the quest for a humidifier that doesn't suck

It is ridiculous what I had to go through just to find a replacement humidifier that works like it should. Mostly.

A few years back, I acquired an AquaOasis cool mist humidifier. And it was perfect...

...until they changed it.

I'll explain the changes in a moment, but the original had an infinite-adjust style adjustment knob, threw a lot of mist, ran quietly, operated on plain tap water, and did its job. That thing was amazing.

After years of use, the one I had started making weird noises. No matter what I did to try and fix it, nope, not happening. I had to replace it.

Naturally, since I had such a good experience with the first one, I bought another. And it's terrible. Runs louder with an annoying whine, the infinite-adjust is gone and replaced with a 3-click, doesn't throw anywhere near as much mist as the first one did, the tank has changed and doesn't hold as much water... it's just bad.

Now I had to find another humidifier that would actually work.

After acquiring FIVE DIFFERENT HUMIDIFIERS (and yes, I will be writing an article on that soon, because the crap I had to go through was ridiculous), I finally found one that worked for me. It's the Frida Baby 3-in-1.

What I wanted was a humidifier that:

1. Ran on tap water
2. Ran quietly
3. Has an infinite-adjust knob
4. Does not require filters just to work
5. Has a decently sized tank so it can run for at least 2 days
6. Is easy to refill
7. Is easy to clean
8. Throws a decent amount of mist

And WOW, what a tall order THAT is.

The Frida, even with it's very annoying cutesy language on the box like "all in the deets" (groan...), does mostly satisfy all my requirements.

My only complaint is that I have to run it at maximum all the time just to get some mostly-good mist out of it.

Again, I will go over all the other humidifiers I went through just to find one that doesn't suck. Actually, I found two, and I'll post that here soon.

Published 2025 Jul 27