Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)We bought this unit to help humidify our house in the winter. Past experiences with cool mist humidifiers were poor - having to clean mysterious brown gunk off the electronic innards was disturbing. If you're like me, you'll pretend you don't see the brown gunk. This strategy works great until the gunk becomes a pulsating biohazard that threatens to move about on its own. Warm mist humidifiers don't seem to have this problem. The Vicks Vaporizer looked a bit wimpy, but with itchy skin and static electricity zapping about, anything was better than nothing. Besides, it's cheap.
First, the unit puffs out warm odorless steam as advertised. The manual says you have to add salt to the water to really get the steam going and warns vaguely about blowing fuses if you get carried away. This made me curious, so I got out my Kill-A-Watt power meter (very cool gadget by the way) to see how much juice this thing used. Turns out it REALLY matters how much salt you add. The vaporizer was puffing steam like crazy, and using over a kilowatt of power. I emptied and refilled the water, adding the maximum recommended amount of salt (1/4 teaspoon). Steam production was still fine at a more reasonable 450 Watts.
Since I had the power meter hooked up, I wondered just how efficiently the Vicks produced steam. 450 Watts running all night is enough to want my money's worth. So, I performed a test. I filled the tank with exactly 192 ounces of room temperature water, added the salt, and plugged it into the power meter for the night. By morning it was done and the power meter read 0 Watts. There was still quite a bit of water in the tank, which I measured to be 50 ounces. The power meter said 3.15 kilowatt-hours (kWh) had been used. So, it took 3.15 kWh to vaporize 192 - 50 = 142 ounces of room temperature water. Is this reasonable? I calculated the energy required to vaporize 142 ounces of water as:
Energy to raise 142 oz from 21.1 C to 100 C = 0.37 kWh
Energy to boil 142 oz at 100 C = 2.53 kWh
Total = 2.9 kWh
So, the Vicks is about 92% energy efficient. Not bad.
Our electricity costs 8.3 cents per kWh, so the vaporizer costs me 26 cents per tank.
I'm very happy with the Vicks considering the price. Rather than spend much more on a big unit, I'll just buy a couple more of these.
To summarize:
The Good
* Uses no energy when tank runs low. Good for safety and economy.
* 92% energy efficient (about 26 cents of electricity per tank).
* Except for the steam itself, no outside surfaces get hot.
* Has a little light on top so you don't bump it in the dark.
The Bad (minus 1 star)
* Can't vaporize a full 1.5 gallons. Leaves about a quarter tank.
* Black particles appear in the tank. They don't stick to anything and rinse away easily. I suspect these are some electrolytic byproduct from running electricity through the salty water.
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