What’s Wrong With The Honeywell Humidifier | Hacker News Reader

What’s Wrong With The Honeywell Humidifier

angelalashbrook.medium.com

188 pointsantigizmo293 comments

A company accused Wirecutter of being pay-for-play, based on how how heavily affiliate revenue (allegedly) factors into Wirecutter reviews. [1] The Wirecutter responded here. [2]

I wonder if this was part of the reason that the Honeywell unit was recommended.

1: https://www.xdesk.com/wirecutter-standing-desk-review-pay-to...

2: https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/our-response-to-nextdesk/

I suspect you are right. I bought a wireless router they recommended once, and it was worse than the one it replaced. Since then I have not trusted any online review site.

And the Wirecutter response even has a factually inaccurate statement in the first 3 sentences:

> In it, the company claims that The Wirecutter initially picked NextDesk as an editorial recommendation but later downgraded the recommendation after NextDesk declined to set up an affiliate-revenue agreement.

>We want to be clear: NextDesk’s claim is false, and its representation of our editorial decision-making process is factually inaccurate.

That claim as described is in fact TRUE. NextDesk was picked, then declined an affiliate-revenue agreement, then the recommendation was downgraded. That was the order of events. The rest I don't know, but it's pretty ridiculous to have that kind of error when these kinds of things often result in lawsuits.

Do you have any proof of this?

The rest of the Wirecutter article where it backtracks?

Where do they backtrack? The article is pretty clear about there being no editorial influence.

Did you read about the order of events?

I believe you're taking "after" in this sentence way too literally. The order of events isn't in dispute, what's at issue is whether Nextdesk's declination to enter a revenue sharing agreement caused Wirecutter to downgrade their ranking.

This comment by geofft convinced me Nextdesk (RIP) was in the wrong in this dispute. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22144078

You're reading a causal meaning into "after" that clearly was not intended by the author of Wirecutter's response. They are clearly expressing a simple temporal relation and not a causal one.

Please be clear that I have no opinion on the truthfulness of the Wirecutter's response. Perhaps they're truly corrupt as all hell. I have no inside knowledge of how they operate.

However, it is absolutely clear you're reading something into the "after" that was not intended.

"After" is a temporal word. We have may ways to clearly express cause that could have been used. Generally, one uses "after" to imply cause without explicitly saying it.

Instead, Wirecutter has made a factually incorrect statement. That Thing 1 happened, then Thing 2 happened, then Thing 3 happened is not in dispute. Also not in dispute: Thing 3 happened after Thing 2, which happened after Thing 1.

"After" can certainly imply causality but that is not necessarily the case and, from context, we can see it was clearly not the author's intent.

I think you misread this sentence:

These are NextDesk's "claims". Wirecutter does not acknowledge them. According to Wirecutter this is what happened:

> Without the editorial team’s knowledge, NextDesk and our business team exchanged communications about setting up an affiliate agreement, and ultimately NextDesk declined to do so. That fact was never communicated to our editorial team until NextDesk itself made it known to them by email in November 2015, long after the new pick had been made.

Update: I'm not saying that I'm buying it; just clarifying their response.

> That fact was never communicated to our editorial team until

That’s a overly specific denial, their saying the editorial team wasn’t informed. However, it doesn’t actually mean the events where unrelated, as long as the editorial team assumes no agreement was reached at which point nothing needs to be communicated.

If they had actually chosen a new pick before the deal was canceled they would have said that. Instead they refer to internal emails rather than the actual timing of the events. Which where #1 Pick, #2 request for a kickback, #3 no agreement reached, #4 new pick. They don’t even deny the actual content of the emails posted.

Officially Wirecutter functions based on affiliate links and kickbacks and the reviewing staff isn't informed of this to maintain a separation. But this is a very weak defense. It's still a massive coincidence and obvious candidate for a conflict of interest when a product gets downgraded just as the kickback deal falls through.

Looking at the email exchanges I can't honestly think this is a coincidence. I've been shaken down before (unrelated to this topic) and that's exactly how it looked. My own experience going through Wirecutter's reviews kind of supports the idea that it's "pay to win".

Erik posts a comment on Hacker News, next thing you know, there's a military coup in Myanmar. Factually correct.

The phrasing implies a causal relationship, which is what Wirecutter disputes.

I used to religiously follow wirecutter recommendations. But I don’t anymore.

I had the exact same issue with this humidifier. I got their upgraded version instead and that was better.

I don't trust reviews on the internet at all anymore, unless they come from a single person (not a faceless group) that's known in that space. Affiliate garbage has ruined the ability to find any good information about products.

>that's known in that space

that's the most important. if you're looking for humidifier recommendations online and you find a community of people dedicated to humidifiers and there's one they recommend, then you're probably good. but there's no reason to trust any sort of general review site.

Friendly reminder: If this is not the internet you want, please try to support indie content producers whose work you think is decent and who take tips/Patreon/et al. And if you can afford it, subscribe to online newspapers and the like (because journalism is in a world of hurt and it is negatively impacting minor little things like freedom and democracy).

I blog and I take tips and Patreon and I sometimes hit the front page of HN. I make a pittance. This means that I have no real choice but to do other kinds of paid writing.

So I've thought long and hard about this and I've read the stuff on HN for years where people here don't want ads on the sites they visit, don't want paywalls, don't like content marketing and "pay for play" affiliate sites, etc etc etc.

And then also do not want to leave tips, support a person's Patreon, etc.

If you give writers and other creatives no means to earn an adequate income trying to meet your prissy high standards for so-called ethics [1], then don't be all shocked that they will do whatever happens to actually work to line their pockets, though it involves lying, writing reviews for pay without actually ever touching the product, etc.

People need to eat. Not everyone can be a programmer.

Make it possible for creatives to establish a middle class income. Stop telling people like me "Writing doesn't pay. You know that. Go get a real job." and find a way to make it pay such that doing the kind of writing you want to see is what gets rewarded and not sketchy garbage.

Writing does pay. It just pays for doing bad things and occasionally someone like J.K. Rowling gets stinking rich. It doesn't have to be that way. The world can decide it values good writing and that writers deserve a decent income and make choices to move the world in that direction.

[1] These so-called "ethics" seem to boil down to "we expect writers to write for free and find some other means to support themselves while producing quality content as...a hobby, I guess" -- aka slave labor. And then folks get upset if you frame it that way.

> The world can decide it values good writing and that writers deserve a decent income

It has decided. The sad truth is just that “good writing” just isn’t that valuable (as can be seen in how much people pay) if you don’t have some killer content to back it up. Good writing is requisite but not sufficient.

Just because something is a sustaining profession for a few people doesn’t mean it should be for everyone who does that. Do you realize how many photographers and other artists are in the same category?

> aka slave labor.

Something that is voluntary is - by definition - not slave labor. Nobody is forcing you to write.

There are people who effectively tweet full time. Is that “slave labor”? There are people to play games full time. Is that “slave labor”?

> And then folks get upset if you frame it that way.

I hope you can see why.

Finally, people don’t get mad at writers because they want to make money. They get mad when the writers’ hide the fact that the money has tainted and shaped everything they are saying. A review site that is shilling products because of kickbacks corrupts the entire thing.

Can you imagine your friend recommending you a doctor and then you find out that the friend actually thinks the doctor is terrible but got $1k for the referral?

Nobody is forcing you to write.

I write because it's something I can do. I'm seriously handicapped and there are a lot of things I simply cannot do.

That's a lousy argument. I use myself as an example for various reasons, but the reality is this a widespread problem and the state of journalism is a real problem, as I noted above.

I'm well aware of why people don't like hearing they basically want slave labor. I've listened for years to the reasons people on HN do not like ads, do not like content marketing, etc. I removed ads from my sites and I don't typically use affiliate links.

I use myself as an example in hopes of elucidating the problem space and making it clear that I've studied this for years and I'm not blowing smoke. It's not just me. Writing generally has terrible pay even when it's good quality, etc.

Find some way to help writers pay their bills. The fact that writers exist and that's what they know and there aren't other middle class jobs with good benefits they can readily apply for is an actual issue which negatively impacts the world.

Gig work is up. Benefits are down. Lots of people are underpaid, underemployed, etc. It isn't just writers.

As for medicine, our medical system is probably even more messed up than what we do to writers. We actively incentivize a system of keeping you drugged up and limping along and yadda.

But I'm sure people are even less interested in hearing that than in hearing "If you don't want the shitty internet we've chosen to create, then make other choices that support some other outcome."

I don't intend to spend a whole lot of time arguing it. I've been here a lot of years. I know people don't like hearing this, quickly turn to dismissive personal attacks and ugly justifications. This is hardly some original rebuttal to my points.

I chose to say it anyway because I know most folks here are business people or IT people and haven't thought it through as much as I have. Each individual case of criticism of how people here don't want to support writers seems logical and not a problem in isolation. Most folks here are not on the receiving end going "Wait a minute. This is part of why I remain poor. There's no good means to get paid for what I do, though there is certainly demand for good writing."

This is me telling folks I write, the world makes it really hard for writers to make ends meet, that's part of why you get certain kinds of garbage on the internet.

People can do with that info what they choose, including nothing at all. I've occasionally said such things for years and it seems to make no difference.

But I will likely continue to say something from time to time anyway, even though people think it's appropriate to attack me instead of taking my points seriously. And that's why I say it boils down to an expectation of slave labor because, yeah, people basically get mad at being told "this is why this goes on" rather than going "oh, I had not thought to connect those dots. I shall have to keep that in mind going forward."

> I'm well aware of why people don't like hearing they basically want slave labor.

They don’t like it because it’s a bald faced lie. You’re accusing them of supporting slavery.

Just a quick refresher on what slavery is (from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery)

> Slavery and enslavement are both the state and the condition of being a slave, who is someone forbidden to quit their service for another person and is treated as property.

I implore you to read that article to grasp how horrific and life smothering actual slave labor is. You comparing writing voluntarily for free to that is offensive and smacks of first world entitlement. Perhaps you’re just trolling and I fell for it, but there are people surviving today in slave labor conditions that can only dream of quitting and spending their days arguing on the Internet (after they learn to read and write of course!). Until then they’ll just keep working 12 hour days of hard labor 7 days a week.

Wanting something for free is not the same thing as wanting slavery.

I use hacker news and read the comments here under the expectations that I will not pay for them and nobody will be writing them under coercion. The same applies to reading random blogs, etc. I don’t want to pay for that because it changes the entire nature of the relationship and I frankly just don’t care about any one particular piece of information.

I will pay for deep expertise (e.g. books or even substack). But as I said before, the ability to write is necessary, but the subject is what I’m paying for.

I bought the Harry Potter books because of the world she built, not because of her writing ability. The same applies to most of her fans, as born to out by the tepid performance of the pseudonym book.

Slave labor is also a colloquialism for poorly paid work. The Cambridge dictionary for example says it has an “informal disapproving” sense of “very hard work for which people are paid very little” and has an example sentence of “It’s slave labor working in that office”. Dictionary.com’s example is “data entry at that salary is slave labor.”

You can argue that colloquialism is a crass juxtaposition of horrifying slavery and things far less horrifying, but it’s clear to me the OP was using it in that informal sense, and is probably quite aware slavery was a terrible thing.

As a colloquialism, with the day entry example, using “slave labor” means that the wage is so low that the employer is paying it only defensively in order to justify _not_ being a slave master or share-cropper landlord.

GP is competing with people who write as a hobby rather than a profession. Responses above are about the crass hyperbole in GP, not misunderstanding the colloquialism.

>I bought the Harry Potter books because of the world she built, not because of her writing ability.

