Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I have owned this model for a bit over 2 years. Will it take water from the air, put it through its filters and then store and chill it? Why yes, yes it will. And if you are the end-user you will also be the one having to replace those filters. And that is where the problems with this design start to show up. The air filter is dead simple to deal with. That is a great design plus for the unit with captive thumbscrews on the panel holding it in. The rest of the filters are behind a panel without thumbscrews. The filters, themselves, are held with a plastic retaining system and are attached by quick disconnect fittings. These fittings are a bit of a pain to remove. When reattaching they each must be firmly reattached otherwise you will get a leak. And as a few of the center filters are directly attached to other filters, that means it is very, very, very wise to make sure each side of tubing is firmly put back in place otherwise you will get a leak. In addition to the filters attached to the retaining piece, there is the free-floating Halo filter which is the reverse-osmosis filter, and its fittings and tubing end up pressing against other tubing which is why the rear panel has a bit more space on the right side. I have been in contact with the distributor on this and have pointed out that this filter system is not: A) easy to access, B) prone to leaks, and C) generally not well placed for easy maintenance. In normal operation this unit has blown through its factory 10 amp fuse 3 times. It is not a normal off-the-shelf fuse, either. The last time the distributor sent a 15 amp fuse to replace it. To get to the fuse requires taking the front panel off to then access the internal electronics panel to then firmly pull the fuse carrier out. This design is not easy to access and as there are many, many, many more common fuse types available on the market, there is absolutely no need to go with a fuse that is hard to find for the US domestic market. For design use, if you are going to have a fuse in a system it should be: A) easy to access, and, B) commonly available. The distributor admits that this is a problem and as a simple wiring up of a fuse to the rear of the system (and there is space on the frame back there to do this) would obviate the position problem. Thus this is a design/conception problem. Also note that the front panel electronics are mounted to the plastic facing and that its quick disconnect fitting is not easy to access as it is between two circuit boards that are on the front panel. Why this piece is not mounted to the frame of the machine and instead to the faceplate where one slight drop can pull the wires from the hard to reach quick disconnect fitting is beyond me. This will be a last straw...but there is another set of straws to address. Cleaning the tanks is a really quite labor intensive bit of work and the easy part of the process is attaching the drain hose to get the majority of water out of the system. Getting to the tanks requires the removal of the front panel (you know the one with the semi-captive quick disconnect fitting that is hard to reach?), the top panel, the bottom rear panel and also the side panel on the left as you face the machine from the front. These tanks need to be cleaned with a dry cloth. Note that the chiller is in direct contact with the water at the bottom of the front tank, under a plastic top with flow vents held in by two screws. What I have found is that a bio-film producing bacteria gets into the system and then is nearly impossible to clean out as the entire tank cannot be removed. But where does this bacteria come from if you have all those lovely filters in place? The rear plastic tank is the one that has the float sensor in it, and that tank is not sealed against anything which means that as air flows through the machine to cool it, that anything in the outside air has direct access to the system's lower tank. And if you ever have to manually fill the system, such as on initial start-up, then that also allows such bacteria into the system. This has been a problem with the prior UV based system and this system. To remove the lower tank requires the removal of 3 water quick disconnects and one electronic one (for the sensor) which is conveniently located out of reach from the rear which is why the side panel has to come off. That is purely a problem of wire length not being properly accounted for from its bundle, but you won't know that until you get to the bundle on the side of the machine. Now back to the liquid quick disconnect fittings for a moment. When changing filters or going through the cleaning process (and finding out that the tubing still has water in it to spill out and that the drain hose doesn't actually drain everything) you are most likely to get some air into the tubing system. The main pump, once a small bubble of air gets into it, will then stop working with an error code showing up. What needs to be done is the last piece of tubing has to be disconnected so you can suck water backwards to fill up the pump. Make sure to quickly reconnect that piece of tubing so as not to get air into the system. Oh, and do so firmly so you don't get a leak. The system needs a better system to address this such as a mini manual vent or a pump that is gas tolerant (which should be the actual solution). The distributor admits that this is a problem with the system. Say, kudos for the distributor! That poor guy has been relaying all my complaints back to the factory and design team! And I am not alone in my complaints, either. Back to cleaning the system. With the way the upper and lower tanks are designed, there is no good physical method to clean the contact surfaces in the lower part of the front tank as the coils obstruct doing so. Remember, soft cloths only! No chemicals, no detergents, just cloth. Dry cloth, no cheating. As contact cleaning isn't going to do it and bio-films will get into every crevice, every tight part of the coil and into the space under the coils in the tank that means that you will then get another bio-film build-up. What I have used is a UV light wand which, unfortunately, doesn't