Credit:
Reviewed / Jackson Ruckar
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Credit:
Reviewed / Jackson Ruckar
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Attractive and with a reservoir that can be uniquely removed from the side, this dehumidifier is tops for its efficiency and performance. Read More
This energy efficient model has an auto mode, a sleek design, and a low operating temperature. Read More
A strength is its smart connectivity with iOS and Android and compatibility with Amazon and Google Home. It also has a great front reservoir design. Read More
This top performer for humidity reduction flags when it comes to energy consumption. Read More
Excellent, spill-resistant reservoir, sturdy filter, and robust carrying handle makes it a good value despite lacking smart features. Read More
Your home can get too damp for comfort, whether it’s because of a soggy basement or humid summer weather. Excess moisture in basements and bathrooms can breed mold or mildew, and muggy weather raises humidity above the comfortable range.
A portable dehumidifier could be the solution you’re looking for. Most dehumidifiers work similarly, cooling room air to condense out excess moisture. However, not all are created equal.
After detailed testing of top dehumidifiers in our lab, we chose the LG Puricare 50 Pint (UG501KOG5) (available at Amazon) as the best dehumidifier overall. It combines a sleek, easy-to-use design with an incredible ability to stop excess moisture in its tracks to make your home drier, safer, and more comfortable.
Coming in black, LG's Puricare is a strong contender for the most attractive dehumidifier on the market.
Our Best Value winner, the Hisense is energy efficient at reducing humidity and features a convenient auto mode.
The Frigidaire Gallery, a high-performer with smart features, would be a good pick for someone looking for a basement dehumidifier.
Fast humidity removal
Built-in pump
Energy hungry
Easy to empty reservoir
Easy to move
Sturdy filter
Average humidity reduction
Smart connectivity
Easy to lift
Effective humidity reduction
Awkward reservoir emptying
Easy to move on castors
Easy to empty reservoir
Slow humidity reduction
Hard to lift
Comfort setting
Awkward reservoir
Slow humidity reduction
The best dehumidifiers, especially when coupled with an air conditioner or air purifier, can help keep your home cool, dry, and clean, even on the stickiest day. While your individual needs are unique, there are some general things to consider when looking for a dehumidifier.
If you have a larger room that needs occasional dehumidifying on humid days, one of the dehumidifiers we tested is likely going to be a better choice. It’s worth noting that they can use a lot of energy.
A desiccant dehumidifier would be more appropriate for smaller spaces that need consistent dehumidification or cold areas. In addition to not being limited by temperature, they use less energy so you can leave them running.
Tank capacity: When it comes to finding the best dehumidifiers, a frequently asked question is, “what size do I need?” While you might be tempted to purchase a small dehumidifier, we recommend a large dehumidifier because they have more capacity in emergencies.
Portability: There’s no getting around it—even the best dehumidifiers can be heavy and difficult to move. If you’re moving a dehumidifier from room to room, we recommend looking for one that rolls easily and has well-designed handles. Of course, weight will be a factor, but most of the devices we tested for this roundup, which were all 50-pint capacity, were in the 40-pound range.
First, the physics: The warmer the air is, the more moisture it holds. That’s why humidity is more noticeable in the summer. During chilly weather, the air holds less moisture and feels drier. Dehumidifiers make use of this cooling effect to reduce air humidity.
A dehumidifier is like an air conditioner. It has a cooling compressor linked to cooling coils. A fan pulls air across these, cooling it down, and condensing out some of the water it contains. This drips down into a collection reservoir.
The key difference to an air conditioner is that, with dehumidifiers, the air is rewarmed before it gets returned to the room. So, moist air goes in, and drier air comes out at about the same temperature as it started.
Compressors and fans aren’t silent, so expect a noise level similar to an AC unit or refrigerator.
Dehumidifiers are rated by how many pints of moisture they can remove from the air in 24 hours. We tested 50-pint models, close to the upper end of the size range. You'll need a high-capacity model for large spaces or very damp areas.
It’s difficult to match pint capacity exactly to your square footage. In the real world, dehumidifying needs can vary throughout the year.
High-performance units take up more space, but we recommend larger models. Large dehumidifiers give you extra capacity to cope with emergencies like leaks or spills that temporarily make your home more humid.
A small dehumidifier could also struggle to keep up with the typical humidity levels in your home. An undersized dehumidifier may run almost constantly to maintain the ideal humidity. Constant running puts extra stress on compressors and fans and will shorten the life of the product.
If you routinely move the units between rooms, particularly between floors, you could opt for several small-capacity dehumidifiers. A 20-pint unit would work well for most small rooms.
All dehumidifiers can run in a stand-alone mode where all the water is collected in the reservoir. This means regularly carrying the reservoir to the nearest drain or sink and pouring it out.
If you need to run your dehumidifier this way, note how easy it is to empty the tank by hand.
Most models also include a drain opening that can connect to a hose. When the reservoir is full, any extra water collected runs down the hose. This avoids the hassle of reservoir emptying. It’s only possible if you have a floor drain or a place for the hose to discharge.
Models with a pump are the most versatile. The pump gives flexible emptying options as it moves the water to a drain point above the dehumidifier.
For example, it can drain into a bathroom sink, out a window, or into your washing machine drain stack. This saves on reservoir carrying and gives you more placement options but adds significantly to the cost.
There are two main situations where we fire up a dehumidifier: in cool, damp basements or during sticky summer months to cope with warm, water-saturated air.
Because humidity is removed by cooling the air, dehumidifiers work best when the air is warm. All the dehumidifiers we tested have minimum operating temperatures of around 40°F. This means they’ll work just fine in most basements. If you have an unconditioned space that gets colder than 40°F, compressor-based dehumidifiers won’t work for you.
