Whirlpool WED5900SW0

by Kiwi
(Doylestown, PA, USA)

The Whirlpool WED5900SW0 is an electric clothes dryer with a 7.0 cubic ft. capacity. It includes nine automatic cycles, a delicate cycle, and a variety of other standard features. Unfortunately, the much-vaunted AccuDry feature leaves a lot to be desired. More on that later.

The features are fairly basic, but comprehensive. There is a good variety of drying cycles and heat levels to handle different fabrics. The adjustable end-of-cycle signal can be set to off, soft, or loud, and will beep to let you know the cycle has ended. Fortunately it can be disabled, so if you have it running at night you won’t be awakened by the beeps.

The dryer also includes a wrinkle shield feature. This can be turned on or off. If you set it on, it will gently tumble the clothes inside for 120 minutes after the drying cycle is completed, to help guard against wrinkles setting in. This means you do not have to go up and empty the load as soon as it is finished to avoid wrinkles.

One of the big advantages Whirlpool promotes is the AccuDry sensing system. This is supposed to detect the amount of moisture in the drying load and hence dry just long enough: not so long that it gets too dry, but long enough that you don’t end up with lots of damp clothes. This is a good theory, but in practice it doesn’t seem to work too well if you have mixed loads (heavyweight and lightweight articles) or very big items (such as sheets). Sheets, in particular, seem to be a big problem. They have an annoying tendency to get wrapped and tangled up in themselves. This results in the outside becoming dry, but the inside still staying quite damp. Even if you set the drying time to be super dry (e.g. the towel setting), this still is a problem.

The dryer also features an economy drying mode. Unfortunately, for most loads this seems not to work very well, and you end up having to run the dryer again, negating any economizing.

Overall, this is a reasonable and basic dryer. The annoyances listed with the AccuDry system are not major offsets, but do mean you have to take more care than Whirlpool would suggest when using the dryer.