The best heated towel rails

75 W is the number that makes this worth writing about. It is a quarter of the draw of the cheapest heated drying rack we cover, and roughly what an old-style incandescent bulb used - running it for five hours costs under seven cents at the current US average rate.

That low draw is also its limit. A 4-bar rail warms and finishes towels; it will not dry a washer load, and nothing on its listing claims it will.

The 24-level timer is the feature that matters for running cost. A rail left on permanently costs roughly five times what one on a five-hour schedule costs, and the timer is how you choose which of those you are paying for.

304 stainless with laser-welded joints and no visible seams. In a bathroom - which is where all of these live - 304 is the grade that does not pit.

Eight bars is enough to take a bath sheet at full width plus hand towels, which is the practical difference from the 4-bar rails - those make you fold a bath sheet, and a folded towel dries at roughly half the rate.

160 W published. Double the Topdattion's draw for double the bars, which is a proportionate trade rather than a penalty.

Brushed 304 stainless. The brushed finish hides water spotting far better than a polished one, which in a hard-water area is the difference between a rail that looks clean and one you are always wiping.

At nearly 11 lb before you hang anything on it, this wants a proper fixing. Peaktrivol does not publish a load capacity, so treat the mounting rather than the rail as the limit.

Nine bars is the most in this group and the layout is the point - evenly spaced rods dry a towel from both faces rather than warming the one side that happens to be touching.

The 0-24 hour scheduled timer is the best-specified timer here. On a product whose whole cost story is hours-on, a proper schedule is worth more than an extra bar.

304 stainless and a choice of hardwired or plug-in fitting, so it suits a bathroom with no convenient outlet.

No wattage published. With nine bars it is reasonable to expect a draw at the upper end of this category, but reasonable expectation is not a published figure and we will not print one as though it were.

The published 115-155 F range is genuinely useful information - it tells you the rail is warm rather than hot, and well below anything that would damage a towel. It tells you nothing about the electricity bill.

201 stainless rather than 304. It is a lower-nickel grade that costs less and is more prone to surface rust in permanently damp air, which is exactly the air a bathroom rail lives in. That is a real trade against the 304 rails on this page.

Six bars sits between the 4-bar and 8-bar options, and the black finish is the only non-silver option we found in this group.

We would want the wattage before buying a heating appliance that stays on. It is not published, and we are not going to infer one from the temperature range.