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Vicks UV 99.999% Germ Free Humidifier
Product: Vicks UV 99.999% Germ Free Humidifier-Retail $99.99! Sale Only $57.90!
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Vicks UV 99.999% Germ Free Humidifier. Worry Free, Healthful Moisture for Your Family. Please note that steam production time may take up to 6-7 minutes.
- Amazon Sales Rank: #1068 in Health and Beauty
- Brand: Vicks
- Model: V790
- Released on: 2008-09-01
- Dimensions: 13.60″ h x 12.30″ w x 16.90″ l, 10.12 pounds
Features
- Kills up to 99.999% Bacteria, Mold & Spores
- Patented Ultraviolet Chamber
- Up to 24 Hours of Operation per Filling. Dual Tanks for Easy Filling
- Adjustable Humidity Control w/ Multiple Output Settings
- Medicine cup allows for the use of Vicks Vaposteam or Kaz Inhalent to produce a medicated vapor that sooths irritated nose and throat membranes
Quiet, Warm and it works.
After buying two other humidifiers and throwing them away we finally bought this model last year and are very happy with it. The main feature we hated about the other models were Noise and the filters. This model is nice and quiet, it has a low humming sound and a gurgling sound that actually is very tolerable, and maybe even soothing. Our two year old doesn’t mind it at all, he sleeps better with it I think. Another advantage of the warm steam is that it keeps my sons room nice and warm and he needs that since he kicks off his blanket most of the time. The warm steam might be a disadvantage for people living in warm dry climate but it works great for northwest winters.
Although this unit does not have a filter a mineral pad comes with it and is recommended to remove minerals from the water if you use tap water. You can’t find the pad in most retail stores but can buy it here on Amazon.
Also it has a Ultraviolet Light bulb (great Feature) and after a year of use the Ultraviolet light finally went out and again I bought it here on Amazon. The unit is fairly maintenance free, you should clean it often but its not too bad.
Another great feature is the two water chambers, they hold enough water for the overnight operation so you don’t have to worry about running out of water in the middle of the night.
Overall this is the best humidifier that we have owned and I do recommend it.
It works very well (updated Dec. 23)
I just got this unit (Vicks V790) from Amazon. (For several reasons, I greatly prefer the steam-type humidifiers over the cold-mist types.)
Pros – It’s attractive and well made. Twin independently-fillable water tanks mean you do not have to shut it off to refill it. Holds a lot of water so it does not go dry overnight. Makes a pleasant noise not unlike a drip coffee percolator. The UV lamp feature gives an additional level of sterilization, over and above the boiling action that creates the steam.
Cons – The blue LED power light is indeed bright. I turned mine toward the wall, and now it also serves as a night light. (If it really bothers you, a small piece of electrical tape will cover it.)
(EDIT) Previously I complained here about lack of vapor output. But after running it for a few days, output greatly increased. Apparently there is a slight break-in period. Naturally, water usage increased also, as did the boiling noise, but now it’s working like it should, and I have adequate RH (30%) even in my large (400 sq. ft.) room. Amazon does not allow me to change the rating, but if I could I would now give it 5 stars.
The replacement mineral absorber pads are the small 2-1/4 inch round size sold here on Amazon under the “Slant Fin” brand. (Don’t get the larger 3-1/4 inch Honeywell ones, unless you like trimming to fit with scissors.) You replace the pad when it gets stiff. If you have hard water, this may happen quite frequently.
Remember that all humidifiers require regular maintenance. This is where many owners drop the ball. Every month or so you should put some vinegar in it to dissolve any mineral deposits, and sterilize the tanks with bleach water. The exact procedure is clearly spelled out in the manual. If you disregard this, you will be handsomely rewarded with hard mineral crusts and foul-smelling slimy deposits of algae and bacteria.
In conclusion, I really like this humidifier so far.
Potential hazard?
Like Honeywell warm mist humidifiers, this humidifier is actually made by Kaz and simply branded by Vicks. (Does anybody besides Kaz make warm mist humidifiers?) This isn’t necessarily a bad thing; Kaz makes some good humidifiers.