Risible. What made that world if not the writing? The Harry Potter Wikipedia contains all the substantial plots, characters, worlds they inhabit. Same world. Pay for that, would you? Read that for pleasure, would you?

JK Rowling rewrote the first chapter of the first Harry Potter book something like twenty times. She has said that if you read all drafts of her first chapter you would know the entire plot.

The story supposedly came to her in a flash "fully formed," I think on a train trip. And then she worked -- for a long time -- at trying to figure out how to tell that story well in written form.

Before the Harry Potter books, writing for children's books hardly paid anything. The series was so good that it changed the industry.

One of the things about good writing is that it's something even a poor person can do.

JK Rowling was on welfare while writing the first Harry Potter book, living in some kind of government housing for poor people I think. She would take her small child for a walk in a stroller and when the kid fell asleep she would go to coffee shop or eatery owned by friends and sit and write and joke that "When I'm famous, your place will get famous as the place I wrote the book."

Telling stories via film tends to take money for equipment if nothing else. Not paying independent writers adequately is not only a means to undermine democracy, it's also a form of class warfare.

> And that's why I say it boils down to an expectation of slave labor because, yeah, people basically get mad at being told "this is why this goes on" rather than going "oh, I had not thought to connect those dots. I shall have to keep that in mind going forward."

Someone getting mad doesn't mean they disagree with you in that specific worst-case way.

> These so-called "ethics" seem to boil down to "we expect writers to write for free and find some other means to support themselves while producing quality content as...a hobby, I guess" -- aka slave labor. And then folks get upset if you frame it that way.

If you give no money and demand they keep doing it, that's slave labor.

If you give no money and suggest that if they're unhappy they should stop doing it, it's not slave labor.

You're talking about the former, but I'm pretty sure people are actually saying the latter.

> If you give writers and other creatives no means to earn an adequate income trying to meet your prissy high standards for so-called ethics [1], then don't be all shocked that they will do whatever happens to actually work to line their pockets, though it involves lying, writing reviews for pay without actually ever touching the product, etc.

> People need to eat. Not everyone can be a programmer.

The problem with this reasoning is that you could replace "writer" with almost anything and make the same analogy. Even something like "hitman"! Having ethics doesn't mean you starve. It doesn't even significantly reduce the number of jobs you could take. Someone asking for ethics isn't asking for free labor.

> you could replace "writer" with almost anything and make the same analogy. Even something like "hitman"!

This is some extraordinary specious reasoning, comparing "writer" with "hitman". How is "hitman" a creative force for good for society?

There is value in good writing. We haven't figured out how to judge and pay for it directly. It's not hard to see that if you continue to not pay for something, it doesn't get done. And one day a billionaire will pay for it, as some special project. Bezos owns the WaPo, I'm not making any statement about editorial influence, but is it a reach to surmise the WaPo is more hesitant in publishing negative articles about things in Bezos' influence? He can probably give the paper away for free, or subsidize it. Then you will say, is everything bought and paid for by the billionaires? Do I declare for the fiefdom of Elon or the barony of Zuckerberg? It's miserable. This was literally a comment on HN last week.

There's value in writing, music-making, art, cooking, photography. That the world doesn't pay well for these things, or the pay curve is depressed except for the very few, is not a convincing argument that they are inherently not valuable. The HN crowd is in the Maslow hierarchy to be able to afford to pay for it.

Pay for the things you want more of. If you don't pay for independent writing, someone else will pay for it, and it's not to support your interests.

> This is some extraordinary specious reasoning, comparing "writer" with "hitman". How is "hitman" a creative force for good for society?

The argument I quoted doesn't care if they are a creative force for good.

There are other reasons to want to pay writers, but those reasons don't conclude that it's slave labor to not want to pay. That's why I criticized the specific argument, not the value of writers in general.

Good writing is valuable. People just aren't used to pay for it. We just take it for granted, even when it saves our bacon. We'll read expert advice for hours, and don't think twice about even thanking them.

I often get messages from readers saying that they depended on the content I write and read it like the bible. They used it to start a business or get a residence permit.

There's a donation button under every post, out of 100k visitors, around 3-6 will donate. I get more emails with extra questions than I get donations. When I patiently answer those, maybe half will donate 5-15€, and only since I added a line about it in my signature.

By comparison, affiliate income pays roughly 100x better if you stay neutral. If you can't get paid to sell your content, you get paid to sell your audience. This shouldn't be a surprise to anyone.

I want to be uncompromisingly helpful, but the incentives are often at odds with this. It's also not surprising that many websites get greedy and fall apart.

If the maintainers of critical open source projects have to beg for enough money to keep the lights on, I don't think the problem is the lack of value, but the expectation that digital content is free.

If true, this explains the awful towels we bought at the WireCutter’s suggestion.

Which ones?

Previously discussed on HN:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22141719

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16729408

I still use The Wirecutter, but in combination with other sources. I try to ask myself the question: do there appear to be competing products that wouldn't provide the affiliate revenue and therefore potentially be left out of the recommendations?

If I'm just deciding between a bunch of stuff on Amazon, then I assume there's no thumb on the scale.

This is what makes the internet fun. You want to research something, but then you have to research the trustworthiness of the sites your are finding in the search.

We might have different ideas of fun :)

You must have been looking away when I used air quotes around the word fun.

I’m assuming you have tried consumer report? They don’t accept any incentives from the manufacturers. They even buy all their test products.

I have in the past but not much recently. I got the impression they tested fewer products and had a bit of a lag in terms of publication. Perhaps things have changed though?

I’ve definitely seen missing products in the list. I usually don’t mind.

As a German I and many others are religiously following what our consumer reports "Stiftung Warentest" recommends (except for high-tech products). Germans have very high confidence in the products and many companies print a good test result ("very good" or even "good" on their packaging). Reasons are that they are extremely thorough, unbiased, financially independent and can be quite tough. They have sophisticated testing facilities, do lab tests, test lifetime of products with machines, etc. And they have been sued several times by companies. So when I cam to the US I was very worried of the basically unregulated companies to screw me over so naturally I (digitally) subscribed to the OG Consumer Reports (which historically seems to be the role model of all other international consumer reports). However I am so disappointed about the magazine:

- it is not very thorough or strict (rather leniant)

- it has a really poor selection of product categories

- besides a table of comparing the products features it has very little editorial buying guides that go more into detail.

In the case of the German magazine, when you read through some of the guides they can be quite entertaining, they slap the wrists of even the most powerful (german) companies if something breaks or if they falsely advertise features, or if there are critical design flaws in the product. I really wish CR would be as critical.

Stiftung Warentest is definitely useful, but like you said have a spotty track-record for tech products. Realising that definitely made me more sceptical of them. It's basically the concept of "Gell-Mann Amnesia" - if I can tell their tests are flawed in a field I'm knowledgable in, are the tests they do in other fields that seem reasonable to me also flawed (but I ignore that)?

Although they do come up with the testing protocol, I'm pretty sure they don't do the testing themselves, and contract it out to specialist labs/testing companies (not a bad thing).

In general though, I agree it's easier to trust them, being an independent foundation, and getting no commission. Wirecutter got acquired in 2016, too.

I've also found it hard to get that German experience in other places. At the core, it's just down to how much/how many people care about something like quality. I think the (German) federal regulations and Stiftung Warentest are a result of this culture, but also make it easier to care about quality. It's a nice feedback cycle. The internet can substitute, but it's much more effort.

True. I think there are categories where I take their word for gospel, like electric tooth brushes, mixers and other electric household items, food, cosmetics, etc.

But for some products they had/have really weird metrics. E.g. an early smartphone would be punished because the battery was not replaceable, so a shitty feature phone took the crone (a little exaggerated). But still, they are focused on customers.

And a lot of the non-test editorial focuses on updating the consumer about warnings of faulty products, new regulations, test candidate updates, etc.

The good thing is, that the composition of the end score is also published. This way you have a standardized comparision of the different features/properties and you can give an other weight to the categories for yourself.

Anyone interested in a comparable organisation in their country might like to read: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Consumer_Researc...

Obviously I can't vouch for the reliability of these organisations, but it may provide a starting point.

Technology Connections just recently made a really good video about humidifiers

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHeehYYgl28

the TC video's conclusion is that the evaporative humidifiers are best, but TFA's main complaints would not be solved by that. It sounds like the TFA needs an air filter combined with an evaporative cooler. And maybe some expectation management concerning what happens to standing water at room temperature under a fan.

It's probably more likely that the humidifier in TFA is just a poorly designed POS and should be replaced with a better version of the same evap type.

If you notice, the evap ones TC covers in his video all have easily accessible fans with no grill blocking access to the blades, and in general are fairly cleanable, while the one in TFA sounds like a nightmare.

I bought an old Vornado Evap40 wicking unit from an estate sale some time back after concerns about using an ultrasonic unit with tap water that is high in silicates. The whole unit breaks down so it's pretty easy to clean if it gets slimy inside.

He made a video talking about that, basically he thinks he have the wrong impression and he doesn't think any version is "the best" per se, it all depends on your situation. https://youtu.be/HfFAiCMLJ14

I have an ultrasonic humidifier and I swear by it. The water here is quite soft so I don't have much trouble with the dust Alec complains about.

Actually just discovered that channel a couple weeks ago. Kind of amazing how interesting he can make such mundane topics. (Though I do prefer to watch at 1.75-2x speed.)

This channel is the only one where I find real utility in Newpipe's ability to go faster than that.

I watched some of the US congressional testimony last year during the impeachment, that was the first time 3.5+ was worth it for me.

Video Speed Controller is great too

Newpipe is the first video player I've found which has a trim-silence feature. I use the similar feature for (audio) podcasts all the time and according to pocketcasts, it saves me huge amounts of time. I've enjoyed having it for videos too.

He really does need to do a video on hair cutting technology though. For a bit the hair made him look younger, now he’s starting to look emo.

I’m not saying that to be catty. One of the little mercies of the quarantine is the number of people who have figured out how to keep making content. It’s a little bit of normalcy, or at least it was until everyone’s personal grooming limitations started causing that illusion to crack, along with bits of my sanity.

Does anybody know if it's safe to add copper sulfate to evaporative humidifier? I've checked some resources and based on what I read it should be safe and very cheap. Yet this doesn't seem to be popular so I'm wondering if maybe I'm missing something. I'm only talking about evaporative humidifier.

If it has a fan then it you might have to worry about aerosolized water.

It does, but I would imagine amount of water droplets are negligible. I mean if it is used in cleaning products (presumably in higher concentrations that would be required in humidifier), it seems that droplets of those have higher probability of staying in the air after cleaning than whatever fan blowing on the surface can put there? Or am I understanding risks associated with it wrong?

I have one of these; the complaint about the fan being inaccessible is legitimate, but it's otherwise clean, and easy to clean - the tank and the base can be scrubbed by hand or just thrown in the dishwasher, unlike any vaporizing humidifier I've used. I think the other complaints may be regional - and the fact that the proposed solutions all seem to be vaporizing humidifiers (or boiling water) seems telling.

I got one because in Arizona, the water quality's terrible, but the air is bone-dry to the point it turns your skin to sandpaper. The hard water means that vaporizing humidifiers fill the air with white dust that coats everything, because they vaporize the minerals. Evaporative humidifiers don't; the minerals all end up in the filter. And, while an evaporative humidifier has no trouble going through a full tank of water overnight on the lowest settings in AZ, it phsyically can't oversaturate the air like a sauna in the way that a vaporizing humidifier does.

The air in the north east just doesn't get dry enough (maybe in winter, but then you don't have the AC fighting your humidifier), and if boiling a pot of water is what the author's looking for, an evaporative humidifier just doesn't do that.

