hOmeLabs Dehumidifier - Advanced Humidity & Moisture Control, Quiet, Efficient, Auto Shut-off, Ideal for Home, Basement, Office - 4,500 Sq Ft Wi-Fi (32 Pint MAX 80 Pint at 95°F, 90% RH)

For years I had a bathroom that was plagued with black mold due to excessive humidity. The little dots would appears along the tops of the walls shortly after I'd scrubbed them or painted over them, and then bloom into larger rosettes within weeks. We tried squirting bleach at them, we scrubbed them routinely, and they went away only to appear again a few weeks later. We tried leaving the door open to let some of the humidity out, but that meant less privacy. We opened the window in the summertime, and that helped, but in the winter it was far too cold. Then I stumbled across this machine while on vacation at my sister-in-laws house and the solution was clear. I'm one of those people who obsessively research a major-ish purchase like this before I buy it. I don't like dropping cash on something that later turns out to be a dud, so I read reviews and comparisons and went and looked a few items in stores. Finally, I bought this machine and it's terrific. It works effectively and is easy to use. I empty it about once/week and clean the filter on average once/month. I'm very satisfied - if you're looking for a good, quality dehumidifier with great customer support look no further. UPDATE 2/10/19: My original unit stopped working after a few months so I reached out to HOmelabs and they substituted it for free. The replacement has been chugging away for nearly a year now without any issues - faithfully sucking the moisture out of the air and drying out my steamy bathroom. Best of all - ZERO black mold. Love this unit and would highly recommend both the appliance and the brand. UPDATE 7/6/20: this little beast is still going strong. Sucks the humidity out of the bathroom in the winter and then moves to the basement in the summer. Runs 25/7/365 without complaint or missing a beat. Pretty economical to run, too. Would recommend and buy another whenever the time comes. UPDATE 5/14/22: This little champ is still going after nearly five years. It runs daily, faithfully dehumidifying our bathroom which sees 3-4 steaming hot showers per day (kids have grown into smelly teenagers since we’ve had this thing). I haven’t seen mold in so long I’ve forgotten what it looks like. About to pull the trigger on buying another unit for the basement over the summer, which will then replace the original on the bathroom/basement rotation when it eventually has to “go play with its friends on a farm upstate” someday. UPDATE 7/31/23: This thing is truly the energizer bunny of dehumidifiers. It’s getting a little noisier and perhaps a little less efficient but after 5.5 years of non-stop service it has held up extremely well for a consumer grade appliance. I still haven’t subbed it out for a new one (probably will do so as we get back into fall and the bathroom window closes). When I do getting another one of these will be the easiest decision of the year. UPDATE 8/16/25: The darn thing is still going! The thing is like Edison’s lightbulb. As long as I don’t touch it, look at it, or even acknowledge its presence it just keeps faithfully working, keeping the basement dry during this swampy hot summer. I have this thing for eight years now and it’s been in almost continual service. Sure, it’s a little noisy but like Boxer from Animal Farm it just keeps optimistically pushing forward, so we’re riding this one to the bitter end to see how long it will keep going.

