Tame Your Indoor Desert With the Vornado EVDC300 Humidifier

WIRED

4 hours ago

As prominently as the weather report includes outdoor humidity on any given day, you may be surprised to know that you should pay close attention to the humidity inside your home, too.Every time the weather turns frigid and the soupy East Coast air turns dry, my previously comfortable apartment turns into a dried-out mess. My lips crack. My hands crack. Even my wood desk has cracked. That is, until I set up the Vornado DVDC300 humidifier in my two-bedroom apartment.
No longer did I itch and my hands crack, as long as the machine spat out a constant stream of water vapor. A humidifier like this could be just what you need to make your home much more comfortable. Be sure to also check out our guides on How to Build a Home Tool Kit, Best Air Purifiers, Best Eco-Friendly Cleaning Products, Best Robot Vacuums, Best Dyson Vacuums, and Best Cordless Vacuums.
Setting It Up
When the air is dry, not only can you feel it, but it could also create health hazards in your home. Indoor humidity should ideally be kept between 30 and 50 percent to deter mold and pests, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. My apartment is about 700 square feet, with the combination kitchen/living room where I placed the Vornado comprising a bit less than half that.
About 12 inches high, 13 inches long, and 8 inches wide, the EVDC300 fit nicely in an unused corner near my couch, where it whirred away as I worked, ate, read, and watched movies alongside it. It weighs 6.9 pounds and is made of smooth plastic that wiped clean when it got dusty, although the white and gray plastic worked well at not showing much dust. The round, transparent blue water tank and the round fan slats atop the unit contrast with the straighter edges of the device's casing.
The first time I plugged in the EVDC300 and turned it on, my apartment was at an ambient temperature of 28 percent. It took about 15 minutes to raise my humidity to 35 percent. That's on par with the Honeywell HCM-350 and SPT SU-9210 humidifiers, which are both of similar size to the Vornado.
Maintaining Humidity
The EVDC300 is designed to stay on constantly and automatically turn the fan on for short bursts to maintain the desired humidity, without letting it drop far from the set humidity level. It did that well, not letting humidity drop more than two or three percentage points before kicking back on. But that only worked up to a point.
The sales literature on the EVDC300 says it'll handle spaces of up to 750 square feet, but it fell short. Even in my living room, I couldn't get my indoor humidity percentage past the mid-30s, as displayed on a ThermoPro TP49. No matter how high I set the preferred humidity on the Vornado (it goes up to 60 percent) or how high I set the fan speed, it couldn't do it. All it meant was more noise. And my home is equipped with electric wall unit heating systems and is well-sealed against weather and air leakage.
Rarely could I get it to the 40 percent I wanted, where I personally felt most comfortable. It was a disappointment, but I still saw a noticeably positive change. My skin no longer itched from the dry air, and my hands cracked less than when I was living in my own private, indoor desert habitat. Is mid-30s percent humidity indoors ideal? No, but it's a lot better than the 20s. I felt more comfortable, even if I expected more power and ability from the machine to raise my humidity to the 40 percent range, based on the marketing specifications. It performs more like a bedroom or office humidifier than a large-room or whole-apartment humidifier.
Energy Smart mode is selectable by pushing the leaf symbol on the LCD control screen. If you find that the EVDC300 doesn't require switching out of low fan speed often to maintain your desired humidity, as I did with mine, go ahead and give the leaf a press. I noticed my humidity level dip one or two percent at times, but not much more than that, making it a worthwhile mode I used often. Vornado claims that using the Energy Smart mode can use as little as one watt, 90 percent less than its humidifiers that don't feature it. On high, the EVDC300 uses as much as 8.5 watts. By comparison, Anker says the average 55-inch TV will use 77 watts while on and 2.1 watts in standby mode.
Even though I couldn't get the humidity as high as I wanted, the Vornado worked wonderfully to bring humidity up to an adequate level, and hardly ever made noise in the process. I'd set the desired humidity and have the machine ramp up, run low, or turn off automatically as needed, it barely ever needed to run higher than low to keep the humidity in the 30s. On a medium fan speed, I could barely hear it, and on low I couldn't hear it at all, even with it only about four feet away.