Best car drying cloths 2024
Which products make a clean sweep in the drying stakes and which should throw in the towel? Our test reveals all
The easiest and safest way to dry your car after washing and rinsing it is a blower. These are not cheap or quick, though, so most of us will still rely on a microfibre cloth. But which one? There’s a bewildering array of sizes, weaves and constructions that all claim to be the one that effortlessly lifts away water, leaving your car ready for the next stage of preparing or protecting. And don’t be tempted to skip drying, because you will inevitably be left with water spots that will need removing.
To find the towel that will make water spots a thing of the past, we grabbed eight top sellers, waited for the weather to play ball, then got busy with the hose.
How we tested them
After a run of very close results, we revised our test in an attempt to sort the best from the merely good. We assessed absorbency by weighing each cloth when it was dry and then after soaking and draining for 30 seconds. We backed this up with monitoring the finish after dragging each one across a soaked bonnet both when dry and wet.
Ease of use when wet was assessed on a grille and side of our test pick-up truck. In a bid to add another real-world element, we rinsed the truck and dried the bonnet and vertical panels to simulate a family hatchback or SUV, looking to see if the towel needed wringing and how easy the task was. Finally, we assessed value and what you get for your money.
Reviews:
Sam’s Detailing Drying Towel
- Price: Around £16
- Rating: 5 stars
- Website: samsdetailing.co.uk
Our pick of the twisted-loop towels that provide the absorbency of the older big towels, but without the weight and bulk. There is little to choose between the three twisted-loop products here, but you get a lot for your money with this big 92x71cm towel.
It syphons up water, retaining six times its own weight in our test. It easily dried our pick-up with no need for wringing out, and required just one sweep over the majority of areas. It can also be used in the grille, but care needs to be taken to keep it off the ground.
Buy now from Sam's Detailing...
Gyeon Q2M SilkDryer EVO
- Price: Around £22
- Rating: 4.5 stars
- Website: cleanandshiny.co.uk
This EVO version succeeds Gyeon’s original short-pile SilkDryer, using twisted-loop technology, which increases absorbency by 50 per cent. It is similarly sized to our winner, but is a little heavier and topped our soak-and-drain test.
It performed the same as the test winner, easily drying our pick-up and performing well in the bonnet-drag when wet or dry. Its size means it needs care when working low down to prevent it touching the ground, but this is a top performance and the Gyeon was only denied the win by its higher price.
Armor All Extra Large Drying Towel
- Price: Around £6
- Rating: 4 stars
- Website: armorall.eu
Our revised test may have lost Armor All its crown after multiple wins, but it remains a good choice for those on a tight budget.
It retains its short pile on one side, but this is a single layer as used so effectively by the twisted-loop generation. This ensures the towel can get in grilles and tight panel gaps and never becomes a strain on the arms or hands. The Armor All retained five times its own weight in our absorbency test, but its size meant it ran out of capacity towards the end of our pick-up drying test and needed a quick, but easy wring.
Autoglym Ultra-Soft Drying Towel
- Price: Around £21
- Rating: 4 stars
- Website: autoglym.com
Our tweaked test helped the Ultra-Soft jump ahead of its innovative InstaDry stablemate, but bigger, more effective rivals kept it out of the top spots. It’s a little smaller than the Gyeon and Sam’s Detailing alternatives, at 80x60cm, but remains a useful size and its twisted-loop tech works just as well on a car.
The drag test left the faintest layer of moisture, which rapidly dried. It was a little easier to use, but still needed two hands in places. While it couldn’t match its bigger rivals in the soak test, it easily dried the truck without requiring a wring.
Autoglym InstaDry
- Price: Around £18
- Rating: 4 stars
- Website: autoglym.com
Adding a whole-car drying element to our test was never going to play to the InstaDry’s strengths, and neither was a cost-per-square-centimetre calculation. So it’s a measure of the Autoglym’s clever performance that the towel still merits four stars in this test.
Although it needed pretty frequent wringing in the whole-truck test, it is so light and easy to remove excess water that it dropped only a few marks. This is largely down to its weight and easy handling, plus nothing gets into grilles and panel gaps like the InstaDry.
Car Gods Nike Edgeless Drying Towel
- Price: Around £5
- Rating: 3.5 stars
- Website: cargods.com
Car Gods offers several sizes of Nike waffle-weave towels and we went for one of the smallest, the 40x40cm. At less than a fiver, it’s on a par with Armor All and it matched the InstaDry for size.
Light and easy to handle, it’s great for panel gaps and grilles, as with the clever Autoglym, but it soon got waterlogged on the whole-truck dry. The waffle-weave couldn’t quite manage to hold twice its own weight, which meant lots of wringing. The upside was it never got too heavy and was a breeze to wring, but newer tech has moved the game on from this Nike towel.
Halfords Drying Towel
- Price: Around £13
- Rating: 3.5 stars
- Website: halfords.com
There’s something old school about this big and bulky Halfords Drying Towel after handling the latest twisted-loop cloths. Straight out of the box you can’t ignore the heavier weight, which was around half a kilo when dry. It is also thick thanks to the twin layers, so is harder to grasp and control on the car.
Halfords’ product worked well in the drag test, but required a lot more effort than the twisted-loop towels. There’s no doubt it can soak up huge amounts of water and it easily completed our pick-up drying test, but the effort required was significantly more than for our top two.
Auto Finesse Aqua Dry Deluxe XL
- Price: Around £22
- Rating: 3.5 stars
- Website: autofinesse.com
Using similar tech and design as the Halfords, it’s the same story here, but more so because it’s a much larger towel. The Auto Finesse weighs 600g and easily tops four kilos when soaked, which isn’t ideal.
Its bulk also made it a real effort to wring, and this can only be done effectively if it’s anchored on a pole or something similar. It easily stripped our pick-up of water, but required significantly more effort than the twisted-loop towels and needed two hands in some places to ensure it was not dropped.
Verdict:
Our revised test saw a new winner from the latest wave of twisted-loop microfibre towels. Sam’s Detailing’s cost-effective cloth takes the win here from the Gyeon version. Our multiple champion, Armor All’s Extra Large, completed the podium, providing a good alternative for those on a budget.
- Sam’s Detailing Drying Towel
- Gyeon Q2M SilkDryer EVO
- Armor All Extra Large Drying Towel
Now that the drying is sorted, click to read our list of the best wax and sealant…