Here's my story: I live on the Gulf Coast, and in the late spring and early summer, the humidity down here soars. Perhaps my apartment isn't the best insulated, because the digital hygrometer in my bedroom routinely shows humidity readings above 75 percent during warm seasons. While my apartment unit has a decent central AC unit, I'd like to see the humidity down around the 45 to 50 percent range. So I recently figured that purchasing a dehumidifier would be a good option for accomplishing that. I really mainly wanted the appliance for my bedroom, to increase the comfort level when I'm sleeping. I tried the $65 ToLife TZ-C2 Dehumidifier (also available here on Amazon). The price was right, and it was an attractive, compact, quiet unit. The problem was, as some others have mentioned, it didn't do an effective job of removing much moisture and humidity from the air. So after some research, looking for a brand I could trust – with an actual corporation and web site behind it – I decided on Homelabs (their cutesy trademark is rendered “hOmelabs” for some reason) at nearly 3X the price. But...it's rated for 3X the space. The first thing I noticed right away about the Homelabs unit is that it's pretty darn large. And HEAVY, weighing in at 40 pounds (!). This is not some little thing you can slide onto a shelf – it's an actual appliance a little taller than a mini-fridge. Reading the enclosed manual (which I do suggest) was also an eye-opener. It offers MANY cautions and warnings (especially about keeping the thing away from sources of flames) because apparently this unit contains refrigerant chemicals. That probably explains why both the box and the user manual request you let the unit sit upright and outside the box for a FULL 24 HOURS. Yep, you won't be able to just switch it on right away, so plan for that (or get a smaller unit from another manufacturer instead). First impressions are that this device is well built. It's certainly attractive in its own right, and has not just handles on either side, but rolling casters for moving the item across the floor. Again, at 40 pounds, those little conveniences become big. The control panel with the power button is on top of the unit. The water tank to be emptied faces front (logically). The power cord is thick and is the three-prong variety with the grounded pin, so your home MUST have grounded outlets to use this device. The manual says to plug it directly into a wall socket rather than through any kind of extension cord. In actual operation, I have been very pleased! This unit sucks plenty of moisture from the air in under an hour – often 20 to 25 percent relative humidity, knocking a room from 80% down to around 60%. A caution: if you're hoping to close in on much drier conditions – like in the 40% to 45% RH range – I question whether this unit can do that. I've set it for 50% RH and it's come close at 52% but I've not gone for less than that. But I have found the 50% to 60% RH range to be a huge improvement on northwards of 70%. The unit I got DOES NOT have the pump or drain hose feature, so it must be emptied fairly often, but if you get in the habit of doing that once or twice a day, it's no big deal, and the designers thoughtfully included a nice, sturdy handle that allows you to lift the water tank a bit more easily. A red, plastic floater shows in a thermometer-style gauge on the front of the unit to indicate how full the water tank is. SAFETY SUGGESTIONS: ALWAYS unplug the unit before removing the water tank or servicing the filter. Do everything SLOWLY – pull the water tank out slowly and smoothly, then carry the tank low near the floor, and when you get to a dumping place (like a bathtub), dump slowly and smoothly. After replacing the tank, I personally think it's a good idea to do a quick wipe down of the exterior of the unit with a towel or dry cloth. Also, when rolling the unit from one room to another, I suggest slightly lifting the unit by its top side handles and, again, rolling slowly. As it's 40 pounds, I'd strongly suggest making use of those thoughtfully added casters underneath the device that I mentioned above. I like the decent length power cord that's included; the instructions suggest plugging directly into a wall socket – no extension cords, please, as this is a powerful unit. There are NINE variations of this dehumidifier at the time I wrote this review, with room size ratings running from 1000 square feet all the way up to 4500 square feet. Clearly, Homelabs has been doing this for a while, so I'd be inclined to trust them over some fly-by-night operations with unpronounceable business names. There's a reason the 3000 square foot model carries the “Amazon's Choice” marker. Take a good look at this one if you want drier air in your home. I also want to answer some of the other comments I've seen about this device, just to give some of you a little more to consider. First of all, many of the reviews you're reading cover NINE DIFFERENT MODELS of the Homelabs devices, rated for rooms from 1000 SF all the way up to 4500 SF. I think it's not a reach to say the smaller the unit, the greater the likelihood of disappointment, especially for larger living situations. I opted for a unit rated at 3000 SF even though my whole apartment is maybe 750 SF total, and my bedroom – the only room I really care about for this – is just 150 SF. Keep that in mind as you're reading the reviews – I saw a one-star review for the 8-pint appliance whereas mine can hold 8 times that much water. I'm stunned to hear someone proclaim that 3 years of service is NOT a long time. For an item costing $200 (roughly what I paid, just under that), that works out to about $5.50 a month, or the cost of an expensive boutique coffee. Sure, it would be nice if anything we bought lasted forever, but for a unit to stretch into over 2 years of service to me suggests it has some degree of longevity. If you think that 2 to 3 years of use is lousy, read the reviews of cheaper units running under $100. I bought and returned one from ToLife ($71) the same week I bought this Homelabs one. The difference is night and day. One review even said, “Was working good then just stopped...Only lasted 6 years.” OMG, most CARS in the States don't even last SIX YEARS. Perspective, folks, perspective. I only run my unit for a few hours each day. This is not a central AC system, it's an appliance. Second, I can certainly appreciate the crapshoot that modern manufacturing is. It sucks getting a lemon, because you the consumer have to repackage the thing and ship it back, then (if applicable) speak with customer support. It's a shame that rolling the dice comes up craps for some people and 7's for others, but a product line with tens of thousands of ratings that maintains a 4-star average out of 5 indeed moved the needle for me. I looked at some fly-by-night outfit that's been around since 2021 called “Aerbyon”. Couldn't find a blasted thing about the company, their corporate structure, anything. Scoff, if you will, at “big companies” like Homelabs, but I can assure you that smaller brands don't guarantee anything either. I also want to call out and compliment the customer who wrote the review that got over 9,000 “helpful” markings. THAT is how you write a detailed review, and my hat's off for going to such trouble. I didn't agree with absolutely everything written, but I loved how thorough it was. One quick point of disagreement I have, though – I love it that the Homelabs unit registers RH changes by increments of 1% vs 5%. There is something awfully reassuring about seeing that number tick downward in closer to real-time. I have a digital hygrometer, but I don't think it's as accurate as the unit in the Homelabs device. Still...GREAT review, and I hope mine is just as helpful!

Funciona según lo previsto. La bomba se reinicia tras un corte de luz cuando los usuarios no están en casa. Me gusta la opción wifi y parece funcionar bien. El diseño es deficiente: el cubo se llena de agua antes de que arranque la bomba.

I found this dehumidifier works well. The noise level is fine. I have it in the basement, so it is not really a factor, but I am not sure I would have it in my bedroom and on when I wanted to sleep. It appears to drain well and I use a hose to drain directly to a drain pipe in the basement so I never have to worry about the container filling up. A perfectly good product and works as required.

I plugged this in and it started to work fine filled up the tank I would shut off as it's supposed to ended up putting on the hose to run it to a drain in the basement still seems to be working fine but since I'm not emptying the tank I'm not sure how much water it's pulling out. That was confusing though or the numbers and what they actually do in terms of I don't know is it humidity anyway so no idea what it's for couldn't quite figure that out from the instructions but in terms of getting water out of the air seems to do very well

It has been in continuous operation for 6 months with no issues.

This is a nice dehumidifier. My partner who is sensitive to sound believes that it is too noise, but it is actually not really that bad. When it dehumidifies using the compressor you just hear a large fan for a couple of minutes then it goes back to 'idle' for most of the time and you don't hear it at all. We recommend.