Dehumidifiers: Our Review Process

The Full Database of our Dehumidifiers. Scroll to the right for all data & specifications!

Below is an overview of the criteria we review each dehumidifier unit on. We cover why we chose the criteria and how it gets weighed into the final rating. 

The high level breakdown of each criteria we look at to determine the final score is below:

• Affordability (Price): 30%
• Cost Efficiency: 30%
• Warranty: 25%
• Space Efficiency: 7.5%
• Portability: 7.5%

Keep reading for a complete breakdown of each criteria. 

Affordability (Price): 30% Weight

Just like anything people buy, price plays a major role in the buying decision. Same goes for dehumidifier units. That is why it is a heavily weighted criteria in our formula. 

How do we determine the Affordability rating?

We compare the price of a dehumidifier to the average price of other dehumidifiers that are roughly the same size (based on the Pints rating). The spread of the prices are set on a scale and their percentile is calculated within that scale, then normalized to a 0-5 rating based on that percentile. 

Cost Efficiency: 30% Weight

Cost efficiency is a simple calculation of the price vs. how many pints of water the unit is advertised to remove per day. Basically: how well is this unit going to perform given your investment?

How many dollars does the unit cost to remove one pint?

Then, in a similar fashion, our algorithm finds the spread of units considered for the category (based on the article topic) and then normalizes it to a 0 to 5 scale based on its percentile in the range.

Warranty: 25% Weight

Dehumidifiers and other relatively cheap home appliances aren’t known for their longevity, especially these days (sadly). Our findings were that it is not uncommon at all for these units to burn out every few years unless they are commercial units. Therefore, to protect the consumer, we heavily weighted how long the warranty is.

If multiple warranties are offered (like 1 year for the coils, and 5 years for the rest of it), we always assigned the shortest period. Because it’s likely that is going to be the first thing to fail.

Note: Many companies require you to register the unit within 30 days to be able to claim a warranty!! So make sure you get that done as soon as it arrives!

A general breakdown of our Warranty scores are outlined below. Yes, we realize there is no “1” score! We wanted to make it very obvious that the warranty is non-existent.

Rating Score	Criteria
5	Warranty is longer than 3 years
4	Warranty is 3 years
3	Warranty is 2 years
2	Warranty is 1 year
0	No warranty or we could not confirm

Space Efficiency: 7.5% Weight

We did not find too many reports of people complaining about the size of the units, as long as they weren’t looking for a specific case (like inside a closet, RV, bathroom, or similar). So this section was given a lightweight.

However, we did want to award units that were compact in size compared to the amount of water they process per day. So this calculation is the amount of pints per day, divided by the total volume of the unit. Then, our algorithm generates a scale and percentile on that range for each unit. That score is then normalized and rounded to the nearest half-star on a 0-5 scale.

We determine the sound level based on the lowest decibel level of the unit. 

Portability: 7.5% Weight

This rating is similar to space efficiency, but is strictly concerned with size and weight. The dimensions and weight of the unit are multiplied together to start. Then some preference is given to small/dense units as they are still relatively portable. We also manually awarded bonuses to the units that had handles and/or wheels (especially for larger, heavier units).

Similarly, these scores are then normalized by our algorithm and converted to a 0-5 scale.

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