Pure Enrichment humidifiers

Pure Enrichment is unusually straight about runtime: it publishes a range, ten to twenty-four hours depending on the setting, rather than quoting only the flattering end. That one editorial choice tells you more about the machine than any spec - at the high setting a gallon lasts ten hours, which is what a gallon does. It is otherwise an unremarkable and perfectly competent $60 ultrasonic: no filters, a mist dial, an optional nightlight, auto shut-off. The 500 sq ft claim is the usual fiction.

Sold on being easy to clean - a wide 3.5-litre tank you can get a whole hand into, which is a bigger deal than it sounds given that the narrow-necked tank is why most cheap humidifiers end up growing something. Fifty hours on the low setting, no filters, and no room-size claim printed anywhere, which after forty-odd entries in this catalog reads as restraint rather than an omission. What you give up for the wide mouth is a sensor: there is no humidistat, so it runs at the level you set until it is empty, and in a small closed room that is how windows end up wet.