AIRCARE EA1201 Digital Whole-House Console-Style Evaporative Humidifier, Mini, Silver and Black Design

Like many of the other comments, the cover to this Essick Air Humidifier is very flimsy plastic. You must be careful when removing to access the filters because it feels like it will break or crack at the slightest pressure. The fan motor on my unit seems to be rather quiet, unlike some others' experience. I set it up on a Friday and took a whole week for it to accomplish a level of 45% humidity in my 3250 square foot house. I positioned it in my living room, which is in the middle of my house. It seems to run without issue. I read one customer had a bad experience with his/her motor that it would shut off and they would have to unplug to get a reset. To date, I have not had this problem and it has been operating for over a month. The fill spout seems a little awkward because if you pour the water in too fast, it will splash out through the side vents, so pour slowly. Another feature I would like to see is, even though there is a LED light shining on the indicator of the water level, the white colored float is hard to see against the white label with the "height" mark. It need to be orange or another bright color for easier viewing, in my opinion. Overall, I am very satisfied with this unit and recommend it for any one to use in thier home. I am pleased even though I mentioned some things I think are flaws needing to be improved.

Great Humidifier....once I got one that was not a returned product. It 3 tries for Amazon to provide me with the actual new product that I originally ordered. The first one showed up with a damaged interior box and all broken top tabs on the machine. It had clearly been previously opened and had scuff marks on the plastic outside. I submitted a return, and quickly received another one. This one also had interior box damage and only half of the top tabs broken. It had also been clearly previously opened and had black scuff marks on the plastic outside. I submitted another return, and finally received a clearly new one. Interior box was not damaged and the unit was in completely new condition. I contacted Essick to complain about their quality control and they informed me that the company I purchased it from was the responsible party. In this case it was Amazon.com LLC. It makes sense to me now, apparently Amazon is recycling returned products and Essick is out of the loop on it, but gets blamed when broken ones show up. Shame on Amazon for needing 3 tries to get me the NEW product I originally ordered. My wife, in the mean time was saying, don't worry about the broken parts it will still work....which is exactly what Amazon is counting on. 5 stars for Essick and the product, 1 star for Amazon recycling broken returned merchandise as "NEW". I am going to be inspecting things from them much closer now to ensure I get a new product when I order it.

I like it - with one caveat: Fan has a great selection of speeds, from quiet (good for film night without having to shut it off all the way) to full speed, which is not overbearingly loud (like my last humidifier). The controls work fine (when they are working - see below), and I like having the option to set it at max humidity, which will run it continuously. The front fill looked like it would be a pain at first, but then I noticed the LED light inside that illuminated the front float. With a 1-gallon jug, it was easy to fill with 2-3 trips (I have a sink within 10 feet - if your is further away you'll have to figure out something else. Don't use a bucket and pour - it will splash and make a mess. Ask me how I know. :) Here's the caveat - for the first week of use, I never got it to work correctly. When I first plugged it in, it had a CF on the display, which means "replace filters" (it shows this every 720 hours of operation - why it showed this from the start I do not know). Unplugging it, plugging it back in removed that. After filling it, I turned it on and heard the low hum of the fan. The humidity level buttons worked fine, but the fan buttons did nothing. It took several days at that fan speed to empty the water tank, while the humidity level in the room dropped. Also, it would shut itself off every few hours, even with humidity set at Max. Finally, today, with it running on an empty tank, I removed the top section and looked at all the mechanisms. The problem appears to be the float in the center which does not always depress the switch under the fan motor. Without that switch being depressed, the unit goes into a slow, idle mode, then shuts off after a while (I'm guessing that's what it will do when it runs dry). The fan speed switches do not work when this happens. Refilling the bottom all the way with the top off, then putting the top carefully back (I heard the click of the switch) got me a blast of F9 (highest) fan speed, and everything worked fine. Next time it's run dry, I plan on figuring out a way to either line the float up better so it pops straight up instead of leaning to one side, or attaching something to the switch so that the float has a bigger target. I like this unit better than all the others I've tried over the years, so it will be worth it for me to jury-rig it a bit to get it functional. I'll add to this review once I've figured out how to fix the problem for good.

Does a fantastic job of keeping the humidity level in the house comfortable.

Good unit but goes threw filters fast ...Have to replace them monthly and that gets costly

This unit is pretty big. I have it in the hall so that all the rooms will get some humidity. Other than the size the only gripe I have with it is that, the float that tells you that you filled enough water, moves only a half centimetre before you reach max water. It's hard to tell if the float actually moved or not. Also sometimes when you pour water the float doesn't want to work, you need to tap it to see what the water level is or risk overfilling it.

Liked: When it ran the humidity level was perfect. Disliked. So flimsy that when I lifted top part off to check water levels it was necessary to reassemble each time. Tabs and notches not well aligned. When I filled it, water came out of vents on the sides. Finally gave up after one month and bought a unit made by Air Care.

Does what we need it to, no frills approach. Pros: not totally offensive looking, simple to use, effective. Cons: the controls are digital but they aren't great to use (response to input slow) , should have a remote. Fan is loud. Filling is finicky because the design allows water to spill from the side vents if you pour quickly.