How do you deal with cleaning the handle part of the tank? It looks like the end can pop off, but I haven't tried.

I don't have a problem getting my fingers down everywhere but the corners of the handle, so just pushing a paper towel down there works fine; I wouldn't be surprised if people with bigger hands than mine have more trouble, though. In practice, I've mostly just been throwing it in the dishwasher.

I use a kitchen sponge to get around the corner and it's been quite clean for me.

I have one too and cleaning the tank was never an issue. Instead, my problem was the wick always got moldy on me within a couple weeks. I went through a couple cycles of buying new wicks from them, but it kept happening and I gave up on it. Went back to my old ultrasonic one, which isn’t great, but it doesn’t get black mold and is better than nothing.

Same experience here. My conclusion was that the Honneywell model is just a vehicle to sell more filters, which are not that cheap in the long run.

Tired of the moldy mess, we too now run an ultrasonic mist'er. I can't say it makes a big difference, but it is quiet. Also routinely airing the bedroom with window open and ceiling fan spinning before the bedtime.

Ah, also had to plug that toxic bright blue light on our humidifier. Someone thought it's a nicely looking design, but such blue shining is hardly conducive to sleeping.

> My conclusion was that the Honneywell model is just a vehicle to sell more filters, which are not that cheap in the long run.

This is every air quality device in the industry. I have an old vornado air purifier that uses furnace filters for its media. $30 for the allergen level filters, when I can find them. When the electronics crap out in that thing will be when I learn to repair fans.

I had a prototype I built before I discovered these that used a 12V Molex power supply brick and a bunch of case fans to draw air through a furnace filter. I had it in a triangular box, intending to put it under a bed or a chair so it was dead silent. Then I found the Vornado and that went into storage. Higher cfm.

Unfortunately the Vornado filter was built at the height of the blue LED craze. But at least it’s low lumens.

> This is every air quality device in the industry.

I did not have much exposure to many. Previous to the Honneywell we had the "boiler" kind of humidifier, the one that uses two graphite electrodes submerged into water tank. Not many consumables, except that this does not work much, unless one keeps it right at their noses (as pictured on the box :). The electrodes develop some grime eventually which further decreases 'efficiency', but can be cleaned somewhat.

As for the ultrasonic one we use now, there does not seem to be any consumables as such. Maybe the ultrasonic element itself. In three years of seasonal use I can notice some either corrosion or build up on the black ring of the element, but not much difference from that.

There is some kind of filter ring, made of hard plastic, filled with small beads. But as I said in the 3 years we had no reasons to change it. Clean it, yes, but not replace it like with Honneywell.

Cleaning the thing is a drag as always. Two usual problems: the reddish mold above the waterline and inside the "gorge" and nozzle. Also the limescale, though a moderate one. We fill it with just the cold tap water, which is not too bad here.

As someone living on the east coast and having a very sensitive nose, I have tried different humidifiers and sadly no humidifiers have been perfect. There are three main types of humidifiers:

1. Warm mist humidifiers boil water and generate steam which humidifies the air. But, they are a burn hazard and consume a lot of energy.

2. Cool mist (non ultrasonic) work like miniature swamp coolers. They are essentially fans which draw air through a wet paper wick. The Honeywell mentioned in the article is of this type. The fan is however very underpowered and it doesn’t work well in anything bigger than a small bedroom. Vornado makes a version with a much more powerful fan which works very well in large rooms, but their tanks are finicky and prone to breaking and leaking. The wick absorbs minerals in the water and will eventually have to be replaced.

3. Ultrasonic humidifiers: A vibrating diaphragm will aerosolize water. Unless you use distilled water, minerals in the water will turn into dust and reduce air quality.

I happen to like the non ultrasonic cool mist ones because they use less energy than the warm mist ones and replacing crusty wicks is cheaper than using distilled water in ultrasonic ones. The problem is everything currently on the market has issues. Any company making incremental improvements to existing cool mist humidifiers will probably get a lot of eager buyers.

We used Ultrasonic humidifiers in a server room (to cut down on static risk) and I can confirm they get covered in minerals

Amazon reviews on ultrasonic humidifiers complained that their expensive home electronics died because of the dust.

Hah, well I don't work there anymore. They did have reverse osmosis water filters on them, but no air filters.

Turn them down (ideally to the point where you can barely see the mist). They don't have to run at full blast to be effective.

About the energy, maybe you can throttle it with a timer and still get enough steam.

They basically do that internally already, there's not much point.

The power usage is offset if you're primarily using them during the winter in that the energy used is all converted to heat. It's not gonna be as efficient as a heat pump so there is some loss, but the heat added is heat your HVAC doesn't have to provide so it's not exactly wasted. I haven't actually run the numbers to calculate the effective power used (how much energy it uses to generate the same amount of heat versus if a more efficient heat pump did it), but my hunch is that it ends up being quite a bit more competitive than it might first appear.

Ah, good point. The real cost difference is the difference between heating your house with electricity or gas (or your landlord's gas). I think of that when I run my oven in the winter too.

I have a very sensitive nose as well, and have stopped using humidifiers completely since one caused mold issues in my home.

What I do instead is use a nose clip (the kind swimmers wear).[1]

It doesn't look great, but when I'm alone I don't care. The price is right (only $6), there's no maintenance, no noise, no energy costs, no risk of developing mold in you home from too high a humidity.

It works great. Whenever my nose gets too dry I put it on and in maybe an hour or even less it's fine again. I also sometimes sleep with it on, when the air is dry enough to cause my nose pain.

[1] - https://www.amazon.com/Speedo-Competition-Nose-Clip-Charcoal...

Breathing through your mouth is a terrible thing to do for your health. The nose does much, much more than just bringing oxygen into the lungs. Look it up.

> Any company making incremental improvements to existing cool mist humidifiers will probably get a lot of eager buyers.

I don't buy that. Japan has a ton of high quality air cleaner combo cool mist humidifiers. We don't see these units sold in the US because Americans are cheap. The idea of paying 200$ for an air cleaner feels like a scam to American ears.

And thus the American market continues to race to the bottom.

Are there any of those Japanese ones you can buy in North America? Any brands you're aware of?

> Are there any of those Japanese ones you can buy in North America? Any brands you're aware of?

yeah, i'm curious as well.

Alright since you guys asked I found the closest in spec Sharp model to my favorite domestic Sharp.

In America KC-850U: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B003BF665Y/ref=emc_b_5_t

In Japan KC-H50-W: https://www.amazon.co.jp/gp/product/B077TC5PM8/ref=ppx_yo_dt...

The American offering is an extra 150$, but that buys you marketing videos with a fake scientist pouring baby powder through a filter onto a hepa filter. Japan gets no video at all. Otherwise the Ozone generator, carbon + hepa filters, wheel driven wick humidifier, and canister water tanks are all the same.

The Japanese model also includes modes to disable all lighting, switches between displaying humidity or energy consumption in either KWh or yen per day.

Yup I have several of these sharp air filter/humidifiers and I find that they really improve the indoor air quality. It's very subtle, and for the most part you don't even notice a difference when they are running. But when I have accidentally left one turned off for a while I have definitely noticed when I woke up with a horrifically dry throat and nose, or come home to a very stale smelling house.

In case anybody is wondering, it looks like the KC-H50-W can be shipped to the US straight from Amazon, but with the 11.4k yen shipping fee the total comes to ~$317.15. About $30 less than the American model.

I wouldn't use an ultrasonic humidifier with non-distilled water in a living area. Those minerals will end up in your lungs and I'm not confident it won't accumulate and cause long term problems. The body can't eliminate at least some of them like silica. I don't know if you can actually end up with silicosis from that but that does not seem worth the risk.

Warm mist humidifiers consumers higher power but other humidifiers make air cooler by evaporation so anyway more heating is needed. So it's not too bad as you saw in specsheet.

To be fair, HVAC is very efficient (about x5) to heat compared to just a heater(Warm mist humidifier) so it's not efficient but acceptable for me.

Whelp.

I just learned more about humidifiers from your comment than from reading zillions of reviews.

I seem to recall my brother's fish tank increased the humidity. Could a bucket with an aquarium style aerator also work?

Adding my thoughts here ("Yes, and...") because your input was most constructive.

Review sites could go even further. Start with the most basic DIY home build solutions possible. Just to show how things work. Like a reverse teardown. Even include some basic metrics and science. Like watts consumed, evaporative rates, etc.

Per the AQI problems, in China and Western USA (forest fires), there was a semi-viral video for a DIY air filter using just a box fan and bog standard air filter.

So many other products, appliances could receive similar treatment.

It'd be nothing to use a stove top to mock up at a warm mister. Ditto cool mister (bucket, old t-shirt, fan). And maybe repurpose a sonic tooth brush for an ultrasonic mister.

Interesting. So one personal observation on Wirecutter (which caused me to stop trusting it).

It does reviews of portable air conditioners. A couple of years ago, it went into painstaking detail on how single hose AC is bad. They linked articles from the Department of Energy and so on. Their message was that single hose were easy to install but were absolutely not worth it. And recommended a dual hose system

I happen to agree with that. Portable AC units are already incredibly inefficient, so you don't want to make it any more inefficient than it has to be. I bought their recommendation, it was actually a decent one.

Next year, the completely backtracked. Not because new research came to light that contradicts the previous one. Not because new models came out that massively improved the losses (not even sure that's possible). No. Now they say that the difference is "minimal". It is not minimal, and their previous argument is that it wasn't minimal and they should only be used when there was no other option. They did not provide updated efficiency figures.

Here's the new text:

> While dual-hose models have been shown to outperform some single-hose units in extremely hot or muggy weather, the difference is usually minimal, and we don’t think it outweighs the convenience of a single hose.

Sure, one can reverse their position and that can be a healthy thing to do. But to take major pains in arguing one position one year, just to reverse the position and provide no new data, it's very fishy.

And, of course, the recommended models tend to be pricey too.

FWIW, you are correct that it is essentially physically impossible for the single hose models to be as efficient as dual hose. Single hose models take in conditioned air, pump heat into it, then pump that air to the exterior. Dual hose do the same, but with exterior air as the input.

Single hose models have to work harder two ways. First, in pumping the air out of the conditioned environment, they're basically throwing away work they've done. Not all of it, but some. More the bigger the difference is between the interior and exterior.

Another thing they have going against them is that they need to pull air from somewhere -- the exterior. So their fans have to work a bit harder due to the pressure difference.

Dual hose models suffer neither drawback. Single hose portable ACs are an abomination that should not exist.

How big is the difference then? I see EER ratings in a huge range, and if I trust those then getting the right model matters much much more than single vs. dual hose. Are those numbers not to be trusted?

Edit: I found some numbers, but they seem to support the 'minimal' theory. This page[1] says that SAAC ratings take the air infiltration into account, and that SAAC for a single hose model is 55-58% of a simpler rating, while a dual hose model is 63-70%. That's only about a 15% loss in efficiency. But the difference between a good model and a bad model with the same number of hoses can supposedly exceed 50%!

[1] https://www.pickhvac.com/portable-air-conditioner/best-dual-...

I own this model, and use it to humidify a small room. I sympathize with the author's complaints with respect to the difficulty of cleaning it, though mine just doesn't need cleaning very often. And the wick DOES get moldy if you let it sit in wet water for weeks on end.

But her other complaints puzzle me:

I don't find it to be messy to refill. What is she doing wrong?

It's even more baffling that she thinks it "doesn't work". I mean, she refills the tank every night, so we know the water is disappearing from the tank... where does she think the water is going? Isn't that proof enough that it does, in fact work?

A teaspoon- of bleach or so for 3 gallons of water will solve your mold issue quite handily, even while sitting. It's not enough to smell even when the humidifier is running at full blast. Just enough to kill bacteria and mold.