fit down the center of the coils...that is a non-contact way of dealing with the problem. And it is a major design flaw with this and the prior generation of systems. Bio-films are some of the most tenacious forms of bacteria you will find and dealing with them (like with a pool or hull of a ship) requires serious work and chemicals, both. Fish tanks have this problem, too, which is why they need to be cleaned regularly. Remember none of that is allowed for cleaning the system, thus all the major tools of bio-film removal are taken off the board for you by this design requirement. And as this is a bio-film, even if you get it out of the tanks you still haven't gotten it out of the tubing going to/from the tanks...and for the float system to work on the lower tank there is a direct connection between the two tanks. This problem could be obviated by putting the coil outside the lower part of the main tank and making the entire main tank removable. And if the float valve could be incorporated INTO the main tank, then you would only need to clean one tank. It wouldn't address the bio-film in the tubing problem, though. That needs something like silver lined tubing and it beats me if they make a plastic tubing that is silver lined. That sort of thing worked for the early settlers (drop a silver dollar into a canteen and the silver kills the bacteria in the canteen during the course of a day) and it should still work today. There are even some pools that use silver lined pipes to reduce the requirement for stuff like chlorine. Now back to the front panel for a moment. In theory you should be able to disconnect the quick disconnect fitting, but in practice it doesn't really work. This is the Theory and Practice Conundrum at work: In theory there is no difference between theory and practice; in practice there is. This goes for ALL of the quick disconnect fittings for both the electronics and water system, but is of particular concern for the front panel as trying to deal with the fuse and cleaning, means that baby comes off frequently, and as utilizing the quick disconnect is a non-starter, you are left to the mercy of having to set the front of the case on something or leave it dangling. Or, the worst of all worlds, is to place it on something and have it slide off and have the fragile cable pull out of its side of the quick disconnect fitting. I build computers for home use at the component level (since 1994) and I'm used to biased quick disconnect fittings and it seems that electronics manufacturers realized that for a quick disconnect fittings to be useful they must be EASY TO ACCESS. If you can't attach the main panel to the case then at least make the quick disconnect fitting EASY TO ACCESS. Now apply that to each and every tube and electronic fitting in the entire machine so I don't have to repeat myself a dozen times in saying that. Oh and they should also have a nice feel to them when they are properly situated, too. So the times you have to do the work with low lighting or in a hurry, you get that nice snug and sealed feel via tactile response. Look how much you are asked to shell out for this device (not to speak of the filters at a couple hundred per year) and ask yourself: what sort of design team makes a device that is not easy to access, not easy to maintain, with critical design flaws and that then, for all the healthy stuff it is supposed to do, then make it prone to one of the most pernicious types of bacteria on planet Earth? There are a few industries that live off of removing bio-films, and you can't use ANY of their solutions with this system. A sealed tank with silver lining and chilling coils outside the tank would then make this a next to no maintenance machine. I've seen better in-line water filter systems with snap-in filters that are easy to deal with and that have real water pressure to deal with, as well. For water production: if you are in a constant, high humidity environment that also has a sheltered spot for a machine like this to be out of the elements, you may get something close to its rated daily capacity. Inside a home with 40-50% constant humidity, not so much, and a few quarts per day (less than a gallon per day) is the norm. It is even decent water, if you can keep the reservoir tanks clean, that is. And when it comes time to replace the water filters, make sure you get them all nice and snug. And get that air bubble out of the pump! Don't forget that or you'll see the error code coming up soon... PROs - In the right conditions, you might get rated water production capacity - It is generally pretty quiet in operation as opposed to dehumidifiers which just concentrate on getting water out of the air - Not out of place in an office or home environment CONs - Expensive filters - Nasty cleaning requirements that will never, ever get the system entirely clean and that is by the way it is designed - Finicky quick disconnect water fittings, hard to impossible to access quick disconnect electrical fittings, and generally not well thought out as a system If you are getting a dozen or so of these that means you have a tech team ready to handle them, and are a pretty big business. Great if you have that sort of resources! If it is just you, then you will dread the things that don't 'just work' and the tank cleaning is something you will be frustrated with to no end. And that day you had to put the front panel up and it slid off of where you set it and yanked the wires from the quick disconnect that can't be accessed easily (or at all), then you will find yourself either crying or screaming or both...or just wondering 'what were they thinking?' As it is I feel like a beta tester who is paying to have this experience because the people who did the designing never bothered to actually use the device they created or to properly determine what it's design flaws actually are. The entire thing suffers from the Theory and Practice Conundrum. Maybe somewhat later models have gotten some of these issues ironed out: you got a better device because people like me paid for the joy to own something which should 'just work' but doesn't. And that is something I refuse to do any longer.