Is the MOJOCO Portable Clothes Dryer Worth It?Worth it, for the right kind of load
around $50Buy on Amazon

Is the MOJOCO portable clothes dryer actually worth buying?

Worth it, for the right kind of load

4/5around $50
Buy on Amazon

1 of 5

You rent an apartment with no dryer hookup

Does that sound like you?

MOJOCO — Is the MOJOCO portable clothes dryer actually worth buying?
The moment

Why laundry day never really ends without a dryer

You know the specific damp helplessness of a wet load with nowhere to go: the radiator draped in towels, the shower rod holding three shirts hostage, the laundromat two blocks over that closes before you get off work. A mojoco portable clothes dryer sits in that exact gap, on a counter or a closet shelf, promising to finish what the washer started without a vent, a contractor, or a hole in the wall. The size of the thing is the first thing that makes you suspicious it's a toy.

The mechanism

How the mojoco portable clothes dryer actually dries a small load

Here's what's actually going on inside it. The drum sits on top rather than behind a door at waist height, because that layout lets a small heating element and a fan share space with a motor in a footprint that fits on a counter. Hot air gets pushed through the tumbling clothes the same way a full-size dryer does it, just with less of everything: less drum volume, less air moving, less time needed to push the moisture out. That's the real story behind the fifty-minute cycle time. It isn't fast because the engineering is clever, it's fast because the load is small. Nine garments is a specific number and it's doing real work in that sentence: this machine is built for a stack of t-shirts, gym socks, or a couple of baby onesies, not a hamper of bath towels or a load of jeans, because there simply isn't the drum space or the airflow to push that much wet fabric dry. The other piece worth understanding is the venting, or the lack of it. A full-size dryer needs a duct to the outside because it's moving a lot of hot, wet air somewhere. A machine this size is moving so little that it can vent into the room through its own housing without turning your apartment into a sauna, which is the whole reason it can live on a counter instead of behind a wall. That trade, small drum for no ductwork, is the entire design.

The click

So you're not buying a replacement for the dryer downstairs, you're buying a way to finish a handful of items on your own schedule without leaving the apartment. That's worth something specific: gym clothes dry before tomorrow's run, a shirt dry before tonight's plans, and it's worth exactly that much and no more.

Who it's for

Who the mojoco portable dryer suits, and who should skip it

Worth it if

  • You rent an apartment with no dryer hookup
  • You live in an RV, van, or small space with no room for a vented dryer
  • You mostly need to dry small loads like gym clothes, delicates, or baby items
  • You want a fast finish between laundromat trips

Skip it if

  • You do full family laundry loads with towels and jeans
  • You need to dry more than a handful of garments per cycle
  • You expect it to replace a full-size vented dryer

If your laundry is towels, jeans, and a household's worth of shirts every week, this isn't your dryer.

The verdict

The mojoco portable clothes dryer verdict

If you're renting without hookups, living in an RV, or you just need a fast way to finish small loads between laundromat runs, this is a quiet yes. If your laundry is towels, jeans, and a family's worth of shirts every week, buy the real dryer and let this one stay on the shelf where it belongs.

The damp-shirt-on-the-shower-rod problem goes away, at least for the loads it's actually built for. Day one probably looks like this: you get back from a run, toss the shirt and shorts in, and by the time you've showered and eaten, they're warm and dry instead of sitting in a hamper turning sour. Over a thousand buyers have rated this one, and the pattern in what they describe lines up with what the mechanism promises: it handles small loads well and struggles with big ones, which is exactly the shape of machine it was built to be.

Amazon shoppers rate it 4 out of 5 across 1,231 ratings. That is their number, not ours.

Buy on Amazon

Before you go

Which brand of dryer is the most reliable?

Among full-size vented dryers, brands like Whirlpool, GE, and LG tend to top reliability surveys, but a compact countertop dryer like this one is a different category built for small loads rather than daily family laundry, so its reliability is more about matching expectations than brand pedigree.

Are Midea tumble dryers any good?

Midea is a large manufacturer that produces or supplies compact and portable dryers under several brand names, and they're generally seen as decent for light, occasional drying jobs rather than heavy daily use.

What is the average lifespan of a clothes dryer?

A full-size vented dryer typically lasts around 10 to 13 years with normal use, while a compact, occasional-use unit like this one sees a different kind of duty cycle since it isn't run daily the way a family dryer is.

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By the numbers

60

appliances products reviewedThis one is a yes with a condition attached.

8

other reviews field the same questionWhich brand of dryer is the most reliable? comes up across our appliances coverage, not just here — one of the things worth settling before you choose.

Verdict datasetQuestion indexCC BY 4.0

Full spec sheet
BrandMOJOCO
Form FactorTop Load
Access LocationTop Load
CapacityUp to 9 garments per cycle
ColorWarm White
Cycle timeAs fast as 50 minutes

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Tom Reddick covers appliances for Is It Worth It Reviews. We research products and explain them honestly; we do not test them and we never pretend to.