I'm repeating this advice a lot in this thread, it surprises me it's not better known.

Is that too much bleach though? I do just a few drops in my ~1 gallon humidifier that works continuously in my clone room and it stays clean and even keeps the Serratia bacteria that make the pink stuff in the reservoir at bay. I do use reverse osmosis water to fill it though. Is breathing that much aerosolized chlorine a concern?

A calculator I use is here. Tap water is about 2 ppm.

https://www.publichealthontario.ca/en/health-topics/environm...

Looks like you are doing about 30 ppm so maybe that isn't that much really.

So when the water evaporates you get salt precipitates all over the wick, and more and more over time?

Wicks are a consumable item, whether in swamp coolers, humidifiers, candles or lamps.

The problem isn't so much the wick itself but the concentration increase of salts over time as water-soluble chemicals are introduced at seemingly small levels each time. I suppose with proper monitoring it can be managed, but doesn't seem like the ticket in a non-flushing system.

I hasn’t been an issue, but I am careful to not overdo it. I have overdone it once with a cool mist humidifier, and it was definitely noticeably uncomfortable. I replaced the water quite quickly.

How are you sure it's not a boiling the frog scenario then? You might be "comfortable", but internal damage over long term can be taking place until it gets to a tipping point. I'm just weary of ingesting / inhaling anything foreign over long periods of time regularly.

You’ve inspired me to up it a bit. I think I’m doing a little too low. I want zero bacteria, not to just be in a stalemate with them.

Your what room?

I am a legal cannabis grower haha.

I thought it was Clone Troopers on Kamino

Oh, that makes sense. I thought it must be a typo, but I couldn't imagine for what.

I just bought a (different) honeywell humidifier. so far it works, but not as well as I expected. I hoped it would be able to maintain a somewhat stable humidity for the sake of my guitars, but it can't really keep up with the desiccating power of my central heat. I wonder if part of the issue here is mismatched expectations with evaporative humidifiers?

I went through early parts of my life thinking little humidifiers were doing something and not until I got a relative humidity meter did I see how little they do unless you either a.) have a very big humidifier or b.) a very small sealed room. One of those "I'm sick" humidifiers can be going full blast and not budge the RH right nearby.

If you have a central HVAC and valuable things that are sensitive to humidity you really need a whole-house humidifier. A bunch of manufacturers make them, I have the Aprilaire 400 ($741 professionally installed in 2016), you can see all their products here: https://www.aprilaire.com/whole-house-products/humidifier

I have never seen relative humidity budge more than a few percent using any portable humidifer. Sitting at 10% here, hard cases with humidity packs is the only way I can keep acoustics in one piece, though as a result I hardly ever play them anymore.

I think the problem is your humidifier needs to be able to keep up with the rate of air turnover in your house.

If your humidifier can't push a 1/4 gallon an hour it's probably not doing that much.

I think the wick type humidifiers likely suck because at low humidity the dew point is really low, the wick gets cold and the water doesn't can't evaporate very fast.

I was confused by that complaint about it not working too. If the water disappearing isn't enough to confirm it then a hygrometer certainly would do the trick.

>though mine just doesn't need cleaning very often.

Do you have carpet where you use it and do you have pets?

From fairly limited observation on computer fans, those two factors make a huge difference in how messy fans will get. Apartment with hardwood floors, air duster once a year is fine. Apartment with carpet, monthly minimum still leaves the fans gunked up.

Algicide also works. Benzalkonium chloride. You can get it as a 60% solution as a pool chemical and that will last forever. I use like 0.005% iirc. I make a 1% stock and dose that in, but I haven't used a humidifier in a while (prolly should)

I have this model, and I thought the refill comment was funny too. She's carrying it with the opening pointed down, cap screwed on, but the cap must be leaking. My cap doesn't leak, but I carry mine with the opening up.... so it doesn't matter if the cap leaks. I leave the reservoir open, sitting on my counter each morning so that it dries out, and i run the fan on the unit for a while to dry out the filter (so it doesn't mold). My unit doesn't get dirty, but I don't have dogs.

I have one of these too. I was baffled by many parts of the commentary. There's obviously a huge range of fastidiousness / standard for cleanliness in people but I have literally never felt the urge to try and pry off the grille to get at the fan blades etc.

And unless there's some kind of catastrophic failure of the gasket on the lid, you're really talking about a few drops of water leaking out, at most, if you carry it by the handle.

I have the same humidifier that the author does and I largely disagree with her points. It is rather ineffective at humidifying larger rooms (e.g. for the ~350 sq. ft. room I have it in, it humidifies the room +10% above what it otherwise would've been at aka 23% => 33% per my hygrometer), but it's certainly better than nothing. I usually have to refill the tank 3 times/day which is by definition a testament to how much it humidifies my apt's air.

However, I agree that the Wirecutter's recommendations are suspect sometimes; mostly for the more expensive items that cost several hundred dollars for a "quality" item [0]. However for the smaller/cheaper things where it's exceptionally hard to stand out in a crowded field of products (e.g. routers, bath towels, basic kitchen equipment, home tool kits, etc.), the Wirecutter is a good way to narrow down the choices.

[0]: e.g. they recommend a $370 (at the time of publication) 27", 1440p monitor; for that price the monitor should be 4K https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/best-27-inch-moni...

As an owner of the Z27, I can confidently say that for most people, a 27in 1440p monitor is a better choice over a 4K monitor in the same size. You'd likely need to increase the render scale on a 4K monitor at that size, resulting in a lower effective resolution.

Imo the wirecutter model doesn't make sense for monitors. The major manufacturers seem to release new models several times a year and there's too many dimensions to optimize for. I have different preferences for gaming vs development, a single monitor can't satisfy them both right now.

After years of garbage humidifiers, I made my own.

It cost a tiny fraction of the high end models, has huge reservoir, easy to clean, easy to modify and repair.

It's a food grade 5 gallon bucket ($3) with a bathroom vent fan ($15) mounted to the lid with a pvc pipe section ($2 maybe) for adapting the fan the wick, a flour sack cloth towel (pack of 10 for $5). A couple of holes in the lid, some creative testing for holes in the cloth (made it a tube that is cut to the height of the bucket) and presto... industrial strength humidifier for about $25 with 3 gallon capacity.

I am never going to buy another commercial humidifier ever again. I will tweak this design until it's perfect.

If you perfect it, I hope you write up instructions and post them here!

I'm not much for blogging, maybe someone else can try it out and do better.

I just wanted to share that it's not only possible to make your own, your first try doing a terrible job can be better results than store bought stuff. But it's ugly and a bit loud for most people I think.

I definitely think people would be interested. Instructables.com would be a good place to share your results.

I felt like such an idiot when I paid $100 for one and found out it’s basically a bucket with a big wick and a $10 fan (retail!) controlled by a humidistat. There had to be a good $80 markup there

I've been there and I feel your pain. I feel like humidifiers in the store are just vehicles to sell crappy wicks.

If it makes you feel better - my wife insisted on paying 350 euros each for two 'design' humidifiers. Just the replacement wicks they sell are e50 to replace them all. But hey, it does have 5 different fan speed settings...

Do you have a picture of it?

Nah, it's a shameful beast right now.

Honestly that makes me want to see it even more!

Here's a $15 fan:

https://www.homedepot.com/p/Broan-NuTone-50-CFM-Wall-Ceiling...

Cut 2 holes on top of a 5 gallon (food grade) pale lid and stick this in it. Screw/nail/tape a towel on the other side of the lide making a tube of the towel. Fill 2/3 with water. Plug in the fan. (the fan I bought had an actual 120v wall plug built into it.)

So much the better – it will make me more likely go make my own beastly version for my house >-D

Ha, I described it in a neighboring comment. Go for it, I just based mine design on many other like it:

I am more inclined to try a design more similar to this one next time:

https://steemit.com/growing/@guanyu/cheap-diy-humidifier-for...

Another design:

https://www.dudegrows.com/grow-hack-diy-humidifier-bucket/

I think this may have been one of the original designs I saw that sparked trying it myself:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxSLbpAwibg

I use a "swamp cooler" as a whole house humidifier. It's the same concept. Also my cardboard wick doesn't get mold - unlike some other paper based wick humidifiers.

I have the steam humidifiers for the small rooms. But my winter has been so much comfortable since using the swamp cooler. I just turn it on a few times a day and within minutes, the humidity jumps a few percentage.

I have a similar setup but use these cheap fog makers to atomize the water that I push around with a fan.

It's cheap, and very effective even for a larger space. I also have the humidifier the article mentions, and found it to be useless for a large area.

Air purifiers are the same. A HEPA filter, a fan, and an expensive unnecessary fancy looking plastic box.

I've made my own aswell.

Well, I thought about building my own, but it's not so easy as you make it seem to get one that is efficient (i.e., not just brute force capacity through size) and easy to use.

- How to make it not look like an animal food barrel in your living room, aka WAF, although I do find that term somewhat demeaning as I get older - I used to not care about such things either when I was in my 20's, but nowadays I do, even if it's just because of the realization that people around me care.

- How to make a mechnism to easily fill it, without spilling. This is related to size - you can have a huge one so that you only have to fill it every few days, but then you'll need to shlepp around buckets or watering cans. If it's smaller, you need a separate tank, which you now have to hook up to the rest.

- How to moisten the wick. It's called a 'wick' because it, well, wicks, of course, but you need a relatively large surface contact area to get lots of water into the wick(s); or you need a pump that will keep vertical 'wicks' wet all the time.

- The fans need to be on the top, and large for minimum noise, but the largest Noctuas are only 20cm. But you need air intake from the bottom, somehow, while still maximizing volume efficiency (i.e., you don't want 75% of the volume of the device to be unused because you can only have water in the lower 25% because of the airflow design).

- You need something that can be cleaned and filled without too much (preferably no) disassembly, and you don't want moving parts like floats or fragile things like measuring water level with metal strips because those will break within a year or two; or faster if you don't have a water softening device in you house.

Overall, I think humidification is a job of proper devices that are part of the indoor climate control system along with heating and cooling, but I don't know of residential systems that combine all, and if they do/would exist, it would be much more expensive than the few 100 at most people want to spend on this, and require extensive plumbing to get installed.

I guess it depends on your goals. I had a whole house humidifier, and it leaked just enough to cause long term damage. And that's as good as it gets for humidifying your entire house.

Now, I don't care. I just want to sleep well, and my bedroom is the only room that actually really matters for my skin not to be dry and sleep comfortable.

I don't need to add any treatments, chemicals to my bucket system, so I would say it's far and above safer and more effective than all the other systems I've tried.

Cool Mist humidifiers are just hard IMO.

1. Warm Mist humidifiers work by boiling water. This has the downside of... well... boiling hot water hanging around the area. But otherwise, these are the simplest and are only ~$20 or $30.

2. Cool Mist humidifiers try to get around the boiling water issue. Since they humidify at room-temperatures, they're a lot more efficient... but now bacteria / mold is growing constantly. You can somewhat fix that with chemicals / filters / whatever, but now those filters need to be cleaned, or those chemicals need to be replaced on the regular.

In both circumstances: minerals in the water will harden into 'slag'. More so in warm-mist humidifiers actually (because boiling water separates water from minerals very naturally). Cool-mist humidifiers often carry the slag into the air, forming "white dust" all over your furniture.

The slag dissolves with vinegar in ~20 minutes or so (unless its been building up for a while). But its never an easy job to clean.

I prefer my warm-mist humidifier. Centralize the slag into one spot and clean it with vinegar every few weeks. Better than dusting off all my furniture in the room.

