Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I like this device and it works pretty good for putting the moisture back in the air in the natural way - via evaporation - during winter heating season. During this time the furnace is doing its job by taking the moisture out of the air and since all the windows are closed most of the time (as you don't want to take in a lot of cold air and make your house cold) the external air intake is not enough to replenish the moisture even in such a "wet" place like here in Seattle. Your skin goes dry, eyes itch and nasal passages feel uncomfortable. With dry air you are more prone to get an airborne infection. Finally when we installed a smart thermostat that also shows the humidity in the air and it showed unhealthy 30% humidity I figured out that humidifier is an important "life support" system you need to have in your house when its cycling the air inside during the winter. The device is bigger than ultrasonic humidifiers we had in the past but for a good reason - since it relies on natural way of water evaporation and you need larger surface contact area with the air to make it work. Ultrasonic humidifiers work in another way - they force the water vapor in the air by exciting the water with ultrasonic membrane so it bursts in bubbles which break and release mist in the air. The assumption here is that tiny droplets of mist have much larger contact with air (this is what the big filter is for in this device) and evaporate quickly in dry air. But the problem is that some of them don't - and those land down on the floor near the ultrasonic humidifier making it wet and leaving mineral residue from the water droplets around the device. Another problem with ultrasonic humidifiers - they put equal amount of moisture in the air regardless how humid the air is. If the air is dry - it pick more moisture from the mist, less dry air - takes less leaving more to land back on your floor around the device. This device is free from those pitfalls of ultrasonic humidifiers. It evaporates the water in the air in the natural way, like everything else exchange the moisture around you. It just speeds the process in two ways: (1) by increasing the contact area with the air with large filter made of strings of porous material that pick the water from the bottom tray using capillary action; (2) by increasing the volume of dry air the contacts with the filter by blowing through with the fan. Because of this natural process the amount of moisture it puts in the air depends on how dry you air is. It never puts more moisture in the air that the air cannot take, so the floor around the device is never wet and no mineral residue. The device is very simple - the bottom tray which feeds the water to the filter, the filter that evaporates the water and the water tank that feeds the water to the tray through the valve and main body that houses 3 speed fan and UV light. I thought the device will be warming water so it is easier to evaporate, but it does not. Because of this simple design the cleaning is easy. Now about the filter - as you can see it is most essential part of this device. To make it last longer you need to understand how it works. It pulls the air from the tray using capillary action. When filter ages, is capillary get clogged with minerals from the water. So it starts drawing less water. So the more mineralized water you have the less filter life you are going to have. You can try using filtered water - but I am not sure how economical it would be - it consumes a lot of water and filters also cost money. So maybe it will be cheaper to buy a new humidifier filter than buy water filters more frequently. Another factor is fan speed - it is better to opt for slower speed with aged filter because it won't be able to draw as much water and will dry out and minerals in it will solidify aging it more faster. I noticed that even with new filter and top fan speed the topmost part of the filter gets dry after a couple of hours of runtime. So avoid running at top speed - and it produces definitely audible noise in this mode. As for the noise - I find that at top speed it's pretty noisy - you can definitely hear it running if you are in the same room. Middle speed (recommended by the manufacturer as a regular operating speed) is audible if you are few feet away from the device. Low speed is barely audible. I am skeptical about UV light feature if it is useful at all. Think about it - it is supposed to kill germs in the water that flows from the tank to the filter. But that water comes right from the tap (the same water that you drink) and the tank is refilled every day. But the part where there are much more germs - the filter - is not getting any UV light and is in constant contact with external air that brings new microbes all the time. So when the UV light goes out, I do not think I want to spend money on replacing it. Last point - this humidifier is listed as 'single room' humidifier but if you place it in the room where you have air return it can affect the air humidity in the whole house. Humidifier was off for the night today and the thermostat in the other room was showing 43% humidity. Turning the humidifier on with middle speed (it is located close to furnace air return) and turning on the furnace fan after that for a while brought the humidity reading in the other room up to 48% in about an hour. Hope this review is helpful. Thanks.