have yet to have to vacuum the heat exchanger fins as the filter is very effective at stopping dirt getting to them. If I need to, they are easily accessible just behind the filter. This filter will eventually need replacing, and replacements are quite expensive. I am considering having a spare filter to swap in so I do not have to clean it immediately when that is needed.
We do not have the dryer plumbed in, so we do need to empty the water bottle after each load. I forgot once, and the dryer stopped in the middle of the load when the bottle was full, rather than spilling water on the floor.
When the cycle finishes, when you take the clothes out, you often feel for a second that they are still a bit damp. This is an illusion - once out of the dryer for a few seconds it goes away. But it is probably why some people think a heat pump dryer is not actually drying things properly. Or maybe why they dry things for much longer than with a standard dryer. Or maybe Miele just make a better heat pump dryer that gets the drying done in the same time as a standard dryer - I have not used any other heat pump dryer to be able to compare it with. When drying a full load of bedclothes including a matress protector, the matress protector is always still quite damp when the rest of the load is finished and the dryer stops. This is simply because of how much water a matress protector absorbs, and is the same as with standard dryers that also detect moisture levels automatically. I now normally dry the matress protector separately, and the total time taken for the two loads works out about the same as one load and having to restart the dryer for an extra 30-45 minutes manually to get the matress protector dry.
The T1 does not do full reversal of the drum. When it reverses it, it just does a short time in reverse before it switches back to forwards again. It seems just as effective doing this as the Westinghouse was with full reversals.
The estimated drying times the T1 gives on its front panel are not particularly good and seem to mostly be based on how long the previous use of that cycle was. Ttowards the end of the estimated time it will often revise the time and dry for longer. The revised time is usually more accurate.
If you do not empty the T1 immediately after it finishes, it will do occasional short airings for several hours afterwards, to prevent crumpling.
Even though there are only two of us and we only do loads of washing maybe 8-10 times a month, the power bill did drop when we got the T1.