The slag issue can be solved by using demineralized water, and reverse osmosis water filter, which remove almost all minerals, can be had for pretty cheap these days.

People say "pretty cheap", but a lot of reverse-osmosis filters I've seen are ~$150 to $450.

Also consider: it takes ~4 gallons of water to make 1-gallon of reverse-osmosis water. All water-purification methods have their own issues.

-------

If you plan to make distilled water (aka: boil water to remove impurities)... that's basically what a warm-mist boiling-type humidifier does _anyway_.

All good water-purification methods either take up a ton of water (ie: reverse osmosis) or a ton of energy (ie: distilled).

RO doesn’t fundamentally need much energy or all that much waste. This system claims to be much less wasteful by recovering pressure using a “permeate pump”:

https://www.theperfectwater.com/home-master-hydroperfection-...

I personally think an evaporative humidifier is the way to go, as long as you are okay with the evaporator getting gross over time.

I have an under-sink RO/DI system, the whole system was about $200. It's a great investment for a place with hard water. I use it to get demineralized water for my house plants, fish tank, and drinking.

I use the RODI for expensive steam appliances like my Wagner, but I don't use RODI for regular old vegetable steamers or humidifiers. It's just not worth it. The scale buildup isn't a big deal and it's very easy to dissolve with an acid or just brush off.

For people with Ultrasonic humidifiers (which spray the scale across the room as white-dust), it is a much bigger pain to clean that up with regular dusting.

For warm-air humidifiers (aka: boiling water), where all the scale is concentrated onto the heating element: yeah... no big deal. A cup of cheap 5% vinegar and 20-minutes of waiting is all you need to clean that off.

------------

I think if you have RO water, it probably makes sense to use an ultrasonic humidifier.

Convincing water to just evaporate on its own was always going to be a bit tricky. The energy needs to come from somewhere so your best bet is to just get it into contact with enough dry air and hope for the best.

Besides if you're trying to restore humidity lost by heating your room then pure energy wise there's not that much difference in evaporating the required amount of water using ambient heat or evaporating the required amount of water using a different energy source. The only thing you'll achieve by using ambient heat is that your room will cool by the amount of heat required to evaporate the water (a good thing in the summer, somewhat pointless if your aim was to make a room both warm and comfortably humid).

Fundamental thermodynamics will probably mean the 'wait and see' approach is more efficient in the end, but it makes no promises on efficacy. The difference in efficiency probably lies in the fact that you can heat a room with an efficiency >100% if done right, if you haven't managed that yet it probably doesn't really matter which way you humidify the room.

Even without a system that has >100% efficiency (i.e. a heat pump), home heating systems often use a source of heat that is significantly less expensive per watt than electricity. (For example, natural gas.)

Well that depends on what you're optimizing for, but yes.

Gas-fired humidifiers exist, though I'm not sure if you can get small ones easily.

In places with hot dry summers, the evaporative approach is vastly more efficient than boiling water.

As a resident of a place with hot dry summer, I can confirm that the last thing I want to do is to add to the heat with boiling water.

The evaporative approach will actually manage to do something that's generally impossible as it will actually cool down the air. Obviously this is the superior method to deal with hot dry air.

The use-case described in the article however:

>The east coast’s dry winter air, parched further by the radiators that can barely keep up with the chill, causes great discomfort to me and millions

suggests they're trying to heat the space they're in. At which point you'll need to recover any heat lost by evaporation anyway.

So, there are some unpowered options, none of which are as efficient individually as a powered humidifier, but may work in tandom:

1) Plants - they release the water you put into them into the air, as part of how they pull water up from the ground to the leaves.

2) Open Water - Aquariums, fountains, etc.

3) Humidifying balls - basically rough ceramic balls which sucks water up into them, and the water naturally evaporates. Slow, though, and if your water has any impurities they will accumulate on the surface.

4) Humans - we breathe out a lot of water, and if your house is well enough sealed, you'll actually have to de-humidify, even if the air outside is dry. Costly, though.

There is better way to humidify which is to just have cold temperature evaporation. It is slower and you need bigger machine for the same volume, but it requires very little energy and the only real electronics is a fan that moves air.

I got rid of all mist humidifiers because of residue, noise and some health concerns (no, I am not feeling safe inhaling those fine particles) and I am happy for it.

Most importantly, it doesn't get things wet and it is safe to just leave it 24h.

The Honeywell in question is this type-- it calls itself a "cool mist" humidifier, but it's an evaporative humidifier: basically all there is to the thing is a water tank, a wick, and a fan to move air over the wick.

I just put up with the dryness and static.

Boneco makes ultrasonics I like but the humidity on the other hand makes mold more viable. Plus you have to buy filters and cleaners.

Do any humidifiers use UV to disinfect?

The Honeywell one does... probably has some benefit, but doesn't solve the issue.

Put some 3% H202 into a spray bottle. Then spray the humidifier once a week all over to disinfect.

Proper Bleach (Sodium hypochlorite) is probably cheaper, but there's a major convenience factor to just spraying H2O2, and Hydrogen Peroxide is pretty cheap as it is ($2 for 1-liter).

Its not so much that the disinfection was hard to do in my case... Its that it became somewhat of a hassle. Warm Air is nice since it auto-disinfects itself with boiling water. I still disinfect manually, but just once-a-week instead of every day.

> 1. Warm Mist humidifiers work by boiling water. This has the downside of... well... boiling hot water hanging around the area. But otherwise, these are the simplest and are only ~$20 or $30.

Or $0 if you have a pot, a stove, and a tap.

You're going to move your stove to your bedroom and leave it on while you sleep?

You're paying $20 to $30 for safety auto-shutoff features so that you can leave these things on all night long, and not have to worry about fumes, fire, or a myriad of other issues.

Yeah, its basically equivalent to a pot of boiling water + a stove. But... being able to move it to the locations you need (and safety features to boot) is the big advantage.

Depending on the size of your apartment and the amount of air exchange, running it for 20 min before you go to bed may be perfectly sufficient until morning.

But yeah, I see the point. Just wanted to point out this alternative - when it comes to humidifying through boiling, it's a matter of dumping energy into water, and your stove is excellent at doing that quickly. With a regular humidifier, you may need to wait hours until you get the humidity where you want to have it, a stove can be much faster.

The best humidity solution I've found is to set my shower up as a humidifier. Puts out a lot of humidity that spreads throughout the house. Doesn't need any cleaning, refilling, etc. Total cost on Amazon, like $40 (probably cheaper from Home Depot). Picture of my setup: https://imgur.com/a/Oca4USg

I did that with 4-5 products: A shower head splitter, a shower->hose adapter, a mister, and anti-leak tape.

Splitter: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0064TXLHA/

Adapter: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00GYV8G7S/

Elbow connector: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003BZD03K/

Mister (I used just the nozzle and discarded the hose) https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004INGNPG/

Anti-leak tape: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003D7K8E0/

Alternatively tried this fogger nozzle which put out too much water and wet my bathroom floor, may work in some shower setups though. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07FNYNZZM/

The larger humidifiers come with a humidistat which will keep humidity within say a 5% range. A solution like this may over humidify and requires more frequent intervention.

What about this comically expensive https://www.venta-air.com and it’s ripoff: https://www.xiaomitoday.com/2020/06/30/get-the-xiaomi-smartm...

It blows ambient air directly onto the wetted disks; it will empty a full tank in a day and haven’t cursed anymore that usual while cleaning.

I did use a disinfectant additive

I have had a Venta LW15 for a long time, and like it. I have gone through many humidifiers, and the LW15 is the only one that has lasted more than five years and does not require filters. It is expensive, even with cleaning>

It does require regular cleaning, though -- that can be a pain. It pulled minimal power, too.

I have switched to a whole house humidifier this year and I really like not having to change water every day. I am not sure how it will work in the long term.

I don't know if the LW15 has a different mechanism than the LW45, but it shouldn't be difficult to clean. The entire machine literally comes apart (https://youtu.be/-f2FAI70BSk?t=154), leaving only plastic pieces that can be hosed down.

It is probably the same mechanism. The only thing that took time was wiping down both sides of than fan blades.

I would still be using the venta if I didn't have a new geothermal system installed. The ultrasonic humidifiers I had before the venta didn't last more than two years.

I owned a (different) Honeywell cool mist humidifier and ended up buying a Venta LW45 after getting fed up with the Honeywell. The Venta works _shockingly_ well, and requires basically no maintenance. The problem with most wick humidifiers is that minerals build up on the wick very quickly (even before anything starts to grow), and minerals prevent the wick from absorbing any liquid. Even if you don't see or smell anything growing on the wick, the efficiency drops dramatically within a couple weeks, unless you change the wick constantly.

In comparison, the Venta requires almost zero maintenance, and the entire machine is basically indestructible. The electronics pop out if you press the two buttons on top, which means you can hose the entire thing down in a bathtub if you want. You could probably put the whole thing in the dishwasher if you really wanted to, but I haven't tried that myself.

Yeah, I run two Venta air washers in two small rooms. They are expensive but the only option for me that is easy to fill, easy to clean and has a nice noise profile.

I have two ventas, both purchased off ebay used, and they really are the best. Simple, reliable, cleanable and no expensive wick refills.

That honeywell lasted about one season. The wick refills are ridiculously expensive. It was cheaper to trash it and use anything else. I'm also upset with the wirecutter for that trash recommendation.

Do your airwashers make clicking noises? I had one that did, but was kind of old and beat up. I bought a new one and, sure enough, like 2 months later the clicking was back.

I’ve tried replacing the... little walking thing that moves the discs? (not sure what to call it) that makes the noise but it didn’t help.

I had this issue too at one point. I ended up soaking that part in vinegar (to remove the gunk on it) and then rinsing it off with water, which ended up fixing it. I assume it was just grinding due to mineral build up. Seems like it's a pretty common issue, as it's even listed on their website in the FAQ.

Okay I could’ve sworn I scoured their website for this information. Granted it was a few years ago so maybe it’s new...? I’d found the “push the rubber coupling” tip, which has helped before, but I am breaking out the vinegar as we speak - thank you! I owe you one.

It’s definitely comically expensive. But I’ve had mine 15 years and it’s still the best least fuss humidifier I’ve ever owned. Oh and I never use their additive. Little dish soap (drop of two) in each refilling keep the water “sticking” to the disks nicely, nothing else to replace. Never had a mold problem with them either.

To everyone experiencing mold issues, there's an easy way to avoid it. Simply let the wick dry out between tank fillings.

I have eight of these Honeywells running in a couple of vacation rentals. I let guests know to run them till dry before refilling, and I make sure they don't sit wet between guests. I also run a large Holmes wick humidifier at my home. I've run the Honeywells for several years now, and the large Holmes for twelve years. In all that time, I've only had one episode of significant mold growth on a wick, which occurred when I accidentally allowed a wick to sit wet for several days on end.

If the wick stays wet for many days or weeks, it will mold. This is not a design flaw. It's unavoidable biology.

Also note that the UVC "disinfection" system in these Honeywells is useless. It might disinfect the tank water in transit to the wick, but that does nothing to address the innumerable bacteria and fungal spores supplied by the air passing through the wick. What the UVC lamp does do is slowly destroy the plastic base, so I always remove the UVC lamp when I buy one of these humidifiers.

I agree the fan should be more accessible, but it can easily be blown out with a computer duster or compressor.

Or use a warm mist humidifier. We have $10 Vicks warm mist humidifiers and they never get moldy.

I bought this (a few years ago) at Wirecutter's recommendation and had a bad experience with it as well. Like the medium post, the humidifier didn't work for me. Eventually, I got rid of it.

Wirecutter simply isn't that reliable. I do check their recommendations as one input source, but their top recommendation is not reliable (and will change from time to time).

