Honeywell Cool Mist Humidifier, Medium Room, 1 Gallon Tank, White – Humidifier for Baby and Kids Rooms, Bedrooms and More

Why oh why do companies feel the need to over manufacture things. I mean, I get it... the old razor/razor blade phenomenon. Given that the real business is selling the ridiculously overpriced filters, why not make something that at least works sufficiently enough to handle two or three winters' worth of use?!This product finally checks all the boxes. It is elegant in its simplicity. Yes, as one reviewer suggested, this is nothing more than 'a fan over a bucket'. That is exactly what a humidifier is. You want water put into the air. Nothing more, nothing less. I don't need LED lights, I don't need digital displays, I don't need a multitude of settings. You can put a computer on the end of a hammer, but why would you do that? Keep it simple, yeah?This product is far superior to any humidifier I purchased in the past because you don't ever have to remove a container in order to refill the unit. You simply pour water directly into the top of the unit as the unit sits on top of a dresser or table. There is no need to jostle the machine, risk breaking the removable container, no issue with leaking lids or valves, no dripping water all over your bedroom - none of that. Bring a milk jug filled with water, pour it in the top once per day and you are done. So perfect it brings a tear to a man's eye.After dealing with humidifiers every single year for the last 30 years or so (50-year-old guy living in The Northeast, US), this is about as good as it gets. I still find the price of the unit and the ridiculous price of the filters beyond highway robbery, but until I start my own humidifier company, that's just the price of poker. I can wake up to daily nose bleeds or I can man up and buy the right unit. This is the right unit.The only con I have in the pro/con debate is that it has two settings. Barely on and small jet engine. It could absolutely use a middle speed but, what can you do? The rest of the positives far outweigh the negatives. I have well water so a silly ultrasonic machine gets messed up in a matter of weeks. I need a simple, filter-based, humidifier to put water into the air. This is it. Small enough to fit on top of a dresser with no issue. The fill mechanism is brilliant (again, just pour water in the top - no need to remove a thing). Personally, I always have a white noise machine on when I sleep so the high setting (small jet engine) takes place of that each night, but it is pretty loud. The lower setting is quite quiet so if you are a light sleeper, this setting should work well.One fan, one filter, one fill chamber. That's it, folks. Elegantly simple.

So many humidifiers out there advertise that they're "easy to clean". Next thing you know, you have a complicated plastic contraption with water tanks, large water trays with nooks and crannies and sections you can't get to, plastic filter holders, and so on. Every component gets gunked up over the course of a winter season, even when using antibacterial chemicals or treatments in the water every time, and cleaning turns into a nightmare.This humidifier is an outlier. This thing is so simply designed, that it makes you wonder why all the other ones on the market are so complicated. The white base of this thing is nothing but a plastic bucket with a little clear window so you can see the water level. Inside, there aren't any nooks and crannies. The round paper filter just sits in a designated spot in the 'bucket' and the gray top, which has the fan built in, acts as the lid for the bucket and sits on top of it. The fan pulls air through the filter that's sitting in the 'bucket' of water. That's it. There's no water tank, nothing. Super simple, and easy to clean. You literally just wash out the 'bucket' every so often and it's clean.This humidifier also works well too. Sure, it doesn't have a humidity sensor or display, and it doesn't automatically shut off when a humidity level is reached or when it's out of water, but we like that it doesn't. We use this in our bedroom and on low, it's almost inaudible and does a great job keeping the room around 50% humidity in the winter time. Running constantly, it needs to be refilled about once per day as the bucket holds about 1 gallon of water. The filter lasts quite a while too if you flip it over every day or two when you refill it, and knock-off filters work just fine too.We love this humidifier so much, we bought two more for the rest of our house. We were looking into getting a large unit for our main living area, but instead chose two more of these instead, just because of how simple they are and how easy they are to clean. It's also nice to be able to use the same filter type for all too.