The Five-Minute Check Before You Pay for an 'A+++' Dryer

If a tumble dryer you’re looking at still shows a big “A+++” or better badge, check the date before you pay a premium for it. Since 1 July 2025, that old scale is not even legal to display in EU shops or online listings anymore, every current listing is required to carry the EU’s rescaled A-to-G label instead. A badge that still says A+++ somewhere is either stale marketing or a figure nobody has checked against the current registry, and you cannot tell which just by looking at it.

Key takeaways:

• Since 1 July 2025, only the EU’s new A-to-G tumble dryer label is legal to display in shops and online listings. An “A+++” badge you still see is either out of date or unverified, not automatically wrong, but not automatically right either.
• The check costs nothing and takes about five minutes: search the model number at eprel.ec.europa.eu, the EU’s free public registry.
• Real example: Bosch’s Series 6 WQH246D9GB is still marketed on the manufacturer’s own spec sheet as “A+++ minus 10 percent.” Its actual current EU registration, effective 15 July 2025, rates the same physical dryer class B.
• Don’t assume every other A+++ or A++ badge you see is wrong either. Three dryers in our own comparison set (AEG, LG, Samsung) still carry an old-scale rating that has not been individually re-checked, unverified is not the same as false.
• If you’re choosing on running noise as well as efficiency, the one dryer here with a verified current label also happens to be the quietest, a useful tie-breaker when the badge alone can’t settle it.

The five-minute check

Go to eprel.ec.europa.eu and search the exact model number printed on the dryer, not the marketing name. If the record you find cites Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2023/2534 as its implementing act, you’re looking at the current, legally mandatory label, and you can trust the class letter, the energy-per-cycle figure and the noise rating on it. If you can’t find a matching EPREL entry at all, whatever badge the retailer or spec sheet shows you is unverified: it might still be accurate, but nobody, including the manufacturer’s own paperwork, has necessarily updated it since the rules changed.

This matters because the switch is not cosmetic. The new scale reserves its top classes, A and B, for machines that barely exist on the market yet, so a dryer that used to sit at the old ceiling typically lands in the middle of the new one, not at the top. A shopper paying extra for a top-tier legacy badge could be paying for a rating that no longer represents where the machine actually sits.

The same dryer, two documents

Bosch’s Series 6 WQH246D9GB is a real, current case of exactly this gap. Its own UK spec sheet, still live today, reads like a strong claim:

Source	Scale in force	Energy class	Energy use	Noise	Condensation efficiency
Bosch’s own spec sheet	Legacy (2010/30/EC)	A+++ minus 10%	1.44 kWh/cycle (171 kWh/year)	60 dB	Class A
EPREL public registry	New (Reg. 2023/2534)	B	0.92 kWh/cycle	59 dB	Class B

Both documents describe the same physical 9 kg heat-pump dryer. The spec sheet is not fabricated, it reports real figures measured under a regulation that stopped being the legal reference for new labels on 1 July 2025. The EPREL entry is the current, binding record: it shows an on-market start date of 15 July 2025, days after the mandatory cutover, and names Reg. 2023/2534 directly as its implementing act. If you only ever saw the spec sheet, you would think you were buying a top-of-category machine; the registry says it’s solidly mid-scale on the rules that actually apply today.

Checking the rest of a shortlist

Running the same check across a small comparison shortlist shows why this is worth doing before you buy, not after:

Model	Badge you’ll see	Scale it reflects	Noise (dB)	Checked against the current registry?
Bosch Series 6 WQH246D9GB	B	New (Reg. 2023/2534)	59	Yes, EPREL, 15 Jul 2025
Samsung DV90T5240AW	A+++	Legacy	63	Not yet
LG FDV909W	A+++	Legacy	62	Not yet
AEG 8000 TR818P4B	A++	Legacy	66	Not yet
Miele T1 TWD 360 WP 8kg	Not disclosed	N/A	N/A	N/A

The Samsung, LG and AEG badges above are not flagged as wrong, they are flagged as unchecked. That’s the actual decision in front of a shopper: two dryers can look identical on the shelf, one badge freshly confirmed against the current scale, the other not, and the sticker alone will never tell you which is which. Run the search yourself before you let a badge alone justify a higher price.

Quietest and best-verified turning out to be the same machine here is specific to this shortlist, not a rule you can assume elsewhere. It’s still a practical tie-breaker: when a badge check leaves you between two otherwise similar dryers, the one with confirmed current numbers is the safer buy, not just the more efficient-looking one.

Why this happened

The EU rescaled refrigerators, washing machines, dishwashers and televisions onto a tighter A-to-G energy label between 2019 and 2021, a change we covered in what energy class really means across appliance categories. Tumble dryers followed later, on their own timeline. Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2023/2534 set new ecodesign and energy labelling rules for the category, and the European Commission’s own announcement gives the exact date: the updated measures “become applicable from 1 July 2025.” A transitional window from 1 March to 30 June 2025 allowed both the old and new label to appear side by side; since 1 July, only the rescaled label may legally be shown. That is the regulatory reason a manufacturer’s own older paperwork can still say something the EU no longer allows on a current listing.

A correction to our own earlier coverage

Our three A+++ dryers, only one with a published price piece, published before this rescale was confirmed in our own data, stated that tumble dryers had never been folded into the EU’s rescaling round and had no announced switch date. That was accurate when it was written and is now out of date: Reg. 2023/2534 did rescale the category, and the switch date, 1 July 2025, has already passed. We’ve corrected that piece to point here rather than leave two contradictory explanations live on the same site.