AIRCARE
AIRCARE H12-400HB Credenza
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.
The room-size claim, reconciled
2,956 sq ft supported · box says 3,700 sq ft
The box says 3,700 sq ft. By the winter load calculation this output supports about 2,956 sq ft — the claim is 1.3× the room the machine can hold.
Holding 3,700 sq ft takes about 15 gal/day, which drains this 5.4-gallon tank in roughly 8.6 hr — against the 45 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 140 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
- 12 gal/day output
- 5.4-gallon reservoir
- Four speeds with an auto humidistat
- Credenza cabinet
- Check-filter indicator
- Evaporative - no white dust
Pros
- Whole-house-class output with no installation, no plumber and no furnace to modify
- The biggest reservoir of any portable here, which is what turns 12 gal/day from impractical into livable
- Auto humidistat keeps it off the top speed most of the time, which is where the noise is
- No white dust at an output level where an ultrasonic would coat a house
Cons
- Eleven hours per fill at full output - still a twice-daily job on the coldest weeks
- 30 lb empty, over 70 lb full; this is furniture that gets placed once
- $280 is the top of the portable market and close to the hardware cost of a bypass whole-house unit
- 140W and an audible fan at the speeds that deliver the rated output
- A single wick handling 12 gallons a day hardens fast in hard water
The pros and cons above are drawn from the maker’s documentation and published specifications. There is not yet a body of owner reports for this model that we have read.
What owners say
No owner discussion collected for the AIRCARE H12-400HB Credenza yet. The pros and cons above come from the maker's documentation and published reviews, 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 H12-400HB Credenza, head to head
Looked at alongside it
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