Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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71 of 71 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Quiet and effective, November 16, 2008
I knew i needed a humidifier, as i'm just not used to the dry air of east coast winters. But after shopping around on amazon for warm mist humidifiers, i was horrified by the reviews. Every humidifier seemed to be loud, leaky, and a hassle. I ended up getting this one because of the relatively low price, thinking that if it was as bad as all the others, at least i wouldn't have spent too much on it.
I have no complaints.
On the low setting, it's about as loud as a pot of water boiling in the next room. On the high setting, it might compete with a pot of water boiling in the same room. Every once in a while it gets a bit talkative, but that's rare and doesn't last long. I'm a light sleeper, and this unit never wakes me up.
On the low setting, a full tank of water lasts a little over 24 hours. On the high setting, it goes through in about 8 to 9 hours, perfect to run overnight.
The auto-shutoff works just fine, so i don't even bother turning it off before i leave the house.
It is a bit annoying to clean the unit, but that has a lot to do with the tap water here being less than perfectly clean. We switched to using filtered water, and now the humidifier is actually our way of knowing when to change the filter. When there's build-up on the heating element, the filter isn't working as well anymore.
The daily maintenance takes no more than a few minutes. The weekly maintenance takes longer, but that's mainly because you throw some of the pieces in to soak. It's maybe 10 minutes of effort, plus however long you want to soak the pieces.
In all, i'm very glad i purchased this unit. (And the water tank isn't nearly as blue as it looks in the picture.)
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43 of 47 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
"Objective" review, January 12, 2008
Yesterday I went downtown to look for a humidifier for my bedroom. What I thought would be an easy project turned into one of frustration. I wound up going to three different drug stores to try to get an idea of what to buy. Most of the humidifiers I saw were by Kaz (Vicks), who makes many different models. To make choosing a model supposed easier, somewhere along the line the company put a graph on only some of their model's boxes to indicate which model to buy based on your needs. (I wanted it for colds and flu). This graph was at one point changed and updated. But the problem is that Kaz doesn't label their boxes too well as to what model applies to the graph. From what I can tell it is these newer graphs that grade their humidifiers as Best, Better, Good or nothing depending upon the purpose intended. But if you are trying to choose between warm or cool all Kaz tells the consumer is some people prefer the warm mist to the cool mist while some don't. How this is supposed to help the consumer decide I'll never know.
Anyhow, I wound up with this model (v745A) because it was supposed to be all purpose and being the winter here in the NE I thought warm rather than cool mist would be better. An added benefit with the warm mist is that you can add an inhalant and with my current cold that would help. I did have some concerns about whether this unit would be enough for my 16x16x10 room. Kaz only labels some of their boxes with the size room the unit is good for but this one does not say. All my observances below were made using this unit on the high setting.
BUILD: The unit itself is built OK nothing more (and I didn't expect more) but seems a little flimsy.
NOISE: OK, the noise. Come on people, this device boils water for steam, hence the name "Warm Mist". You should not expect this to be absolutely silent so stop whining. And for those of you with the "Princess and the Pea" syndrome do NOT buy it. But for those who want an idea of what it sounds like from 3 feet away think of it is like the sound of a rainy day or it is like having an aquarium in the room. It is not loud at all (certainly no louder than a fan on low speed) and could be soothing to those who like white noise.
PERFORMANCE: This unit does humidify my bedroom but it does take a while to have its effect, so I would start it before I went to bed. The amount of mist that comes out is probably not as great as if you were boiling water in a soup pan. [Please do not have unrealistic expectations: your room will not to turn into a steam bath and you will not see the mirrors fog up as they do in the bathroom.] Ideally, two of these in my room would probably suit it better. I can not say that the added inhalant has a great effect. I can smell it in the mist as it is coming out right above the unit but would not be aware of it otherwise. Incidentally, Vicks makes a personal model of these, but I would skip it in favor of this one because you could just breath in the vapors as it comes out of the top of this unit for the same effect.
CONCLUSION: Overall I am OK with this purchase. Frankly, I don't see how anyone could "love" this device or anything like it. It does what it does. I am not sure if another model would have been better. Kaz really needs to make choosing between these models easier. Having used it now I would only recommend a WARM mist for winter use (when most colds and flu occur). It would be too warm and uncomfortable at other times. I have not had it long enough to test its durability.
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17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great humidifier!, March 28, 2007
This humidifier has been a life-saver. I really like that it's easy to clean and maintain (although the build-up that accumulates on the heat element is a bit hard to remove), I've never been shocked by it, it's simple to use, and the materials are sturdy.
I had one previously that was terrible - it was the thinnest plastic ever and leaked constantly. I have had no problems with this humidifier except that the first one I had got a hole in it when I dropped it (on to a ceramic tiled floor from a few feet up), so after hastily replacing it with the cheap one that gave me problems, I quickly ordered up a duplicate of my original humidifier, and have been happy ever since. I've had this brand and model for 2 years now.
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