The best portable washing machines for an apartment

The three checks to do before you order

1. Read the lease. This is the one people skip. A large number of leases prohibit “washing machines or other water-using appliances” outright, and the reason is not arbitrary — a split hose in a third-floor apartment is a claim against the building. Some leases permit a portable unit explicitly; some permit it with renters insurance; some forbid it. Ask in writing and keep the reply. If the answer is no, a portable washer is a deposit you may not get back, and hand-washing and a drying rack is the fallback.
2. Check the faucet. Nearly every automatic portable washer connects with a quick-connect adapter that threads onto the faucet where the aerator screws out. Go and look: if the tip of your faucet unscrews with a wrench or by hand, you are fine. If it is a pull-out spray head, a sealed aerator, or a wall-mounted bathtub spout, it will not adapt — and that is the case where the twin tub, which you fill by hand, is the only machine on this page that works.
3. Find the drain. Portable washers drain into a sink, a tub or a floor drain, not into a standpipe. A machine with a built-in drain pump — the Giantex 1.34 automatic here — can push water upward over a sink rim. A gravity-drain machine has to sit higher than where the water is going, which in practice means next to a bathtub. Work out which you have room for before you choose.

A fourth, softer check: the floor. These machines weigh forty to seventy pounds empty and considerably more full of water, and they vibrate. On a wood floor in an old building, put it on a mat and do not run it at midnight.

How we picked: four things, in this order

1. What the drum actually holds. The cubic-foot number means nothing until you convert it. A 0.9 cubic foot drum takes roughly six to seven pounds of dry laundry, which is two or three outfits or four bath towels — not a sheet set. Buying a drum too small for the load you had in mind is the commonest regret in this category.
2. Whether the setup parts are in the box. A sink adapter and a drain hose turn a washer into a working appliance, and they are not always included or always compatible. Two of the picks here list both explicitly, and that is worth a few dollars.
3. Spin speed, because it decides drying. With no dryer, the spin cycle is your dryer. A machine that spins at 800 RPM or so leaves clothes damp; a weak spin leaves them wet, and wet laundry on a rack in a small apartment is a humidity problem as well as a space one.
4. Renter-safe, which is our standing criterion in this hub. No permanent plumbing, nothing screwed to a wall, no modification you have to undo. Every machine here connects and disconnects in under a minute and leaves nothing behind.

What each size really holds

Convert the cubic feet into laundry you recognize before you choose, because the gap between the smallest and largest machine on this page is the gap between “shirts” and “bedding”.

Two notes on those numbers. First, rated capacity assumes dry weight loaded loosely — stuffing a drum stops it washing, because agitation needs room. Second, towels are the item that breaks capacity planning: four bath towels fill a 0.9 cubic foot drum on their own, which is why our how many towels do you need page argues for fewer, thinner towels in a small apartment than most lists suggest.

Automatic or twin tub?

This is the real fork in the category, and it is a question about your time rather than your laundry.

Our honest read: if your faucet adapts and your lease allows it, buy automatic. The whole point of owning the machine is that laundry stops being an event, and a twin tub keeps it as one — a shorter, cheaper event, but still something you stand next to. The twin tub earns its place in exactly two situations: a faucet that cannot be adapted, and a budget that cannot stretch to automatic this month.

The part nobody budgets for: drying

A portable washer solves half the problem. Unless you buy a vented or condenser dryer too — which is a bigger purchase, a bigger footprint and in most leases a bigger conversation — everything that comes out of the machine has to dry in your apartment.

• Spin speed is your dryer. This is why we weighted it. Clothes out of an 840 RPM spin are damp; clothes out of a weak spin are wet, and the difference is a day of drying time and a noticeably more humid room.
• You need more rack than you think. One 0.9 cubic foot load needs roughly fifteen to twenty linear feet of rack rail. Our drying rack roundup lists the racks that fold flat against a wall, which is the only kind that works in a small place. If the rack you pick is wall-mounted and the wall is masonry, you will need a carbide bit rather than the twist bits a drill ships with — see the best drill bit sets for home use.
• Ventilate or you will get mold. A load of wet laundry releases a couple of liters of water into the air. Open a window, run the bathroom fan, or dry in the room with the best airflow. This matters most in a bathroom, where the surfaces are already damp — see renter-safe bathroom upgrades for the no-drill ways to improve a bathroom you cannot modify.
• Do not leave wet laundry in the drum. Portable washers have small, poorly ventilated drums, and a load left overnight smells. Leave the lid open between washes.

Does it actually save money?

Often, but the honest answer depends on what you pay now. A laundromat or a building machine commonly runs a few dollars a load to wash and the same again to dry. If you do two loads a week, the arithmetic on a $260 machine is a payback measured in months rather than years — and it improves further because air-drying removes the dryer charge entirely.

What the arithmetic will not capture is the part people actually buy it for: not carrying a bag of laundry down three flights and sitting in a laundromat for ninety minutes. That is the real return, and it is why we rate the small automatic machines above the bigger, better value ones for a single person — the machine that fits your life gets used.

For the whole-room version of this budget, our bathroom and laundry hub runs through what every line of a small rental bathroom costs, and what it costs to furnish a first apartment puts laundry in context with the rest of the place.

Five mistakes to avoid

1. Leaving the hose connected between washes. A pressurized hose left on a faucet for months is the failure that floods an apartment. Disconnect it. It takes ten seconds.
2. Using regular detergent at regular doses. These are low-water machines. Use a small amount of HE detergent; too much suds stops agitation and leaves residue in the clothes.
3. Overloading to save a cycle. A packed drum does not agitate, so the clothes come out dirty and you run it twice anyway.
4. Draining into a toilet or over a balcony. Sink, tub or floor drain only. Graywater on a balcony is a complaint and in some buildings a violation.
5. Buying before measuring the faucet clearance. The machine has to sit where the adapter reaches, which means the spout has to clear the top of the machine. On a 1.7 cubic foot washer next to a low kitchen faucet, that is a real conflict.