AIRCARE
AIRCARE EP9800 Pedestal
AIRCARE's concession to the fact that a console humidifier is a large brown box in a living room. The EP9800 is the same machinery in a pedestal cabinet with a wood finish, meant to look like furniture rather than an appliance - and it half succeeds, which is more than the MA1201 attempts. Nine fan speeds is genuinely useful granularity when you are trying to find the setting that is quiet enough to live with. Output is 7.4 gallons a day against a 2,400 sq ft claim; the calculation supports about 1,820, so it overstates by a third.
The room-size claim, reconciled
1,823 sq ft supported · box says 2,400 sq ft
The box says 2,400 sq ft. By the winter load calculation this output supports about 1,823 sq ft — the claim is 1.3× the room the machine can hold.
Holding 2,400 sq ft takes about 9.74 gal/day, which drains this 3.5-gallon tank in roughly 8.6 hr — against the 60 hours AIRCARE advertises, which is measured at the lowest setting.
What a year costs
one SuperWick at roughly $20, three a season in hard water. Electricity assumes the rated 110 W for 12 hours a day across a 150-day heating season at 16¢ per kilowatt-hour.
Specifications
Maintenance profile
- Top fill
- No — tank comes off and goes to the sink
- Replaceable media
- Wick, replaced through the season
Facts, not a score. Which of these matter depends entirely on whether the unit ends up somewhere you will actually clean it.
Features
- 7.4 gal/day output
- 3.5-gallon reservoir
- Nine fan speeds
- Digital humidistat with auto shut-off
- Pedestal cabinet with a wood finish
- Check-filter indicator
Pros
- Nine speeds means you can actually find the one that is quiet enough for the room instead of choosing between three
- The cabinet is the point - owners buy it specifically because a brown box was vetoed
- 7.4 gallons a day is serious multi-room output without the MA1201's furniture footprint
- Tap water is fine at 7.4 gallons a day; everything mineral stays in the wick
Cons
- Eleven hours at full output against the 60-hour figure, which is speed one of nine
- Wick cost matches the MA1201's while delivering less output
- At $230 it is $40 more than the MA1201 for less capability - the cabinet is what you are paying for
- The 2,400 sq ft claim overstates what 7.4 gal/day supports by about a third
What owners say
No owner discussion collected for the AIRCARE EP9800 Pedestal yet. The pros and cons above come from owner reports and the maker's documentation, and this section will fill in when there is enough first-hand material to summarise honestly. We would rather leave it empty than invent it — how we compare explains why.
AIRCARE EP9800 Pedestal, head to head
Looked at alongside it
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AIRCARE
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Twelve gallons a day is more than any other portable in this catalog by a factor of three, and it is the reason people with genuinely dry old houses end up here rather than buying four bedroom units. The load calculation puts 12 gal/day at around 2,950 square feet against AIRCARE's 3,600 - an overstatement of about a fifth, which in this category counts as restraint. The number that surprises people is the tank: 3.6 gallons feeding 12 gallons a day is roughly seven hours at full output. The 36-hour figure is the lowest of four speeds. Owners of dry houses fill this thing twice a day in January and consider it worth it.
2,956 sq ft supported · box says 3,600 sq ft
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The MA1201's output in a credenza cabinet with half again as much water, which is the version of this machine that makes sense for a house you actually live in. Same 12 gallons a day, but 5.4 gallons of reservoir stretches the fill interval from seven hours to eleven at full tilt, and four speeds with an auto humidistat mean it rarely runs at full tilt. It is heavy, it is furniture, and at $280 it is the most expensive portable here - but it does a job that otherwise requires a plumber and a hole in your ductwork.
2,956 sq ft supported · box says 3,700 sq ft
Levoit
Levoit Superior 6000S
This is what happens when Levoit stops building ultrasonics. A 1,500 mL/hr published output works out to 9.5 gallons a day, which is console territory, and because it evaporates water through wicks rather than atomising it there is no white dust and no mineral film on the furniture. The 3,000 sq ft claim is one of the more defensible in the catalog: the physics supports around 2,300, so it overstates by about a third rather than the three- and four-fold gaps common among the ultrasonics. The cost is a wick habit - four of them, around $40 a set - and a unit you fill through a hose and funnel rather than lifting a tank. Owners who moved from an ultrasonic mostly describe the absence of dust as the thing they noticed first.
2,343 sq ft supported · box says 3,000 sq ft