However, this particular humidifier gets such a low rating (and inspires my first rating ever, for that matter) for one critical reason:
WARNING: This humidifier must be ABSOLUTELY LEVEL (even a 1-degree tilt is too much) or else it will boil itself dry and never shut off. This could pose a fire hazard, and I had to return the unit for this reason. See “PLACEMENT” below for more.
I wanted to like this humidifier, so if the above isn’t a worry for you (or for more details on the problem), please read on:
OPERATION:
* There’s no hygrometer (humidity meter) on the unit. There’s just a dial that seems to range from “never turn on” to “always boil”. I have no idea whether the hygrometers on other humidifiers are even remotely accurate (especially since they’re right next to a source of humidity), so this might not practically be a downside, but it’s worth mentioning. I missed having one. (It’s clear from the pictures that it doesn’t have one, I just didn’t notice until it arrived.)
* It doesn’t seem to put out much steam, compared to other humidifiers I’ve used. It’s nice to claim that you don’t need to refill it more than every 24 hours, but that just means you’re putting out less than 4 gal/day. In contrast, our old humidifier (also 4 gallon capacity) could put out over 8 gal/day.
* It does look easy to clean, and it’s certainly easy to disassemble, but I haven’t had it long enough to determine whether it really is easy to clean. I suspect the deep cylinder of the heating element will be harder to clean than humidifiers that just have a flat heading element.
* As others have mentioned, the “ON” light is blindingly bright. I knew this when I bought it, so I just put some electrical tape over it. It’s also behind a translucent bezel, so you’ll probably want to cover a bit of the bezel as well. Note that the “refill” light is not nearly as bright, so you don’t need to cover it.
* Being a warm mist humidifier, it’s relatively expensive to operate, but it doesn’t have the white residue that ultrasonic humidifiers have, and boiling the water has some antibacterial benefits.
VERDICT: It puts out steam, but lacks most of the bells and whistles and attention to detail you’d expect for the price. I suspect you’re paying for the UV lamp and for the Vicks name (though, again, it’s actually Kaz).
UV LIGHT:
* Using a UV lamp to kill bacteria seems like a potential plus, but I’m somewhat skeptical that it actually provides any benefit beyond the boiling that all warm mist humidifiers do.
* It’s yet another consumable replaceable part (though it’s supposed to last about a year, and the humidifier will work when it’s burned out).
* Despite the lamp cover (and warnings not to look at the lamp), there are still a few places where the UV light is visible while in operation: (1) if you pick up the right tank, the hole which leads to the UV lamp has a blue glow, hopefully attenuated; (2) the lamp is visible from underneath the humidifier, so if you have this on a table top, you might be enjoying a little more UV light in your eyes than you intended.
VERDICT: Seems like a gimmick that introduces a lot of problems. Not really worth the trouble and potential risk.
NOISE:
* The boiling is very quiet.
* As Shane’s review observed (sadly, after I bought this), there’s a fan that’s always on. I presume the fan is required to cool the UV lamp (another strike against the UV lamp), since it’s on even when the humidifier isn’t boiling water. Thankfully, the fan is quieter than the large fans in filter/wick-based humidifiers, but it is louder than the boiling. So while the unit is quieter than filter-based humidifiers, it’s loud for a warm mist humidifier.
VERDICT: This very nearly made me return the unit immediately, as it was unexpected. I much prefer the silence of our old humidifier.
TANKS:
* The use of 2 tanks makes each tank lighter than a larger single tank. This is an improvement over other humidifiers we’ve used, where I was the only person who could lug the full tank from the bathtub to the humidifier. Also, the handles are very comfortable. The down side of 2 tanks, of course, is that you fill them twice as often. A worthwhile trade in our case.
* The seal around the caps of the tanks was the best I’ve encountered in a humidifier. When screwing them closed, they turned easily and distinctly stopped turning when they were fully tightened, and at that point there was no leaking. It’s possible that this would cause a problem over time (as the rubber seal gets compressed and you can’t tighten the cap further), but in my brief use of the humidifier I was impressed. Most other humidifiers require really cranking the caps down to keep them from leaking.
