EV100 Evaporative Humidifier

Very happy with this humidifier. I put in our lower level family room; works quietly and efficiently. Doesn’t leave any white dust since has a wicking filter; the dust I had problems with in the mist type of humidifier. Fills easily and may be the best humidified of its size I’ve bought over the years.

Either you will have white dust to clean up if you buy a cheap humidifier or you can buy this Vornado and change the wick filters now and then and you'll have no white dust. This is my third Vornado humidifier. I also own the EVAP40 with 2 tanks but that one alone couldn't handle the entire 1500 square foot home. So I purchased this one for the master bedroom, which measures 15 x18 feet. It works fine and the fan on low is quiet enough I don't lose any sleep. I've had this a month and no leaking at all. I'm thinking the people who complain about leaking either don't read instruction manuals or didn't test for minute cracking after unboxing. The manual says to do this. Mine was fine, so I had it set up in less than 5 minutes. The water container is easy to fill and carry. I have hard water where I live and the wick filters last me 7-8 weeks. So depending on when I set the humidifiers up for the winter season, I only need to replace them once. Sometimes I can get by with only 1 set of filters by soaking them in vinegar and then replacing them back into the humidifier. BTW, the Vornado customer service is excellent. On my original EVAP40 I bought in 2008, the fan motor started making a strange sound only 3 days before the warranty expired (a 5 year warranty). I contacted Vornado and they immediately sent a replacement no charge. All they wanted in return was the cut off cord of the old unit. The EVAP40 I'm using now is 11 years old. I also have several Vornado air circulator fans that are almost 15 years old and even now, those work as new.

I looked at reviews before buying and purchased even with the many problems reported. Almost all reported problems are not true, I'll address those below. In general, the unit works as expected, humidifying a small space effectively, but it's just too loud for my tastes. The only thing it's missing is auto-shutoff when dry if you're looking for that feature. Its lowest humidity level is 40% which is too high for freezing climates, causing excessive window condensation. Leaking: there is an entire page of the instructions dedicated to checking and testing your unit for leaks. Mine didn't leak and if yours does, it's either a cracked tray from shipping or user error (for example, the first time my spouse refilled it, they didn't seat the tank correctly into the base). Heed their warnings and test run your unit where it won't water damage the surface it's on if it leaks. Humidifying: the unit absolutely does work if you use it correctly. The reviews that claim it does nothing are clearly user error. The bottom edge of the wick must be completely touching the base because the water level is only 1/4" deep, if that. Second, it must be covering all the air intake slots--I found that I had to adjust it after it was wet (lift the white fan housing off but leave the grey housing on the base to adjust). The airflow doesn't bypass the wick and the wick doesn't flop over like two users claimed. Remember, this is an evaporative humidifier so if your ambient air already has high humidity, it's not going to work well, just like evaporative coolers don't work well in humid climates. One other thing to keep in mind if you use this on carpet, the full tank will make the unit tilt that direction so water won't adequately fill the space around the wick, therefore, you need to put something under the tank part of the base to level it out--I used a ceramic drink coaster. Blue lights: the two tiny LEDs for fan speed and humidity level go dim after 20-30 seconds and are very dim. Either other reviewers had defective units or Vornado addressed the issue in the newer iterations. These lights are not an issue unless you're looking directly into them. Cycling on/off constantly: mine works fine, cycling on/off at a reasonable interval. If yours is erratic, it's defective. Noise: this is the only issue I'd have to agree with other reviewers--it's too loud. I bought the smaller EV100 to use in our bedroom and even the low fan speed is way too loud. Our Vornado Evap40 on low is practically silent compared to the EV100 (it's not that quiet, but you get the drift). There is a definite change in pitch from high to low, but it isn't much. I've contacted Vornado support via email questioning this issue and I'll update my review if it was a defect or working as expected. If it is normal, I'll only run it during the day and shut it off at night. If you like white noise then it won't be an issue for you.

I have had an earlier version of the EV100 humidifier for well over a decade, with excellent performance. The fan motor was clearly weakening, so I ordered another one. I knew, on ordering, that the unit with the same model number no longer LOOKED the same, but the specs were identical, so I expected an equivalent device. That is not what I got. The new "equivalent" device has one evaporation pad, rather than two, cutting by half the output ability of the unit, even though the specs haven't changed! But that wasn't the worst of it. When I started using it, in tandem with the old one, I realized in a matter of hours that it was putting out less than a third of the output of the old one (with the weakened fan). Upon investigation, I found that the pad in the "new" unit I had received was actually a used pad. And not just used, but nearly entirely clogged with salts, indicating it had been used for at least two months, and was no longer absorbing water! This is downright fraud. I ordered and paid for a new unit, and got one that was clearly a used, returned unit that had never even been properly refurbished. I replaced the pad with a new one I had around for the old unit, and the output jumped by a factor of 3, making it equivalent to the impaired old unit. So by operating both of them, we are getting about the amount of humidification we used to get from the old "EV100" unit, when it was newer. I have decided not to return the new unit, since it is now working only slightly below expectations. But purchasers of this unit should be on the lookout for fraudulent replacement of new units with used ones. It is, of course, unknown to me whether the fraud occurred at Amazon or at the Vornado factory, but fraud it was. And deeply disturbing.

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!!

Is it quiet? No. Fan is quite loud even on low speed. On high speed is very noisy (cheap small fan). Is it cost effective? No. Not worth the $60. It has no moving parts except the fan, has an upside down water container (which gurgles quite loudly periodically), and a two speed fan. I put the value at about $15. Yes, this was purchased BEFORE the tarrifs were introduced. Does it work? Kind of. Single size does do something, but not much. Expected for an evaporative humidifier of this size. I had to replace the wick after about 2 months. It doesn't say anything to indicate it needs replacing, it just stops using water as the wick gets blocked with deposits. It does the job, mostly. The humidifier industry has been swamped with ultrasonic versions that also spew out the water minerals which ends up all over the place. I wanted something else and tried this first.

Easy to use, works well in the bedroom. Various settings. Easy to clean

When this works its fine. The issue is it doesn't function all the time. The filter that came with the unit wouldn't wick the water from the base so the fan could disperse it. The filter was maybe a third wet. I flipped it over - same thing, wicked about a third of the way. I purchased another set of filters and that solved the issue for about 2 months and the replacement filter simply stopped wicking water. Seems very strange. Not sure where the fault lies, although since both the unit & the filters are Vornado, the buck stops there. Other than not humidifying the air, there's a lot to like. The unit is fairly quiet even on its highest setting. It's not *quiet*, but considering there's a small fan spinning rapidly, its *relatively* quiet. There's a pair of blue lights that light up (fan speed and humidity level) so if you like it a bedroom totally dark, this will annoy you. They're not bright enough to be a night light, but bright enough so you'll notice. The tank is very easy to fill and carry. The entire unit is fairly compact so it doesn't take up too much floor room. The until is quite easy to clean as well. Remove the fan, the tank, and its easy to wash or even run through the dishwasher. One can even fit a hand inside the tank to clean in there as the opening is large . At high speed the unit uses 17 watts as measured by my Kill A Watt meter. All that said, if I was still in the return window, I would have returned it. The filter issue just seems like this is going to be the costliest humidifier I've ever used.