Safety 1st Ultrasonic 360 Degree Humidifier Review

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(More customer reviews)THE QUICK TAKE: The Safety 1st Ultrasonic 360° Humidifier is well designed, quiet and compact, and one of the best choices if you want an ultrasonic humidifier for a small to medium sized room, particularly for a child's room.
COMPACT: This humidifier has a round base 7.5" in diameter, with the water tank above the base. The total height is 13.5", though you'd need some space above that to allow the mist to flow. It's a far more space-efficient design than most other humidifiers, and won't make you re-arrange your room to accomodate it like many other humidifiers do.
This model is particularly good for a child's room, where you want a small ultrasonic cool mist humidifier. (Warm mist is too dangerous, and evaporative cool mist models have noisy fans.) It's hard to find a good option - most people want the Chevy Suburban of humidifiers, it seems, with the biggest tank and the most humidification possible, so that's all that seems to be available.
The tank is surprisingly large for the size of the humidifier - about 0.75 gallons. At the maximum flow setting, it lasts about 10.5 hours, so it should be able to handle about 1.7 gallons per 24 hours if you refill it. Of course, at a lower setting it would last longer. You want to change the water often anyway to reduce bacterial growth, so there's no point in having a bigger tank than you need for one day.
For big rooms, though, you might want to consider something like the slightly larger Crane Humidifier, which also comes in green and pink versions; or something even larger.
WELL DESIGNED: As mentioned, the design doesn't waste space. The controls seem easy to use. And the mist flows out through two spouts at the top which can be aimed in different directions or the same direction, to distribute the humidity or aim it where you'd like it to go. That also helps make it easier to find a location for this humidifier. (Though it would be nice if they could be pointed up a little more than they are.)
QUIET: This model isn't silent but it is quiet - especially if it's several feet away.
VARIABLE MIST: The variable mist feature lets you adjust the flow to allow for the room size and the weather conditions, so you don't have a room that's too damp or too dry. (Even a smallish humidifier can be too much if it has only one or two settings for the flow of humidity, as many do. You end up having to guess how much to fill it up so that it runs out of water before stuff starts to grow on the walls.) With this Safety 1st humidifier, after a little experimenting you can determine what setting will keep the room at a healthy humidity. You can also limit the flow to what will evaporate before it lands on the floor. (If you're getting a wet spot on the floor nearby, you have the humidifier turned up too high - it's more water than the air can absorb.) This humidifier puts out a pretty impressive stream of fog on the maximum setting.
SAFETY 1ST: You might not be familiar with Safety 1st, but they are a well-known maker of products for babies and children.
If you go to a Target store looking for this, you'll need to look in the section of the store with the baby and toddler gear. It wasn't stocked with the other humidifiers in the store I visited.
A FEW SMALL ISSUES: There are a few minor issues, but they won't be problems for most people:
- The feet are hard plastic, so if it's on a smooth surface you might want to add some non-skid feet of your own, or put it on a non-skid liner, to keep it from sliding.
- While the flow of mist is variable, it seems not to go off completely at the lowest setting. There's no real flow of water vapor when it's turned to the minimum, but it's still a little unusual that it doesn't switch off - you need to use the switch in the back to turn it off.
- Also odd is that there's no marking on the knob to distinguish which side of the ridge on the knob is pointing at the level on the dial.
- The trim along the base of the unit is a light hue of a slightly bright green. (See the photo gallery.) That works for us, but I have to wonder why they didn't use a neutral color.
This humidifier has no demineralization feature, so all the minerals in the water will go into the air, and often create a white dust - so it's not a good choice in a hard-water area unless you're willing to use distilled water. We don't have hard water, but do use filtered water to fill the humidifiers - it cuts way down on the amount of brown gunk that builds up.
By the way, the way the feet are arranged on the base, this could fit on a space as narrow as about 5.5" x 6.5" inches. (See the photo gallery for a photo I've uploaded.) But again, you might want to add something to keep it from sliding around if space is tight. Many stores sell self-adhesive rubber bumpers or feet, or you could place it on non-skid shelf liner.
ULTRASONIC HUMIDIFIERS
There are a few pros and cons common to all ultrasonic humidifiers, like this one. On the pro side, they are quiet, quick to put vapor into the air, and take very little energy to do that. On the con side, the process of the water evaporating into the air takes heat out of the air. That may be ideal in Arizona, but if you're heating the room it does offset some of the efficiency. (That's not a reason not to use them, just something that it helps to be aware of - it surprises some people.) Finally, and most importantly, whatever is in the tank will go into the air - that includes bacteria and minerals. So ultrasonic humidifiers need maintenance - you need to clean them regularly. There are models available that reduce bacteria, though they are several times the price of this one.
If you don't want to clean the humidifier regularly, and the humidifier won't be somewhere that children might reach it or where it might be tipped over, then you may be better off with a warm mist humidifier (which boils the water, so that bacteria and minerals don't go into the air).

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