Meaco Arete One 20L review: a damp Lancashire terrace, a cellar and a lot of washing

Bev found it on a Sunday in February, moving the wardrobe to get at a plug. A patch of black spots on the back bedroom wall, low down in the corner, about the size of a dinner plate. She didn't say anything for a moment. Then she said, "Keith, that's where the wedding dress is."

The wedding dress is Kayleigh's, bought in January for a wedding next spring and hanging in that wardrobe in a zip bag because it's the only one long enough. Nothing gets a man to the shops faster. By the Tuesday we had a MeacoDry Arete One 20L in the back bedroom, and I'd started a notebook.

That was 9 February. This is 217 days of that notebook: three rooms, one cellar, a lot of washing and the odd power cut.

The house, and why it's damp

We live in a stone terrace in Burnley, built around 1900, like half the town. Solid walls, no cavity. A cellar under the front room, steps down from the kitchen. A small back bedroom above the kitchen that faces north and never sees the sun from October to March. And Lancashire weather, which means washing dries outside maybe one day in four, and the other three it goes on airers and radiators indoors.

Thirty-odd years of fixing machines at work teaches you the basics. Every load of washing dried indoors puts litres of water into the air, and cold stone walls are where it comes back out. Where it sits, mould grows. The Arete One is a compressor dehumidifier, which works like a small fridge: room air goes over a cold coil, the water drips into a tank, and the dry air comes back out a bit warmer.

What you get for your money

That 20 litres needs a note. Like most dehumidifiers, it's measured in warm, very humid lab conditions, not a 14°C back bedroom in February. In a cool British house you'll get far less per day, and that's normal.

How I tested it

I bought two cheap digital hygrometers and checked them first with the salt test: a pile of damp table salt in a sealed sandwich box with each meter for eight hours. Both should read 75%. One read 74, one 77, so I knocked two off the second one for the rest of the test. It's an old fitter's habit. Never trust a gauge you haven't checked.

Then I logged humidity morning and evening, room temperature, the water in the tank at every empty, and every kWh through a plug-in energy monitor. Noise from a metre with the team's usual sound meter. You'll find the whole method on our how we test page. Bev logged the washing, which was her idea and her handwriting, and far neater than mine.

The back bedroom: from 74% to the low 50s

Before the Meaco went in, the back bedroom read 74% humidity on a February morning, at 13°C, with condensation running down the inside of the window. Anything over about 60% for long spells and mould has a good time.

I set it to 55% and closed the door. In the first 24 hours it pulled out 3.9 litres, and by the second morning the room read 57%. Seven days in, it was holding between 52% and 56% every morning, and the window was dry for the first time that winter.

I cleaned the mould off with a mould spray and a lot of care, and dried the wall with the Meaco running. It hasn't come back in seven months. The wedding dress, for the record, was fine. Kayleigh came round to check it personally and stayed for tea.

The Smart Humidity button, which picks the target for you, kept the room in the low 50s too. Once the room was dry, it cycled on and off on its own, and most days the compressor only ran a few hours.

The cellar: 7.1 litres in two days

The cellar was the real test. It's where the old coats live, the Christmas decorations and Bev's tumble dryer, and it's always smelt faintly of wet dog, even though we haven't had a dog since 2011.

At the start it read 81% at 11°C. The Arete One pulled out 7.1 litres in the first 48 hours, which meant emptying the tank three times and carrying it up the steps. After that I ran a length of old garden hose from the adapter on the back into the Belfast sink down there, and never emptied the tank in the cellar again. The hose isn't in the box. Meaco says most people never use one, so they stopped including it. In a cellar you will.

By the end of February the cellar held at around 60%, and the smell had gone. Coats that used to come up feeling clammy now come up feeling like coats. Over the summer, running on its own in the cellar, it kept things between 55% and 60% on a few hours of compressor a day.

Drying washing: the Laundry mode

This is what most people really buy a dehumidifier for, so Bev and I did it properly. Same wash every time: a 6 kg load, spun at 1,200, on two airers in the back bedroom with the door shut and the heating off in that room.

On Laundry mode, which runs the fan high and ignores the humidity target, a load was dry in an average of 5 hours 20 minutes across eleven washes in February and March. Meaco says 4 hours 45 minutes, and on the two warmer days in March we got close to that. Without the Meaco, the same load on the same airers took the best part of two days and made the window run.

Then the comparison Bev really wanted. Her condenser tumble dryer in the cellar used 4.1 kWh on the same load. The Meaco used 1.12 kWh. Our towels come out of the tumble dryer fluffier, I'll give it that. Everything else, Bev now prefers off the airer, because nothing shrinks.

"Five hours on the airer and nothing's gone crispy on the radiator. I'd have paid for this years ago if I'd known." Bev, wash number nine

Noise and night mode

The Arete One is the quietest compressor dehumidifier I've lived with. My meter read 42 dB from a metre on the low fan and 45 dB on high, a few decibels above Meaco's figures, which is normal in a real room with a hard floor. It's a soft fan sound with a low hum from the compressor, and a gentle click when the compressor starts and stops.

