The Best Towel Warmers (and Two to Avoid)
Towel warmers are luxury items. You don't need one, but you might want one. If you're someone who finds it hard to leave the hot shower for the cold bathroom air, a toasted towel could be just what you need.
Manufacturers sell them in two major configurations—the rack and the canister. Because I live in an apartment and the landlord would make me disappear if I drilled mounting brackets into his tiled bathroom walls, I only tested freestanding units, but towel warming racks like the Amba come in mountable versions. Some need to be hard-wired and some can be plugged into an outlet, but they otherwise function the same way as standing units. With any warmer, rack or canister, you can burn yourself because the parts that contact the towel are metal. But it's not like it's that hot to grab a towel from them safely. You'd have to be careless or distracted—or purposefully touching it for a gear review—for that to happen. Here are our favorites.
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Is It Worth It?
Photograph: Getty ImagesDo You Really Want a Towel Warmer?
All the towel warmers I tested were easy to use. None are going to slow you down when you're rushing to work. And in my unheated bathroom this winter, it was nice to get out of the shower and wrap up in a toasty towel instead of the usual room of cold air. But the towels only stayed warm for about 30 seconds before my body had sucked all the heat from them. It's not the towel warmers' fault. That's just how heat transfer works. It's like a Ghirardelli chocolate square. It's nice while it lasts, even if it is too short of a time. But that's luxury, right?
To make it more worth my while, I started warming two towels at a time so I could swap a fresh, warm one after I drained the first of heat. But then I was doing twice as much laundry. I don't much like the idea of dedicating space to a product I can only use for 15 minutes every morning, so I started dropping blankets and hoodies in the Zadro and Haven canister-style warmers to have something warm to toss on while watching TV. Just remember, don't heat anything with buttons or zippers. Nobody wants YKK burned into their fingers for life.
If 30 seconds of extra warmth is all you are looking for, then by all means get a towel warmer—or at least try one out before you commit to your new towel-warming lifestyle.
The Ultimate Towel Warmer
WIRED: I tested the Zadro and the Haven, two similar canister-style warmers, head to head to compare their heating. At the 5 minute mark, the tops of both towels were plenty warm. The bottom of the Zadro-heated towel was warm, but not warm enough. After seven minutes, the Zadro had completely heated the towel to a very toasty temperature. The Zadro holds more than the Haven, being a few inches taller. I could fit four regular bath towels in it without having to cram them in very hard. It also has a timer that runs in 15-minute increments, from 15 to 60. So if you like a long shower, you can set it to still be heating when you get out.
The Zadro retains heat much, much better than the Haven—20 minutes after I'd turned both of them off, I stuck my hand inside (for science). The Zadro was still warm and the Haven was room temperature, which is helpful if the timer runs out but you haven't toweled off yet. Like the Haven, it's (mostly) made of nice-enough materials. The outer plastic canister has a matte finish, but it's otherwise on par with the Haven.
TIRED: It looks nice, but the fake wood handle and feet feel cheap. The outside of the canister gets hotter than the Haven while it's in use, but not uncomfortably or dangerously hot.
The Budget Choice
WIRED: It's big enough to fit three regular-sized bath towels if I crammed them in there. I only use one per shower, but you and a partner could share it and both have warm towels when you get out. Or, if you like oversized bath towels, you've got enough room. It's made of nice but not astounding materials (the lid wobbles in its place, but the plastic outer canister and lid are made of glossy plastic).
TIRED: It has a timer that shuts off after 15 minutes. And it doesn't tell you that it's going to shut off after 15 minutes. You just get out of the shower and see that it's not on anymore. Fifteen minutes is enough time for a typical shower, and the towel is still warm for some time after, but if you shave your legs or your face in the shower or just like a long bath every once in a while, you'll be getting out to a towel that's not as warm as it could be. In the head-to-head against the Zadro, after 5 minutes the top of the Haven's towel was hot, but the bottom was downright cool. After 7 minutes, the bottom was warm but not hot. It took 9 minutes in total to get a thoroughly hot towel at maximum temperature.
What to Avoid
Photograph: Bed Bath & BeyondDon't Bother With Racks
Ah, racks. If canister warmers are the hare, rack warmers are the turtle. They take forever to heat up, and when done the towels were pockmarked with cold spots and weren't that hot. At the 7- and 9-minute marks, when the canister warmers had grilled their towels well-done, the towels on the racks were still cool. I kept checking as they slowly warmed up, and after 75 minutes I thought I'd given them ample chance to impress me. Max towel temperatures didn't come close to the canister warmers. No surprise, since rack and towel are exposed to room-temperature air, and the towels heated unevenly because only parts of them are touching the bars. It helped to weave the towels between bars before I turned the racks on, but I still ended up with cold spots.
The Conair has a timed delay, where you can set it to start heating 6, 8, or 10 hours later, so you can set it before bed and have it start heating towels shortly before you wake up, mitigating the slow heat-up time. But it performed even worse than the Amba at heating up towels. My end result with the Conair was a cold towel with a ruler-sized strip of warm, but not hot, fabric in the middle.
The Amba doesn't come with a timed delay, so unless you want to shell out extra cash for an accessory, you'll have to wake up early just to turn it on, then go wait around for a while before you hop in the shower. It's not something I had time for when I had to get to work.
Major drawback number two is that, unlike canister warmers that have plastic outer shells to shield you from the heating elements, racks are just chunks of hot metal hanging out there for you to bump into. The Amba gets DAMN HOT. I shouted a lot of four-letter words into the air from brushing past it accidentally. If there's a towel completely over it, no big deal. But if you contact bare metal, you're going to start singing soprano. The Conair didn't get as hot. Instead of fear, I had mild annoyances when trying to slide past and avoid the bars. It wouldn't exactly be pleasant if I touched the metal with bare skin, but I also wouldn't jump through the ceiling.
Canister warmers are the way to go. You can drag them into the living room to heat up blankets, robes, and sweatshirts on a cold night, and they're safer, quicker, and make for hotter towels.
Updated 2-14-20, 4:10 pm EST: This story has been updated to clarify that Amba Products sells timer delays separately from their heated towel racks.
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