> Wirecutter simply isn't that reliable

Agreed. Recently bought a handheld vacuum cleaner. Wirecutter had some recommendations and said the Dyson one was “the strongest” (also most expensive), I got the Dyson and hated it (very cumbersome, heavy, short battery duration, not that easy to clean). Ended up returning it and got a random one at a local store instead. The random one was $50 (instead of $250-400 for the Dyson), has same or better suction, way easier to use and the battery lasts about 50-100% longer per charge (7-10 min instead of 4-5 min for the Dyson).

Similar thing happened with another appliance. Wirecutter is not very reliable.

Are you sure the Dyson you bought was real? I have owned a Dyson stick vacuum for over 5 years and it still runs for ~15 minutes on a charge. The newer versions of the same vacuum sold at Costco are advertised to run for up to 40 minutes.

That said, I switched to a Roborock S5 Max around March of last year and I have only used the Dyson once or twice since then.

I have used maybe a dozen vacuum cleaners over the last 10 years and nothing has come close to a Dyson coordless. I'd describe it as the exact opposite of "very cumbersome, heavy, short battery duration, not that easy to clean".

To give another data point, this exact model--the Honeywell HCM-350--was reviewed by Consumer Reports[1] who rated it the 4th best model of 13 models in their large-room category for humidifiers. (The top three were Boneco 7135, Crane Germ Defense EE-8065, and Honeywell HWM-340.) This is what they said about the Honeywell HCM-350:

"With Excellent ratings for moisture output, convenience, and energy efficiency, this humidifier gets the job done. Excessive noise, often a problem with evaporative models because they use fans to moisten the air, shouldn’t be a major problem. One caution: Its performance using hard water is just average, so anyone with mineral-rich water can do better elsewhere. Plus, this model won’t shut off automatically when the tank is empty. Output 5/5, Convenience 5/5, Noise 4/5, Efficiency 5/5, and Hard water 3/5."

So it seems like a good model among those available. But having used multiple different humidifiers over the years, I hated all of them for one reason or another, and returned or threw them out within days or weeks of purchase. I think that a good humidifier is an unsolved problem. It's probably the same for the author of the article.

[1] Consumer Reports is a decades-old non-profit organization which puts out a magazine (and website) which does unbiased product testing, has zero advertising, pays for all the products they test, never takes sample products, buys all their products anonymously (so they can't be given better samples for testing purposes), and has extensive laboratories, procedures, scientist/technicians for testing (a private track for testing cars, for example). I never heard of anyone claiming that Consumer Reports was fraudulent or pay-for-play.

I find it inexplicable that a humidifier that doesn't automatically shut off when the tank is empty can get a perfect score in the "convenience" category.

It might be that you'd like to finish drying out the wick so it doesn't mold? And use up the last of the water?

I seem to recall Technology Connections also complaining about the auto shutoff in his videos...

It seems easy enough to check the wick for moisture (check if the wick closes a circuit?) instead of using a float. Or using a float, but having a 10 minute lag after detecting an empty tank. I'm curious what the objections would be outside of the objections you mention (which sound like product defects more than an objection to the feature).

Why? Evaporation humidifier won't make more noise when they're empty, and water level detection is surprisingly hard to make reliable while still being convenient in consumer devices. And you have to refill them daily anyway, so using it as an 'empty' indicator doesn't really add much (in theory it does, but not in real use). At best one could say it's the energy savings, but for a device that requires daily maintenance (refills) I'm not sure if the benefits outweight the advantages.

For this type of humidifier you actually want the fan to run after the tank is empty so that the wick dries out. Otherwise you have a wet lump of filter just sitting in an enclosure growing mold and bacteria and gross.

> [...] won’t shut off automatically when the tank is empty.

> Convenience 5/5

How does this go together? Spoiled Dyson user here.

Sat in a damp London flat, with condensation permanently dripping down the windows (despite the dehumidifier running virtually 24/7), I struggle to relate to a world where you would deliberately want to put moisture into the air.

And as someone who lives in Brisbane Australia I’m right there in confusion with you!

We run our aircon on the de-humidify setting haha

There are many places in the USA where in the summer you use AC to dehumidify the air and in the winter you do everything you can to add humidity.

Yep, as a Kiwi, people deliberately owning humidifiers is bemusing - but then, that's probably because our rather shitty housing stock leads to far more humidity than is healthy, in every season.

Also because our winters never get cold enough to freeze all the moisture out of the air - I experienced that when living in an alpine village that turned into a giant ice box over winter / early spring (Arthur's Pass), but that was a village of 37, the rest of NZ is not experiencing that.

Heck, I used to run two dehumidifiers in a previous house of mine during winter, just because the amount of condensation and dampness we got was ridiculous and very unhealthy.

I'm Irish by descent and people who are, genetically, adapted to the environment you're describing and show up to, say, parts of the US northeast can have a hell of a time, especially in the winter. There's really no comparison between the UK and environs where it bascially doesn't get cold (really cold air more or less doesn't carry moisture) and where the climate is just really damp and the climate here. Add in radiator heating that is pretty intensive and you'll start seeing hte plaster crack off the walls due to the dryness, let alone what happens to your body.

Whenever people talk of turning the thermostat UP to save money my brain rebels.

Being from NZ, I thought the same. But now I live in the Netherlands in a modern building with radiators for heat. In the colder parts of winter, just taking damp outside air in at around 0° and warming it up to room temperature lowers the relative humidity enough that I can find it pretty dry. It'll be somewhere between 35-45% at this time of year, which is on the low side for me.

A boiler humidifier has a nice random gurgle noise; that could be a plus for some. The water tank can be rather nasty and you know that the water vapor is safer because its steam.

Propane heat emits water vapor too; and if you can have a lot of plants around they add moisture and lots of other good and bad things to the air.

My issues are such that I can have happy plants and benefit from them. For about the power cost of a humidifier i can have an LED lit jungle shelf that transpires more than a gallon of water a day

Gotta say, I’ve had the Honeywell for a couple years and I’m quite happy with it. I haven’t had any of the problems that the article cites — it works well, easy to clean, easy to refill. I’d be quite confused about whether article has the same product, except that the photos match my model.

Same here. I have the same model as the OP. It’s been on pretty much continuously all this winter and last. The filter only needs replaced every couple months and I’ve only had to wash the base once. And it keeps our 900 sq ft NYC apartment at a comfortable 40-50% humidity. I think the OPs main issues could be fixed by just keeping a cleaner house.

> For me, today at least, it was a pot of boiling water on the stove.

If you elect to do this (I also did this, at one point in my life), think twice if your stove is gas. There's increasing evidence that gas stoves lower the air quality in your home, especially in apartments with poor ventilation:

https://www.epa.gov/indoor-air-quality-iaq/nitrogen-dioxides...

https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/resources/documents/indoor-air-pollut...

https://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/doi/10.1289/ehp.122-a27

Instead, I recommend this humidifier, which is easy to clean (distilled water only, please) and refill (albeit on the smaller side):

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07WKZVWRD?psc=1

I would never use an ultrasonic humidifier. Everything in the water becomes aerosolized: dissolved solids turn into particulate pollution, bacteria and fungus become aerosolized [0], etc.

[0] I wouldn’t worry so much about viruses — viruses that infect humans probably don’t reproduce in water.

> bacteria and fungus

I'm seeing this all over - does nobody add just a bit of bleach to their water? It solves the mold/bacteria issue quite handily.

It makes another health concerns. Maybe it's fine if we put correct volume, but most people may not confident.

Saying it doesn't work is misleading. If you need to fill it up every so often then it is working. By working I mean it is converting water into vapor, and that's all a humidifier can do. They can't magically make a desert climate humid. Most build-up in humidifiers is due to crappy water. They can't do a whole lot about that either. Yes, they should be easier to clean, but when they are that cheap, then yes, they are easier to just throw away. But you get what you pay for.

I'm pretty sure I had this exact model of humidifier at one point and had...none of these issues?

- I was able to pop the fan grille off for cleaning, it took me a while to figure out how, but once I did it was pretty easy.

- The wick does get crusty with mineral deposits, but I just soaked it in a 50/50 mixture of vinegar and water (with a good subsequent rinsing), and it was almost as good as new.

- The rest was pretty easy to clean. As easy as any other humidifier I've owned, at any rate.

- I had it in a small bedroom (couldn't be more than 200 sq. ft), and it was perfectly humid in the room. Granted, it was a tiny room.

I used to live in China a decade ago and everyone used ultrasonic humidifiers there. When I moved back to the US, I searched for one of them and could only find steam and evaporative humidifiers like this Honeywell one. Having small children, I went for the Honneywell humidifier and hated it - I was stupefied that it had such good reviews. So I searched for "safe" steam humidifiers and couldn't find one, so I gave up.

Last year, I noticed that ultrasonic humidifiers were now very popular and cheap on Amazon, and got one. The review sites recommended against them, due to supposed calcium and bacteria build-up, but I haven't seen any problems, and the Honeywell was definitely worse on these fronts.

Get an ultrasonic humidifier - they are cheap and if they break, you can get another one. Just used filtered water in them.

I wonder if there have been waves of "fashion" in humidifier design. My parents used an ultrasonic humidifier when I was growing up in the US in the 1980s.

I was able to buy an ultrasonic humidifier six years ago from Bed Bath and Beyond. I think I had to order it online but it didn't seem to be too rare and it wasn't expensive, or at least it cost a reasonable amount.

I have had the opposite experience. I live in VT, and a humidifier is a real need. I used to use an ultrasonic device because, basically, that is what stores near me had available.

But I noticed that every winter I got bronchitis. I remembered that years ago I read in Consumers Reports that these can cause a reaction because they can break particles apart. (I remember it saying that it can break apart virus particles, but I'm not sure. I'm also not sure if that is correct.)

Based on that dim memory, I bought a Boneco AIR-O-SWISS Warm Mist Steam Humidifier S450. It has faults, and is expensive. But I don't get annual bronchitis any more. So we use that.

Curious what Wirecutter would have to say about this. I use them for a lot of my purchases if I don't know where to start and it does seem like some rare times they just miss the mark, though not so egregiously as this. Why stand on something that seems so widely disliked?

Affiliate revenue. The same reason they recommend all the other products on their site. It's advertising disguised as product reviews. You are a sucker if you believe anything an Amazon affiliate is telling you.

There are a dozen other humidifiers they can earn affiliate money through.

I have a low-end "Victsing" model and it works just fine (as evidenced by the hygrometer next to it), and isn't hard to clean. It isn't a complicated device to make.

(I have no affiliation with the manufacturer).

You don't know what affiliate deals they have with the manufacturer. Amazon pays a flat percentage.

I have found their reviews very extensive, more than any other free alternative that covers so many product categories, and typically they match what you get if you purchase one of the products. You'd think having NYT behind them would lend some legitimacy, at least as far as it concerns outright fabrications. Typically I don't mind if their recommendations are sourced from just a handful of retailers in that case.

All that is to say, that's quite alright with me.

Last time I read the Wirecutter review, they only looked at the wick style of humidifier. The stated reason for this was the propensity for steam and ultrasonic humidifiers to over-humidify. It's entirely possible that the Honeywell is the easiest to clean and most quiet of this type of humidifier.

[edit] Direct quotes from the Wirecutter post (emphasis added by me):

> We recommend the Honeywell HCM-350 Germ Free Cool Mist Humidifier because it’s quieter, more durable, and easier to clean than any other evaporative humidifier we’ve tested, with a 1-gallon tank that will last all day.