Desiccant dehumidifiers are the best choice for cold areas as they’re not temperature-limited.
Pull out the filter on your dehumidifier and vacuum or rinse it off every few weeks.
For effective cooling and humidity removal, the heat exchanger needs to be clean. If it gets dusty, it won’t cool the air effectively to reduce the humidity.
Dehumidifiers have filters to trap dirt before it hits the cooling coils. Over time these filters get clogged and restrict airflow. Some can be vacuumed clean, and others are washable. Pull out the filter and vacuum or rinse it off every few weeks.
Dust can also get past the filter onto the cooling coils. To remove this, gently run a vacuum nozzle over the coils when you clean the filter.
The damp reservoir can also be a home for mold or bacteria. A gentle wash with dish detergent will take care of that.
If your dehumidifier is out of sight in the basement, it’s easy to forget about maintenance. Put a reminder on your calendar for a regular check-up.
The good news is that if you take these simple steps and keep the dehumidifier clean, it will run more efficiently. Also, because there’ll be less stress placed on the components it should last longer.
For a typical room temperature of 68°F to 70°F a relative humidity of 30% to 50% is considered comfortable. Some dehumidifiers have a comfort setting that automatically keeps humidity in this range.
An A/C system, whether it’s a whole-house system, window air conditioner, or portable air conditioner, will remove some humidity.
Air conditioners have a drain or reservoir to remove or collect condensed water. So, if you have air conditioning it might reduce your need for a dehumidifier. However, drying your air isn’t the main function of an A/C unit.
Even if you do have air conditioning, if your living space is damp and humid, you’ll likely need a dehumidifier as well.
Running costs vary widely depending on the humidity your dehumidifier is dealing with. In our tests, we challenged the units with an extremely high-humidity environment and ran them at their maximum fan settings. This should give a top-end estimate for energy use.
Energy efficiency ratings are based on how much water a dehumidifier removes using 1 kWh of electricity. The most efficient portable dehumidifiers remove close to 2 liters of water per kWh.
Any dehumidifier with a score above 1.8 qualifies for an Energy Star rating. All the dehumidifiers we tested are Energy Star products. An Energy Star dehumidifier running 24/7 could use about 300 kWh per month; this compares to 30 to 50 kWh per month for a refrigerator.
Dehumidifiers can use a lot of energy and significantly raise your electricity bill. Remember though, it’s unlikely that you’ll be running your dehumidifier continuously at full capacity. Once humidity hits a comfortable level, the unit will only turn on when needed.
Each dehumidifier ran for two hours at its highest fan setting and set to continuous running mode. After, we measured to see how much water it had collected.
Living in the damp New England climate, our tester, Dave Ellerby, has years of real-life experience using dehumidifiers at home. He uses a portable dehumidifier in his damp basement, which is powered up all year round. In the summer, upstairs living spaces can feel damp too, so he has lugged a dehumidifier up two flights of stairs more than once—he really cares about how portable they are!
As the chief scientist at Reviewed, Ellerby oversees our lab testing and develops the product testing protocols, so he understands the ins and outs of dehumidifiers. To find the best dehumidifiers, we created the most humid conditions possible to challenge each one. We measured how well they remove humidity, ease of use, and power consumption.
We tested dehumidifiers in a temperature and humidity-controlled environmental chamber in our lab in Cambridge, Massachusetts. This 200-square-foot room has its own HVAC and humidifier system, allowing us to control the test conditions precisely.
The room humidifier was set to create a disgustingly humid environment, saturating the room air with water vapor. We placed data loggers to record humidity and temperature around the room. Once we’d hit our peak humidity target of 80% relative humidity, we switched on the test dehumidifier.
We must start with high humidity levels to challenge each dehumidifier. Using tough conditions lets us test the maximum performance for each model.
Each dehumidifier ran for two hours at its highest fan setting and set to continuous running mode. If that wasn’t available, we set the humidistat to the lowest possible relative humidity level.
We used our humidity data to calculate how quickly each dehumidifier reduced the humidity in the room. The collecting reservoir was weighed carefully before and after each test to give us an exact measure of water removal.
We also monitored power use. All the dehumidifiers tested are Energy Star rated, but our harsh tests told us the maximum power consumption under the worst possible conditions. Combining the power and water removal data lets us calculate how efficient each dehumidifier is at turning electricity into dehumidifying performance.
Testing dehumidifiers in our testing labs is more than just pushing buttons—although it's a start!
The performance numbers are important, but a fast-drying dehumidifier isn’t much use if it’s impossible to use.
Each model was assessed for how easy it was to use the controls. If you need to break out the manual just to switch it on, that’s a bad sign. For smart models with app controls, we also check how challenging it is to connect to the dehumidifier and assess how well the app performs for Android and iPhone versions. A good app should provide useful control options and performance data while not intruding on your data privacy.
A portable dehumidifier should also live up to its name and be easy to move! Badly designed carrying handles made it almost impossible to safely lift some of the products we tested.
The water condensed out of the air collects in a reservoir at the bottom of the dehumidifier. Most models we tested didn’t have a built-in pump to remove the water automatically. Unless you have a floor drain, no pump means emptying the water reservoir yourself.
A major part of our usability testing was having an easy-to-remove, carry, and empty reservoir. The best designs had reservoirs that were easy to remove, comfortable carrying handles, and poured out the water without spilling a drop. Spilled water means wasted time and energy.
Dr. Dave Ellerby
Chief Scientist
Dave Ellerby has a Ph.D. from the University of Leeds and a B.Sc. from the University of Manchester. He has 25+ years of experience designing tests and analyzing data.
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