Review on Get Fresh and Comfortable Air with VENTA LW45 Comfort Plus Airwasher - Perfect for 645 ft², White by Christie Cox

I think I've tried every humidifier technology over the years to help deal with the dryness in my apartment during the New York City winters. I could never get the volume I wanted from various ultrasonic devices and I hated the maintenance to avoid white dust. I found the expensive Boneco steam system to start off very well but ran into reliability issues and using boiling water to produce steam was quite noisy compared to ultrasonic. Honeywell's evaporative wick humidifiers have served me well over the past few years, but the wicks themselves — at least the Honeywell brand, which I found to be much better — weren't always available when I needed them. This year I took the plunge and focused on the Venta airwashers, which use Honeywell-like evaporative technology that doesn't require replaceable wicks. One large LW45 Plus and two smaller LW25 Plus units are required to properly humidify a medium sized 2BR room. Here are the pros and cons you should know. CONSI is NOT an effective air purifier. While it's marketed as "air purge" because it humidifies and gives the impression that you're getting two devices in one as a possible excuse for the high price, that's not the case. Wirecutter has researched and documented fairly minimal cleaning abilities, certainly nothing close to a real air purifier, and those results seemed to hold up when I flushed the device to clean. The high price has no real justification. The general build quality and actual parts are very similar to my Honeywell units, which are less than a fifth the price. (And Honeywell's units included ultraviolet light to kill bacteria in the water, which the Venta doesn't have!) One major difference is that where the fan in the Honeywell blows air through a large wet wick, the fan in the Venta blows air the plastic blows by. Disks that rotate slowly in the water. The discs themselves aren't motorized - they're just on a spindle, and their movement causes air to circulate, which circulates the fan. Of course rotating plastic discs cause additional production costs, but FIVE times more expensive?! Very close. Venta has reduced its previous guarantee of 10 years - which at least justified the high price - to 2 years. This applies to both newer Comfort Plus units and newer Old-Style units. Not exactly a vote of confidence in your own product. Venta moistens very slowly at first. How slow? The Venta welcome sheet packed in the box says you have to wait 7-10 DAYS. it's not a typo. so that the air is properly humidified, which means that a humidity level of between 40 and 50% is achieved. Once you achieve proper hydration, it will probably be easy to maintain. I haven't owned my units long enough to know, and we haven't had the driest, coldest days of winter yet. Just take a look. I would say the estimated coverage per unit is WAY overpriced. I started using the LW25 Plus in my master bedroom, which is slightly within range, and the humidity reading was still stuck at 30 after a week of use, and the unit ran at peak levels the entire time. I now have an LW45 Plus in the master bedroom and an LW25 Plus in the living room and guest bedroom. This seems to keep the humidity throughout the apartment at 40 in dry air. But even with 3 blocks it never reaches 50% unless it's a rainy day outside. Wow. With such a list of cons, you're probably wondering why I didn't return my Ventas. Here are the benefits, the reasons you'll want to buy and keep the Venta. Finally, humidifier maintenance, which IS a breeze - add water once or twice a day, rinse the discs and the bottom half of the unit's "tank" once. every week - 10 days, then add 3 ounces fairly cheap water treatment when refilling empty. That's all. I don't like the look of in-room humidifiers all winter, but since it's necessary, I really prefer the Venta design's clean, minimalist square box. This is of course very subjective, but I like that it doesn't look like a humidifier and rather "disappears" in the room. No maintenance costs other than water treatment, which you only add during weekly flushing and refilling. Some maintenance chemicals and wicks required for other humidifiers accumulate over time. Except for the highest fan level, it is very quiet. At top speed, you'll definitely notice a small fan running, but it's more of a white noise. I would recommend the newer Comfort Plus models to original devices, even with their higher price tags. Their coverage is higher than the original model, plus it's really handy to have an automatic setting that controls fan speed based on how close or far you are from your target humidification. And if you prefer, there's manual control too. That's both good and bad when it comes to Venta Airwashers. I'm deducting one star for the inexplicably high price and an additional star for poor performance as an air purifier and slow performance as a humidifier, at least initially. However, minimal labor and maintenance costs can make this humidifier my favorite over time. I hope this review helps you with your purchase decision.