> ...In general, we prefer evaporative humidifiers because we find them less messy and less likely to over-humidify a space; however, you will need to replace the wicking filter on a semi-regular basis, and the fans might not be the best option for people who have pets or particularly dusty homes. The best one for you will be whichever one you’re actually willing to deal with and maintain.

There are ultrasonic humidifiers, at the same price point, that have humidity meters built in so they don't over humidify. It's completely dishonest for wirecutter to claim that the entire category over-humidifies. It's just not true.

I definitely think they need to revise that copy. The article actually has a recommendation now for an ultrasonic with an accurate hygrometer that wasn't there when I first read the article ~9 years ago.

Ultrasonic just sprays all the disolved minerals across your room. You won't notice it at first, but about 2 or 3 weeks into using the device, you'll find plenty of "white dust" all over your room.

In my experience, you get a smelly bacteria-infested humidifier if you keep using it for a few days. You need to regularly rinse ultrasonic humidifiers... or really any humidifier at all.

So, I have one of these running in my room right now (and have for the whole winter thus far). No white dust. That said, I don't run it at full power, I keep it where I can barely see any mist coming out.

It humidifies the room quite nicely, keeping it at about 40% humidity (our house averages 25% without humidifiers running, which is hell on skin and noses).

Maybe my tap water has more minerals than your tap water. A good bit of slag builds up in my warm-air humidifier, and the white-dust was noticeable after a few weeks of ultrasonic.

Warm-air humidifiers are less efficient: My room is ~25% without any devices running. An ultrasonic would bring it up to 35%+, but Warm-air humidifier only brings it up to 32% or so.

Another efficiency test: both units were 1-quart (EDIT: Not a gallon) units. The warm-air humidifier probably goes through the tank in ~12 hours, while the ultrasonic would go through in ~8.

> Maybe my tap water has more minerals than your tap water

Unlikely; my tap water is well water. I do clean the humidifier with vinegar every week to keep the mineral buildup down. Then again, I do that with the shower head and tea kettle too (though a bit less frequently).

The big thing, as I've found it, is keeping the output down to a visible minimum. A big plume of mist that visibly lands anywhere isn't adding more water to the air - it's putting water droplets on the surface much like a spray bottle. It looks good, but isn't doing the job you're asking it to.

Hmm...

Then it is probably a difference in ultrasonic humidifiers. I can tell you that mine barely builds up much slag at all. I switched to warm-air after I grew tired of the white-dust issue.

The white-dust issue is further confirmed as I use the warm-air (boiling-type) humidifier. A LOT of minerals are found every day from my boiled-away tap-water... minerals that clearly used to be sprayed into the air and dusting my furniture.

It's expensive, but distilled water will fix that. Cheaper is filling it up from an RO filter (not as low in minerals as distilled, but probably "good enough")

I typically have good experiences as well, but sometimes I know of an alternative that's very popular - when I go to check the "Competition" section it's almost always missing.

I use a Venta LW25 airwasher or a similar model. It performs very well, and there is no expendable wick to replace.

It is quite difficult to fully clean, as the main component is an array of thin plastic discs arranged closely together. If I wanted to clean it I would have to use a pipe cleaner to get between the discs.

Rather than doing this I have just started submersing it in a bleach or vinegar solution to kill whatever grows on it every 2-3 months. I've also started caring less about it being perfectly clean. My rationale is that it uses evaporation rather than dispersing water droplets, so it should be less likely for whatever grows on it to get into the air. I've used this humidifier every night for about 2 years, and so far I've only gotten sick when I travel away from home.

I used to have the honeywell unit described in this post. I don't understand the author's complaints. It was easy to clean. You can open the upper fan compartment from underneath, although I'll admit it does look inaccessible at first glance. I don't know if the author is being hyperbolic, but the fan noise was a low-pitch drone, not too loud and honestly drowned out by other ambient noise. I got rid of mine because I wanted to use it for a bigger room and I wanted something I didn't have to buy a wick for every N weeks.

I don't use the my Honeywell humidifier regularly, but I use it from time to time and honestly I like it more than any other humidifier I've used. I've found it very easy to keep clean, works really well at increasing the humidity without turning the room into a swamp and I've never had any issues with the wick becoming gross. I exclusively use RO/DI water in the humidifier, never any tap water, so maybe that is helping with a lot of the issues.

I use my Honeywell 24/7 and also find it effective [1] and easy to clean [2], even with our "hard" tap water. It might help that I use a good air filter nearby, which solves the dust problem.

I used to use an ultrasonic humidifier like they suggest but definitely prefer the evaporation-based unit.

The article read a little like one of the clumsy actors in an infomercial. The tank slides out and has a screw top! How can they spill so much while carrying it from the sink that it forms puddles?

[1] It goes through a tank almost every day. That water is going somewhere.

[2] I replace the wick and do a light bleach clean roughly quarterly.

This is so funny to see on Hacker News and ironic because I'm sitting at my computer literally right next to 2 of these units that I'm planning on selling. Bought one for our room and one for our child's room. We have humidity sensors in both rooms and I've studied the delta after hours of use. It does not move the needle of humidity in the room. On top of that, it created a horrible moldy/musky smell.

My father built a new house and has humidifier built into the HVAC (I guess newer systems have this). One day, I'll have that. One day...

Ha, I just threw out this humidifier after it lingered in storage for years. It gets really gross really fast. Our new warm mist humidifier can basically run the entire season without being cleaned since it's more-or-less boiling the water.

I understand there are "efficiency" gains with the evaporative style, but it's absolutely dwarfed by the horrible ownership experience. After my poor experience with this unit, I would only consider an evaporative humidifier if I had to humidify a large space.

I don't trust any humidifier that doesn't boil water. They all grow mold and efficiently disperse it into the air. I don't think reviewers are properly taking this into account.

It is just a swamp cooler. Ran those for years and never had a mold problem.

A teaspoon of bleach in every reservoir of water (amount varies with reservoir size) solves the mold issue quite effectively. Source: Been using the same one for almost a decade. No mold.

I know it's not an option for a lot of people but a simple bypass flow-through humidifier attached to forced-air central heating is pretty hard to beat:

* The only "active" element is a solenoid water valve.

* Since water flows through once and then out a drain there's no standing water to grow mold (at the cost of extra water usage; mine is 3 gallons per hour though the humidifier is rarely on 100% of the time).

* Maintenance is a new water panel yearly (about $20) and some cleaning, again yearly.

* You need smart controls or to regularly adjust a manual humidistat to not over-humidify your house based on outdoor temperature, though this is exactly the same as with "portable" humidifiers.

I have one of these. They typically fail because a tiny amount of crud in the feedwater, whether it came from the city supply or somewhere in the domestic water supply, plugs up the flow restrictor. I've fixed two like that. I replaced the flow restrictor on mine with an adjustable needle valve. 3 gallons per hour is a lot. I have mine adjusted to emit just a slight dribble. I think too much and the water on the biscuit is too cold to evaporate well, too little and the biscuit is not wet enough. I've considered making an Arduino circuit to flood the thing thoroughly at startup and then pulse it, but it works well enough as it is with the slight dribble. I think the newest fanciest humidifiers may actually have the pulse feature.

The "biscuit" in there was kind of old, so I went to some trouble to acquire a new one. Difference in humidification: None whatsoever. But while it doesn't impressively cycle the humidistat (I monitor that) like the old rotating foam drum humidifier did, the air quality is fine.

The previous "standing water" type humidifier was a nightmare. Some sort of microorganism in there caused copious amounts of yellow crud on everything and no amount of cleaning could get rid of it for good. Air quality wasn't affected, but... yuck. I didn't try bleach in there because I hate the smell of it.

Humidifiers are just inherently an iffy technology.

When I was little, my grandma had a gigantic console style humidifier. This thing was a beast. There was a vertical conveyor belt that would go underwater (the tank held at least 10 gallons) and then it would pass in front of a low speed fan. The belt would then circle around and back down to the tank to pull up more water. That thing could humidify a damn hangar.

> Water gets everywhere when carrying the refilled tank back to the humidifier.

How? The water tank has a screw-on cap with a "plunger" in middle, and that plunger opens only if you push it (to let water flow when you lower it into the humidier). It doesn't splash water around when carried. This makes no sense.

The only explanation I can think is that this person carries the water tank cap-downward, and their "plunger" leaks. That seems just silly to carry it like that, why would you do that, especially if the end result bothers you.

I'm in Australia, and I've lived in a lot of areas both inland (hot dry) and coastal and humidifiers are that common here.

What is it in the US that creates the need/demand for Humidifiers?

Winter.

Winter in a house with a forced-air heating system just makes everything far worse. If you have the opportunity and the means, you want to go with a boiler, radiant in-floor heat, etc. Anything but forced-air.

By the way, in the winter we almost never use the dryer when washing clothes - always hang them up and they dry quickly and add their moisture to the air. We also open the dishwasher door as soon as it finishes and let the moisture evaporate into the air. Etc.

The problem with low humidity in winter isn't forced air heating, it's air leakage. But since most houses have poor thermal envelopes, your statement turns out to be mostly true.

It is heating. Forced air doesn't make any difference. Forced air is the most energy efficient (electric is slightly better, but much more expensive), so in cold places you get forced air and also the need for humdification

Cold outdoor temperatures cause indoor humidity to get extremely low, because cold air can't hold humidity well.

Today where I live, the relative humidity outside is around 50%, and temperature -5c. That puts the absolute humidity around 1.7 grams per cubic metre. At 20c indoor temperature, that equates to around 10% relative humidity. Far too low.

Thanks for the info... It's rare to see regular temperatures here much below 10 deg C and even then, most people live on the coastal plain so humidity rarely gets very low. Good to learn the conditions others have to deal with.

Without a humidifier, you can actually feel the dry air and it gets pretty uncomfortable at night. The skin looks dry and flaky in the morning. If you happen to catch a cold, your symptoms get worse because your mucus tends to dry out (the only remedy is to then go and stand in a high humidity bathroom for some-time or inhale vapors. You need it for at-least 2-3 peak winter months in the eastern part of the US.

Winter temperatures in the US midwest and northeast with average daily temps far below zero (C), combined with leaky old houses. The stack effect draws in cold, extremely dry air at a rapid rate.

Cold air has less of an ability to hold moisture, the colder the air the less moisture it can physically hold. So 100% relative humidity at 20°F is much less moisture than 100% relative humidity at 80°F

When you heat cold winter air to a comfortable room temperature you are increasing it's ability to hold moisture without adding any moisture. This has the effect of decreasing the relative humidity. The bigger the change in temperature the more you decrease humidity by heating it.

Winters are cold enough in some places that indoor relative humidity can easily get so low it effects humans negatively - dry cracked skin, dry cracked mucous membranes, sore throat, static buildup. Add to that low humidity aids in the spreading of viruses.

Our Honeywell humidifier has been working perfectly for years. One trick I haven't seen mentioned here is filling the tank exclusively with RO (reverse-osmosis) water. This keeps the mineral deposits down to piratically nothing, meaning that things (pet hair, dust, etc.) don't really stick to the fan blades. After each winter season I spray the fan with compressed air and throw the filter away. We usually go through two filters per winter season.

I bought one last fall and have been using it quite regularly during the winter. The humidity in my bedroom has been dipping down to 20-30%, and I prefer it to be 40-50%.

I started with distilled water, and it worked great - the wick/filter stayed in pristine shape for the 3 weeks I did so. However, buying distilled water was about twice as expensive as changing the filter every two weeks: $0.99/gal at 1-2 gal/day vs a $6.99 Walmart-brand filter. I haven't looked around to see if I can find cheaper reverse-osmosis water.

I have not had to clean the fan yet, but that does seem difficult.

