Vornado EV200 Evaporative Whole Room Humidifier with SimpleTank, 1.5 Gallon Capacity, White, EV200 - 1.5 gallon

This type of humidifier works on a very basic principle, and as such it's a very simple device. It's a bowl of water with a sponge and a fan. The humidistat is the most advanced piece of tech in it, but this is literally something you can just make yourself using household items. Obviously this product is designed for optimal airflow and evaporation and noise and convenience and so on, but the underlying idea is just: let the water freely evaporate into the air.It doesn't heat the water, so it doesn't heat your room or consume much power at all. It doesn't vibrate the water, so it doesn't sprinkle mineral dust all over your room either. You can dump plain tap water in it, and the cost of upkeep is replacing the $14 sponge-like wick every couple months instead of buying distilled water constantly. It's quite good value for your money compared to other humidifier types.Of course it works. If you set a giant bowl of water out in your room, eventually it will all evaporate. This thing distributes a small amount of the water across the wick to increase its surface area, and then pulls air across it with a fan, which speeds up the evaporation process. It works. Of course it does.Ugh, reading humidifier reviews is so annoying, because all of the critical reviews say stuff like, "It used up a whole tank of water, but the air in my room didn't get more humid, so it doesn't work. 1 star." Where do you think the water went?? If you don't know, all of the objects in your room have to absorb humidity first, before the air can increase in humidity. The bed, the chair, the couch, the curtains. Wooden tables, cabinets, dressers, doors. The drywall that makes up the walls. They all pull water out of the air. And if your HVAC system is circulating the air in your room to other parts of your house, then you're trying to make this little thing humidify your entire house.It does work. I set it to 40%, it eventually brought my room to 40% and kept it there. I set it to 50%, it eventually brought my room to 50% and kept it there. It takes time for the moisture to distribute evenly throughout everything. I started from 13% humidity in a 9'x12' bedroom and it took two tanks of water. I also keep the door and window closed most of the time, so that I'm not humidifying the rest of the house, or the rest of the world. You'd need something a bit bigger for that.It's easy to clean. All the surfaces that touch water are curved with no corners. You can't throw it in the dishwasher, but you don't need to. Just wipe it down with some soap in the sink whenever you feel like it needs it, don't overthink it. Don't use stuff that scratches plastic, etc.It's not silent. It doesn't make the watery glorp noise every time a bubble enters the tank, but the fan is noticeable. It's a small fan inside a cylindrical housing that directs the airflow, but also works like a resonant chamber, so it makes a constant whirring noise while it's operating. If your house is completely dead silent, you will notice this thing turning off and on. But if there's normal background noise, you'll hardly ever notice it. I think the quality of the noise is quite comforting and soothing; it has a nice white noise profile that isn't harsh or distracting. There's no sudden click or attack when it turns on. You may even want to buy this humidifier specifically for the background noise to help you sleep. I bought a loud air filter for that, after all.The shape of the thing is elegant and modern, but it looks like a medical device, with its bright white body accented with gray. The white makes it easier to tell when there's algae starting to grow in it, so I understand. But the white is still kinda ugly. For the price and functionality, it's well worth it.My only point of criticism is that the UI uses the world's brightest blue LEDs. I will never understand why corporations feel like spamming blue LEDs into all of their products. They are very uncomfortable to look at, and I'm pretty sure you could use these ones by themselves to light your whole room. The LEDs dim after a few seconds, but they're still ugly and piercing. Buy some LED dimming stickers to put over them, you can get packs here on Amazon for like $4. This isn't enough for me to lower my score by a star, but I'm still gonna complain about it. Enough with the blue LEDs!!

I never write reviews, but I’m here buying a 2nd vornado humidifier, so I have the pros and cons on my mind. I last bought this almost exactly 5 years ago. That first one is still going strong, but I need a second one now (my kids moved to separate rooms). I considered trying a different brand or an ultrasonic humidifier, but I tried tons of brands before I landed on the Vornado, and I’ve kept this one for 5 years! I haven’t kept any of the other brands, despite their very good ratings. I considered a top-filling one again, but the one I had before was a nightmare to clean.In fact, the best part of this one is the ease of cleaning. That’s why I’m buying a second one. The other brands say they are easy to clean, but this one really is! There’s only 5 pieces: wick, base, shell, and tank (with lid). That means there’s not a million little pieces to try to remember how to put back together. The tank and lid can go in the dishwasher, and the only other part to clean is the base, which you can just dump and wipe. Unlike other humidifiers, the base doesn’t have a million tiny nooks and crannies that are impossible to clean. I’m terrible with cleaning humidifiers at the end of the season, and this is the only one I’ve ever felt like I can actually get clean.I change the wick each year (a pack of 2 usually runs $12). You could probably use the wick for more than just one winter if you clean the humidifier more than I do. But I only clean it at the end of the season, so I change the wick, too. And there’s no snapping the wick in or trying to get it in right. It literally drops in with no extra maneuvering. I like that there’s no additional hard plastic on each wick, too. It’s more like a spongy material.If you hate cleaning humidifiers like I do, this is the humidifier for you. Don’t be fooled by “top-filling” — it’s the cleaning that makes the difference between easy and miserable.

Well as mentioned I should have done my homework on sizing these things correctly for the room they're used in this poor little guy just couldn't keep up with the needs of my bedroom midwinter, the filter pads need to be either descaled in vinegar every week or so depending on the amount of calcium in your water or outright replaced about once every week and a half they're not super expensive but that cost adds up over time ultimately though I can't complain too much as it doesn't produce that white dust on all the surfaces in my room like my previous cold mist humidifier used to. As of now they don't have aftermarket washable filter pads and they don't recommend descaling the paper ones though I found you still can they last about 2 or 3 descalings before they start to fall apart. It'll probably work well for you if you use it in the right size of room something like a hundred square feet anything bigger and you'll want to look at a larger option.Fan noise isn't too loud about the right amount of noise for a lot of people if they use it as a white noise machine.Blue LEDs don't belong on any appliance used in a bedroom it's just a bad design choice You can cover them with electrical tape if you want they do try to fix the issue to a degree by dimming the LEDs after you're done selecting your settings but a better option would have been using red or even dark green LEDs come on companies let's stop using harsh blue LEDs for bedroom appliances