Night mode is the bit I'd point out to anyone putting it near a bedroom. Press it, and every light on the top goes off, the fan drops to low, and the beeps stop. It takes two presses to come out of it, which stopped a visiting toddler undoing it at Easter. The back bedroom shares a wall with ours, and neither of us heard it through the wall.

Running costs, in pence

My energy monitor showed between 205 W and 212 W while the compressor was running. The real cost depends on how many hours it runs, and that changes a lot with the season. The pence in the table use 26.32p per unit, the average Direct Debit figure under Ofgem's price cap for the last three months of 2026.

That's roughly 29p a day on average across seven months. Three washes a week on the Meaco instead of the tumble dryer save about £2.35 a week, which over a winter pays for a good chunk of the electricity it uses everywhere else.

Where it struggled: the garage

I tried it in the garage too, where the mower and allotment tools spend the winter going rusty. Below about 8°C it was a waste of time: the coil kept frosting, the machine kept stopping to defrost, and I got a cupful of water in a day. It's rated down to 5°C, but compressor dehumidifiers get weaker the colder it gets.

For an unheated garage, a caravan in winter or a shed, you want a desiccant dehumidifier, which works differently and doesn't mind the cold. I've put one under alternatives.

Filters and looking after it

There's a dust filter at the back that I vacuumed monthly, and the H13 HEPA filter behind it, which had gone from white to light grey after four months in the cellar. Meaco's dehumidifier shop sells a three-pack of replacements for this size at £36 at the time of writing.

The tank is well made, with a handle on top and a spout on each side, so you pour without turning it upside down. The body sits flat against the wall and breathes through a cut-out at the back. In a March power cut it restarted on its own with the same settings, exactly what you want in a cellar you don't visit every day.

Black Friday or buy it now?

My honest answer: probably not, if you've got damp now.

• Right now it's £234.90 at Meaco's dehumidifier shop, £239.99 at Robert Dyas, £259 at Currys and around £260 elsewhere.
• The trend: PriceSpy shows the price as stable over the last three months, with a low of £239.99 among the shops it tracks.
• Last year: we couldn't find a reliable record of a big Black Friday drop on this model, so I won't promise one on 27 November.

A good price, to my mind, is anything under £230, and under £220 I'd buy two. But mould doesn't wait for a sale. Every week of condensation is another week on the walls, and October is when the washing moves indoors. If you need it, buy it at about £235 and get it running.

A good present? For the right house, yes

Nobody dreams of a dehumidifier under the tree. But I once gave one to a young couple who'd just bought their first terrace and found a damp bedroom, and it got more thanks than any gift I've wrapped. Good for a first-time buyer in an old house, a renter drying washing in a flat, or parents in a stone cottage who keep complaining about the windows.

Put in the box: a length of garden hose if it's going near a sink or a drain, and a cheap digital hygrometer so they can watch the numbers drop. To drain upwards into a worktop sink, Meaco sells a separate pump for the Arete range.

Posting back 15 kg of dehumidifier is nobody's idea of fun, so measure the spot first. The law still protects you: a cooling-off fortnight from delivery on internet orders, and 30 days to reject a faulty one for a full refund under the Consumer Rights Act. Christmas return windows are up to each shop. Register it with Meaco for the guarantee.

And if you rent and there's mould, report it in writing as well. A dehumidifier deals with condensation from everyday living. It won't fix a leaking gutter, rising damp or a broken extractor fan, and those are your landlord's job.

Is your house the right house for it?

Alternatives worth a look

MeacoDry Arete One 12L, £159.90 at Meaco's dehumidifier shop. Same design, smaller and lighter. For a flat or a two-bed house with a condensation problem rather than a cellar, it's enough, and it saves you about £75.

Meaco DD8L desiccant, £158.90 at Meaco's dehumidifier shop. The one for cold places: garages, caravans, sheds. It uses more electricity than a compressor model, but it keeps working when it's near freezing.

Meaco 20L Low Energy Platinum, £224.95 at Meaco's dehumidifier shop. The older 20 litre model. Does the same job for a little less, but it's louder and doesn't have the Arete's night mode or handles.

If the windows are your main battle, Clive put a battery window vac up against the old bucket and cloth in his Kärcher WV 6 Plus review. And if you're planning to keep the heating off longer this autumn, like Denise with her Dreamland heated throw, keep an eye on the humidity, because cold rooms get damp faster. Everything else we've tested is in our reviews.

After 217 days

The Meaco lives in the cellar now, with its hose in the Belfast sink, and comes up to the back bedroom on washing days and whenever the window starts to steam. It's the only appliance in the house that Bev has named. She calls it Doris, after an aunt who was also quiet, tidy and always working.

It won't dry a garage in January, and at 15 kg it's no fun on cellar steps. But it took a wall with black spots and a cellar that smelt of wet coats and made them normal again, for about 29p a day. Kayleigh's dress is still in the wardrobe. The wall behind it is still white.

Your Meaco Arete One questions, answered