My biggest issue is the fan noise. The machine only works well when set to the highest speed, but the fan is quite loud at that setting. I have the machine a few feet away from my bed, and High makes it hard to sleep. Medium/Low are no problem, so I just leave it on all the time on Medium.

Refills are only an issue if you carry the tank by the handle. I only use the handle to take it out of/put it into the unit, and carry it upside-down in my arm when taking it to the bathroom to refill.

Some years ago I got an Enviracaire EWM-220, which looks to be discontinued now. This is a warm-steam one that also has a UV bulb in it to (presumably) sanitize the water. Twin tanks where one gets used up before the other one starts to drain, so you can refill them one at a time.

Didn't see this mentioned in another comment, but when it's time to de-calcify the boiling chamber (very easy to access on this model) I squirt a little Lysol toilet boil cleaner in there and let it foam and sizzle on the scale buildup for about ten minutes, then wash it away.

Anecdotally, I saw this model in a couple different violin shops around the time I got it. Typically in one of these places there will be showrooms where you can try out bows and instruments, and they usually have about a hundred violins/violas/cellos hanging up in there.

Humidity control is extremely important for fine string instrument storage, so I figured if this is the model a shop has settled upon to protect $100-200K of their merchandise, it's probably a good choice.

I own this exact model. It's perfectly cromulent. I don't need to clean it that often. I don't frankly care that there's a bit of mineral scale in the basin. That's the only visible filth I see. It's quiet. Super quiet. A fan, on low. I fill the tank in my bathroom, and I seal the cap and invert it, so it, you know, doesn't dump water on my floor. I will concede that I'll take the mesh into the bathroom and dampen it, and it can drip a bit, but I just rest it on the inverted tank as I walk both back to the humidifier. This isn't rocket science.

Finally, I also own a cheapo hygrometer. It shows us hitting 15%-30% when running forced heat in the room. When I turn this on, it pushes up to 35%-40%. That's effective enough for me.

Honestly, this thing works. And I buy a six pack of cheaper meshes and just swap them out as the mesh yellows/gets a bit crusty, which usually takes a few weeks. No big deal, cost of doing business.

I find it fun how the author complains about all the time spent suffering with this ineffective humidifier - as if she had been saddled with it for all eternity. She could have tossed it and gotten a good working one much sooner. I guess the rant does make for some nice medium click bait though.

I also just boil water. It's easy to adjust the rate of evaporation. For night time I lower the fire to its lowest setting, and if needed I just use multiple pots. Over night at lowest setting only half the pot is boiled away.

A warm-mist humidifier is just the boiling strategy... except with actual safety-shutoff sensors.

I count myself among the victims of this wirecutter article. What a piece of garbage, I can't believe I got tricked into buying a humidifier that requires wick and heating element replacements when modern devices don't.

Heating element replacement? The Honeywell HCM-350 I got has a UVC bulb which will eventually need to be replaced, but there's no heating element since it's an evaporative humidifier.

Last winter I installed a whole house humidifier and I couldn’t be happier. Very little maintenance, marked reduction in dry nose and cracked skin. Easily handles the whole house.

As a DIY project I would rate it’s difficulty as moderate.

Does this increase the risk of mold growing in external walls and around windows during winter?

Not in my experience. You'd have to get to the point of condensation to risk mold growth, and that doesn't usually occur until above 60% humidity. We aim for 45%, and haven't had one issue (due to the humidifier - a pinhole leak in our faucet hose was another matter -_-)

I live in an exceptionally dry area - I'm taking the humidity from too-low-to-register-on-the-hygrometer to 30%RH - so there's no material mold risk either around the windows or in the HVAC ducting.

Yes. You have to install an outside temp sensor or use an Ecobee smart thermostat. That and check the windows for condensation.

I've had good luck with this Crane so far:

https://www.canadiantire.ca/en/pdp/crane-1-2-gallon-humidifi...

"Crane 1.2-Gallon Humidifier" -- 1.2 Gallon, cold mist ultrasonic, has those weird LCD buttons but has been pretty reliable. you clean it periodically with vinegar and a cloth. The only issue I've had is it's easy to accidentally overfill. The lid comes off so you can clean it super easily.

The author mentions living in a New York apartment - I wonder if the lack of central heating and air means that their air is unfiltered, thus the only thing to collect the dust would be the humidifier?

I also have one of these and the only thing I really dislike about it is the 'glug glug' sound randomly throughout the night. But it is worth pointing out that I live in Texas and so I don't have extreme low humidity very often or persistently.

I wonder how a tote full of water with an aquarium pump, washable furnace filter, and fan would do.

I recommend getting an ultrasonic humidifier. The Miro appears to be a $120 version of the same thing you can get at Walgreens for thirty bucks:

https://www.walgreens.com/store/c/walgreens-humidifier/ID=30...

There's no wick to clean and they're nearly silent.

They’ll also leave calcium dust all over the place if you put hard water into it, since everything in the water gets sent into the air.

I had a different Honeywell Humidifier which was hard to clean, didn't humidify enough and made a lovely (read: annoying) gurgling noise every so often.

Last year I got the AairCare 831000. It's basically a large tub with wick and a fan on top. No gurgling, massive capacity, can humidify the whole apartment and you refill it with a bucket (so much easier and less messy). No nooks and crannies to clean and you can basically bleach the whole tub if you want to.

I purchased this exact model a few months ago, and agree with all of the criticisms. One curious point, however, is that while I don't see any difference in the hygrometer readings even when I put the hygrometer right above the device, the water tank does empty quickly. It's not clear to me how much water the air in my apartment can hold, such that a few gallons doesn't change the humidity even by more than 1-2%.

Either a bad reading or you have forced air heat and a lot of air exchange sucking out all the moisture you just added.

I have the same model in a medium sized room, with the hygrometer on the other end of the room where it is open to the rest of the house and the second floor. About 3/4 of a tank yesterday bumped us from about 17% humidity to 22%, with a fire going in the fireplace.

Well, a 500sqft aparement with 8ft ceilings is ~30,000 gallons of air.

I suspect what really kills you is the ventilation. If ventilations,air leaks, etc, turn over the air in a room once an hour, any humidty you dump in gets sucked right out in no time flat.

There are many air purifiers, too, which are impossible to clean. Wynd Max is one of those! If you turn it off for a few days (and forget to turn it on), it fills up quickly with dust, which is impossible to clean. Same with Molekule. I wish when people design products they don't ignore the omnipresence of dust in our homes! All these new cool fabric-like materials are also impossible to keep clean.

This was surprising to read.

Generally I've been absolutely thrilled with Wirecutter's recommendations ever since their inception.

Admittedly, there were a few occasions where long-term usability and reliability were issues; the sorts of things you would expect reviewers to miss because it's simply impractical to expect them to use a product on a daily basis for a whole year or something like that.

Can anyone recommend a good humidifier that doesn’t mold!? This is so relatable it hurts. I bought one of these too for the UV functionality. But it didn’t do much and there was mold not just in the wick...BUT on the blades too which I couldn’t take apart to clean. Any review on the Dyson humidifier in terms of mold?

I never had any mold or even any scent from my Dyson. And it was sitting with water for months last summer.

We only run the humidifier once in a while (if someone is sick or it's really dry) and we've done well with a cool-mist + cheap distilled water (nearby water store). Distilled water simply doesn't go bad, so we buy many gallons at a time and it also serves as a disaster prep item.

Beside the point but if the water tank empties but the air stays dry where did the water go? You would think you could calculate at a given room temperature how much water you need to add to the air and see if the flow rate of your machine is great enough to work effectively?

If anyone here is after a good humidifier, the Air Innovations 1.4 gal one is quite good:

Model# HUMID16-WHT

Home Depot used to or still does sell them. They have a ceramic filter, anti microbial body, programmable for time or humidity level, and can produce mist. It’s actually quiet as well.

i have one of these exact humidifiers and also despise it. the amount of gross black mold that grew inside of it was truly incredible, unlike any other humidifier I've tried (and I've tried at least 4 others for multi-month periods).

I've completely stopped using humidifiers after one caused a mold issue in my home after I overused it. Arguably my fault, but I just don't want to ever take the risk of that happening again. Just not worth it.

Had this one and the only thing it did really well was attract giant house spiders. No thanks.

If you own your home and have central air, you might want to look into whole home humidifiers. They’re surprisingly not that expensive.

FWIW I have an AirCare humidifier and no complaints. It has a fan and a big cellulose filter/wick of some sort for the water to evaporate from. Works fine.

I found that one to be junk too, it grows mold everywhere unless you are super on top of adding chemicals. Maybe I'd have had better luck if I ran distilled water only. I use a warm mist honeywell/vicks one now and it's great cost about $35. But I'm pretty sure that I will add steam to my hvac though next season and be done with it.

The vicks giant bulb thing for $20 that they recommend gets pretty gross because you can't get all the water out and the slag accumulates as it doesn't work with distilled water.

I like my AirCare fine. Have had it for about month and a half. Maybe I won't like it so much later.

The Vornado Evap3 is a great alternative. Easy to clean, high output, accurate controls. No issues with mold using two 'aqua sticks' in the tank.

Why does it matter if the fan collects dust on it?

Am I wrong to only be worried about cleaning the parts that get wet, and not really care about the rest?

Absolutely the worst and most horrible appliance purchase I made in the past 10 years was based on a Wirecutter review. Never again!

I always preferred steam radiators. With the perfect adjustment you have humidity and white noise.

Why do people in New York want a humidifier? Isn't it very humid there?

Keep in mind 30-50% relative humidity is comfortable.

Right now in new york city it's 30°F, 87% relative humidity, and a barometric pressure of 29.45 in.

Using this calculator: https://www.rotronic.com/en-us/humidity_measurement-feuchtem...

We can calculate the specific humidity of NYC, that's around 21.42gr/lb right now. That's the mass of water vapour in the air.

However, most people don't keep their houses at 30°F! You heat up the air in your house to room temperature.

So if a New York City resident heat up air that has a specific humidity of 21.42gr/lb to 70°F, they end up with a relative humidity of 19.57% inside their house. This feels very dry! In fact, it's dryer than the Sahara Desert (approximately 25% relative humidity on average).

Simple solution: cut out of Wirecutter, period.

For those wanting humid air: get an aquarium.

This article needs photos.

let's hope this person never looks inside their AC ductwork

First world problems.

I did an exhaustive search and tried them all. The answer is Vornado Evap40. Can easily dump 2 gallons in half a day. Nothing even comes close. Key is moderate negative air pressure. Operating cost is higher than most but well worth it.

Why is negative air pressure important?

water evaporates more easily at lower pressures. That's why at very high elevations, you need a pressure cooker to cook most foods properly.

If you are sensitive to noise, try the Vornado EVDC lineup. It is smart enough to run the fan at the lowest speed required to maintain the set humidity.

I found hygrometers on these machines to be not so accurate. It hardly matters in my use case because even maxed out at 4 gallons per day, it barely keeps up during winter heating months.

Please watch Technology Connection's video on humidifiers (and all their other videos)

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=oHeehYYgl28

> “I don’t think [my humidifier] made any noticeable noise,” my friend Rebecca Rosenberg told me when I asked her about her humidifier, a tower-shaped misting humidifier that she used in her D.C. apartment. “Maybe like a really, really slight noise of the motor but really soft, and I think it helps that because it’s so tall, the motor is on the ground,” as opposed to one that rattles on a table, she says.

Maybe because... it doesn't have a motor.

All humidifiers get gross. I’ve found that the ones that use an ultrasonic piezo transducer are less bad than the other types though.

It works well and puts a lot of water into the air. Once a week, I rinse it with a diluted bleach solution out of a spray bottle. Problem solved.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com