Toyotomi TD-Z110 review

Toyotomi TD Z110 Review & Features

Designed in the UK, Toyotomi may be a little known brand new here at the moment, however they are one of the best well known household brands in Japan where humidity, condensation and high occupancy living are common everyday problems. Given the size and scale of the Japanese market, this alone makes taking a closer look at this dehumidifier worthwhile. This unit is brand new to the Amazon market place and as such has not had time to build up a strong review base as of yet, but I’m sure it will. See current online pricing here.

Design and size

Large 5 bed whole house dehumidifiers tend not to be subtle or blend in as a rule, this Toyotomi TDZ110 does a pretty damn good job however. The Dimensions are  : Width 46cm : Height 53cm : Depth 21cm, and it’s the slim depth at only 21 cm that is the real key. The control panel is clean and very easy to use, you can take a peek at the User manual here if you want. Weighing in at just over 8kg it’s not difficult to move either.

Capacity

The maximum water extraction rate is 12.5 Litres per day under ideal circumstances (high speed lots of damp) and the water collection tank holds 3.8 Litres at a time, so for most people that should mean emptying it once per day, and this is ideal for most houses up to 5 bedrooms. A continuous drain option is available via a connector hidden behind a plastic tab should you need it, but I have never seen anyone connect this up which is why nearly all manufacturers no longer supply a connection hose in the box anymore. For those with smaller homes or only 2 or 3 occupants this unit has a smaller brother in the TD-Z80.

Economy

Power consumption is on a par with most other whole house desiccant dehumidifiers at 400w in slow speed and when in high power mode the 740w is only 40 watts higher than the competition. But as always it’s what you do with the extra power that counts, and I found it to be very effective indeed, most people will however hardly ever make it out of the low speed setting. A humidistat is onboard to save money just like many others, and this stops the potential overdrying of your air as well as saving money. Standby mode is low at only 1w and it has an inbuilt energy saving ‘fuzzy logic’ algorithm within the dehumidifier which will attempt to make further savings when in use, although how you test this I have no idea at all.

How Quiet ?

On paper this sits in the middle of the pack at 48dB but when I tested this against one of the best selling 46dB Meaco units I found it to be exactly the same volume, and quieter than the Meaco when the Meaco’s compressor motor started up. I think this is due to the change in pitch that compressor motors suffer from, and you can take a listen to that at 4mins and 20 seconds into my video test here. On high speed the noise does ramp up a bit (also in video), but this isn’t a mode that people would tend to leave it on long term. What I would say though is don’t get obsessed by trying to obtain the quietest dehumidifier you can. Although I understand the desire to obtain the lowest dB figure, you often end up with a small unit that doesn’t work very well, and this is a whole house dehumidifier at the end of the day. If you need a quiet dehumidifier and don’t mind a drop in size the 3 bed Toyotomi TD Z80 is amongst the very best.

Real world effectiveness

Because this is a desiccant dehumidifier, it has a large effective working temperature range from as little a 1 to 40ºC, so there’s no need to worry if you place this in cool rooms. In my tests it managed to extract 490ml or just over half a Pint of moisture from the air in low power mode and massive 1.5 Litres or just over 2.5 Pints in high power mode in only two hours.

The front facing exhaust design has little to obstruct the airflow and 3 automatic moving louvre settings are manually adjustable for both left and right, so the laundry drying feature should be very good indeed. The manufacturer claims a 20% increase in drying efficiency over the competition but this could prove hard to test because there are so many variables involved. Normally the design of the fans in most dehumidifiers create a noticeable left hand bias, it did however give a very even air flow with only a slight left hand bias in terms of air power on both speed settings, much better than most other units I have tested.

Other features worth a mention

The real star of the show for me was the high power mode and just how effective it was. So if you’re looking for a powerful boost mode, this has it in spades. Like it’s smaller brother it comes with an easily removable and cleanable antibacterial air filter and a 2 year guarantee as standard. All desiccant dehumidifiers have a heating element built in, this one however has a programmed cooling cycle that kicks in once every 10 hours, not only is this a clever safety feature but it should increase the longevity of the unit long term. I thought this showed good safety awareness and good engineering practise.

Conclusion

Just like it’s smaller brother the only thing it lacked was an Ioniser function to really tick every box. Having said that it wouldn’t be a deal breaker for me, in fact some people report black marks or ‘spotting’ created on walls by ionisers so I’m indifferent when I see them now. I thought quality was high throughout including the moulding of the case itself, and for a 5 bedroom dehumidifier the price is comparable with similar units from competitors.

Also see…

• Best dehumidifiers – My personal top recommendations
• Dehumidifier testing – How I test every dehumidifier I reccomend