Honeywell
Honeywell HEV620 Top Fill Tower
Honeywell's answer to the two complaints levelled at the HCM-350: no digital humidistat, and a tank you have to carry upside down to the sink. The HEV620 is a tower with a top-fill opening, a digital humidistat that will actually hold a target, and a timer. Its 300 sq ft claim against 2 gallons a day of output is one of the most conservative ratios in the catalog - the output supports closer to 490 - which is worth knowing if you have been talked out of it by a spec-sheet comparison against an ultrasonic promising 750. Honeywell now sells it in black (HEV620B); the white HEV620W pictured is discontinued.
The room-size claim, reconciled
493 sq ft supported · box says 300 sq ft
The 300 sq ft on the box is what the winter load calculation supports for this output — one of 18 units here whose claim lands within 5% of its own published rate.
Holding 300 sq ft takes about 1.22 gal/day, which drains this 1.7-gallon tank in roughly 34 hr — against the 24 hours Honeywell advertises, which is measured at the lowest setting.
What a year costs
HFT600 wick filter is about $17 and Honeywell asks for a change every one to three months in season. Electricity assumes the rated 43 W for 12 hours a day across a 150-day heating season at 16¢ per kilowatt-hour.
Specifications
A claim the maker makes
Honeywell says the filter is treated to inhibit up to 99.99% of mould growth on the filter itself. We quote it rather than repeat it: this site has not tested it and neither has anyone independent.
Maintenance profile
- Top fill
- Yes
- 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
- Digital humidistat that holds a target humidity
- Top-fill 1.7-gallon tank
- 2 gal/day output
- Timer and filter-change reminder
- Evaporative - no white dust
- HFT600 wick filter
Pros
- The one number on the box that undersells the machine - the output supports roughly 60% more room than Honeywell claims
- A real digital humidistat, so it stops when the room is where you asked for it
- Top filling solves the HCM-350's most-cited annoyance
- Tower footprint takes very little floor area for a 1.7-gallon tank
Cons
- Wick filters at about $17 every one to three months add up faster than the sticker suggests
- The tall narrow tank is hard to get a hand into for cleaning
- Fan noise at the top setting is noticeable in a quiet bedroom
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 Honeywell HEV620 Top Fill Tower 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.
Honeywell HEV620 Top Fill Tower, head to head
Looked at alongside it
More from Honeywell →
The long-running default in this category, and the arithmetic explains why. Honeywell's manual gives 2 gallons a day of output against the 500 sq ft it is sold for - a room that needs almost exactly that - making this one of the few portables in the catalog whose coverage number the physics supports outright. It was sold from 2011 largely unchanged until Honeywell discontinued it; the tank and tray go in the dishwasher, and it evaporates rather than atomises, so there is no white dust. The costs are a wick habit, a fan you can hear, and no humidistat at all: three speeds, and you are the humidistat.
493 sq ft supported · box says 500 sq ft
Take the HCM-350's mechanism and move the fill to the top: water goes in through a funnel on the lid, so nothing has to be carried to the sink, and that is most of what "Easy to Care" means. The trade is capacity: a 1-gallon tank against the 350's 1.1, no UV, and no humidistat here either. Neither Honeywell's manual nor its store page says any part is dishwasher safe, unlike the HCM-350, whose tank and tray are. At the 36 hours Honeywell claims it is moving two thirds of a gallon a day, which is a bedroom's worth; the 360 sq ft it is sold for would take closer to 1.5 gallons a day and drain the tank in about 16 hours.
165 sq ft supported · box says 360 sq ft
Honeywell's filter-free line exists because plenty of people would rather buy no consumables than buy the right ones. There is no wick and nothing to replace, which keeps ownership about as cheap as it gets here - and it is an ultrasonic with no demineralisation media, so on hard water the minerals that a wick would have caught end up on the furniture instead. A gallon tank and 24 hours works out to about a gallon a day, near enough to what its 300 sq ft claim needs, making this one of the more honest small ultrasonics on that particular number.
246 sq ft supported · box says 300 sq ft