* The tanks were a little too tall to fill in our bathroom sink, which was a little surprising. That wasn’t an inherent problem, as we’re accustomed to filling our humidifier tanks in the bathtub. However:
* The tank openings are smaller than on other humidifiers I’ve used. On the plus side, that means it’s easier for small hands to screw them shut. On the minus side, it makes filling the tanks in a bathtub much harder. You either need to hold the tanks as you fill them (which get heavier as they fill), or you have to spend some time moving them around to just the right position if you put them on the tub floor. And if you turn the water pressure up or down at all, it’ll probably miss the hole until you reposition them. On the plus side, the top of the tanks is flat, making them easy to put on the tub floor.
* The tanks have completely flat bottoms (apart from the cap), which causes residual steam to condense on the bottom of them. That means that any time you pick them up, you’ll drip water everywhere (as others have noted). Other humidifiers I’ve used had curved bottoms, so that any condensation rolled down towards the cap and into the reservoir.
VERDICT: This is a draw. Having 2 tanks was nice, but dripping condensation everywhere was annoying. We had to keep a towel next to the humidifier.
PLACEMENT:
* As mentioned above, the humidifier must be ABSOLUTELY LEVEL. The manual does specify placing the humidifier on a “firm, flat, level surface” in multiple places, but who would expect less than 1 degree margin of error? I had to get out a bubble level to even perceive the slight incline. (And I measured it with a protractor.)
* Due to what I consider a major design flaw, if the humidifier is as little as 1 degree tilted forward, it will not shut off when the tanks are empty, and will instead boil dry. Compounding this flaw is that the humidifier does not have a temperature-based shutoff when it runs dry. It just keeps heating (and cooking the mineral absorption pad). I don’t know whether it will keep heating until the pad catches on fire, but I don’t intend to find out.
* It’s nearly impossible to tell when the humidifier has boiled dry, because there’s still water in the reservoir below the tanks, and because you can still feel heat rising from the top vent. (There’s even still water above the little hole leading to the UV lamp!) And because this unit never puts out visible steam, and because the always-on fan is louder than the boiling, it’s hard to tell that boiling has stopped. You have to disassemble the unit to see that the heating element has boiled dry — but be careful, the cone is hot to the touch if you haven’t waited the prescribed 15 minutes.
* The problem with a slight incline is primarily due to the use of a float switch to determine when the tanks are empty. In theory, this should be an improvement over other humidifiers that simply use an overheating sensor to determine that there’s no more water and/or they need cleaning (thus confusing the issue). However, the float switch in this humidifier is placed too far from the water inlet leading to the heating element (it’s on the opposite corner, in fact). Thus the inlet can run dry while there’s still water lifting the float switch.
* Worse still, the manufacturer seems to have decided that the use of the float switch eliminates the need for an overheating sensor. As a result, when the heating element runs dry, there’s nothing to shut it off.
* Because the path of the water from the reservoir past the UV lamp to the heating element is so complicated, even a 1-degree forward incline can cause the heating element to boil dry, but the reservoir (including the inlet to the UV lamp) to appear full.
* I tested other inclines (perfectly level, 1 degree in other directions), and they don’t have this problem. It’s only 1 degree tilted forward (tested multiple times) that’s a problem.
VERDICT: The potential for catastrophic failure when only 1 degree off-level renders this humidifier unacceptable for my use. I don’t want it in my house. I did check, and the box has a UL mark on it, so maybe there’s a fuse somewhere that will burn out before the flames start, but I don’t want to find out the hard way.
FINAL VERDICT:
* For me, the problems with boiling dry made this humidifier unacceptable.
* Apart from that, it seemed a capable though unremarkable humidifier. I’m not sure it’s worth the price premium for the “99.999% Germ Free” label given that boiling kills most germs anyway.
* Does anybody make a truly good warm mist humidifier?
