Air-O-Swiss 32838 Ultrasonic Humidifier
by Air-O-Swiss
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Category: Tools See more product details |
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Tools and Hardware Reviews of Air-O-Swiss 32838 Ultrasonic Humidifier
Customer Review: Alicia's humidifier
Summary: 5 Stars
My granddaughter visited me recently and slept in a room with this humidifier in it and never had a better night's sleep. So I bought her one. She is thrilled.Customer Review: This is the best
Summary: 5 Stars
I recently bought this. It is a little pricey but worth every dollar. It is very effective, easy to clean and very quiet. Very very satisfied with it.Customer Review: Great Customer Service!
Summary: 4 Stars
I'm reading a lot of negative comments about Air-O-Swiss' customer service, and I wonder where they are coming from. Most of them look a year old. I had a great experience with their customer service, it was notably un-painful. About a week after I had bought the unit, I could not unscrew the cap of the water tank. The manual says to press the spring at the bottom of the cap to release water pressure. I did, but unfortunately I think I pressed to hard, and I pushed the pin trough the cap into the filter. I call up AOS later that day, expecting to argue for hours that I just did what the manual told me and I wasn't liable. To my surprise, I picked up the phone and dialed, and a nice sounding american lady picks up. I tell her what happened, and she simply asks for my address. She says were sending you a new cap, and it will be there in a few days. Whatya know, three days later it arrived on my doorstep in a handwritten package. No arguing, no proof of purchase, nothing.
As for the unit itself, it is really good looking. It was the only humidifier that didn't look like a bag of hurt at bed bath & beyond. I am using the humidifier in my basement bedroom, which receives the extremes of the humidity spectrum. During the summer I have a de-humidifier, and the heat is so dry down there I need a humidifier during the winter. The sound the unit makes is most closely related to a laptop's fan, with the occasional bubble of water (3d screensaver?). I keep it next to my bed with no problems. The room is about 400SQ feet, well within the specified range of this humidifier. However, I have had the unit running for about 48 hours now, and have only seen the humidity rise from 25% to 29% on the unit. I would complain that the humidifier isn't even doing its job, but the room is noticeably more humid. Wether it just isn't accurate or a 4% jump in humidity is really that noticeable, I'm pretty satisfied so far. I will update this if it actually gets any higher.
Customer Review: It makes rooms humid!
Summary: 4 Stars
Despite the mixed reviews for this product, I went and got one. I had also bought a Slant/Fin GF-211D a couple weeks earlier. Since I only wanted to keep one, I ran a few of my own tests.
I set up the humidifiers in different rooms of approx. the same size on the same floor. Both were set to max humidity on HI. Several hours later I came back. The first test was inconclusive, although, it seemed the Air-O-Swiss room was slightly more humid. What made the test difficult was that the warm mist on the Air-O-Swiss was not nearly as warm as on the Slant/Fin (which only uses warm mist). So I switched rooms and ran the test again. This time when I came back, the Air-O-Swiss room was like a SWAMP! It was seriously humid in there! The Slant/Fin room, however, felt about the same as before. As a result, I kept the Air-O-Swiss.
Some people have complained about white dust. At my parents' house (which has slightly harder water) the white dust was very slight and took several days to even notice. At my apartment (which has softer water) their is no white dust at all. So, if you have hard water that might be an issue, but there are other options such as using distilled water.
As mentioned above, the warm mist is not that warm. It's warmer than the cool mist, but don't expect it to make your room any warmer.
The relatively low maintenance is also a plus. The Slant/Fin needed cleaning every few days, but the Air-O-Swiss can go for a few weeks and even then it doesn't seem that unclean.
Overall I think this is a great humidifier. It humidifies over 800 sq ft (according to the manual) and seems to cover my two-bedroom apartment just fine. In terms of helping asthma/sinuses, the Slant/Fin might be better, but in terms of pure humidity, the Air-O-Swiss is the best!
Customer Review: An unemotional, engineer's PRODUCT review
Summary: 4 Stars
A very good humidifier, but with a couple of flaws. Very quiet, pumps out lots of warm mist at close to the 3.5 gal/day quoted rate. As such, the tank needs to be filled 2x daily if used full bore in a larger room. As with any ultrasonic humidifier that I've used, filling the tank can be cumbersome and, as some have pointed out, this tank has no flat surface to rest it on, making it unstable. But ignore comments about leaking, placement, etc. because they have NOTHING to do with the model, but more the style of humidifier (ultrasonic). Flaws: more white dust than usual with hard water because the filter has a design flaw. The washer seal on the tank plunger is supposed to double as a filter "anti-bypass" seal, but allows water to bypass the filter (it's undersized). Also, the humidity controller "hunts" on and off when the setpoint is reached, rapidly turning the mist on and off - very annoying in the middle of the night. (For you engineers, there is no "hysteresis" in the control loop.) To avoid this, you need to raise the humidity setpoint higher than desired and lower the fan speed to keep the room level fairly constant, essentially turning the humidifier into a manual control model. (So why spend $200 for the fancy controls?) All in all, it pumps out humidity, it's easy to clean, it's very quiet, it's relatively easy to fill, the humidity is nice and warm (and doesn't freeze out the room), my throat no longer croaks in the morning, and my eyes aren't fused shut. BTW, we live in bone dry Colorado with forced hot air, and the unit is in a ~600 sq. ft BR with a 15' ceiling and adjoining master bath. It does the job nicely if run constantly. I would imagine that the reports about hard water being a big problem are right on. Still, for us: 4 stars.