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This unit is pretty decent. It works well, it's virtually silent, and as soon as you turn it on you'll see a big plume of vapor rising from it. It really does noticeably help during dry periods.
There are some downsides:
* The blue light is not UV, there is nothing to kill bacteria so you should change the water often
* The fountain of vapor, although blown upwards by an internal fan, will fall around the base of the unit. I've never really had any problem with water collecting, but still, don't stand the unit on a material that might harbor mold or be sensitive to moisture.
* There is no timer or automatic shut-off if the humidity gets too high, so unfortunately you can't really feel comfortable going to sleep with it on.
All in all it does its job well for the price. Unfortunately my unit after only light periodical use has started having some problems. Particularly, the materials around the "energy exchanger", which is essentially the part that produces the ultrasonics, seem to be warping and deteriorating. Nevertheless, it's still working for now. I don't rate it down too harshly for this because after reading most of the other reviews for humidifiers of any kind on Amazon it does seem that no matter what kind you buy they all need regular maintenance and they'll all degrade over time in one way or another. At this price point I figure I can afford to buy a new one each year if I have to without hurting my wallet too harshly.
My biggest gripe is with Air & Water, who at the time I purchased charged an extortionate amount (about half the price of the unit!) for what turned out to be 2 day shipping. That left a very sour taste in my mouth. Moral of the story: if you need the unit fast check what kind of shipping you're actually paying for "expedited" might not be as fast as the cost leads you to believe.
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Update:
I'd actually like to warn everyone out there about ultrasonic humidifiers. I've recently discovered that they kick out *huge* amounts of fine particle pollution into the air. I discovered this after my air purifier went nuts every time this humidifier was running. Sure enough, when I whipped out my green laser pen I could see zillions of fine particles flying through the beam every time this humidifier was running. I switched to a warm mist humidifier (which boils/evaporates water) and have no such problem.
Upon further research I found science articles stating that ultrasonics can inject so much particle matter into the air that they can bring the air quality below EPA standards for breathable air.
I've seen others on Amazon comment on "white powder" being dispersed by these things, and I always thought they were crazy. I guess not! I didn't actually notice dust around my room (maybe the water quality is good where I live), but I did notice quite a volume of it collected during vacuuming after running the humidifier for a week or so.
I now strongly recommend against ultrasonic humidifiers altogether, especially for anyone with asthma or other respiratory issues.
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Most ultrasonic humidifiers are shaped so that you cannot place them upside down to fill them at the faucet. They need to have a flat top in order to do this, and this one does have that. On the downside, the fill hole is small, which makes it harder to fill, and the tank is opaque, so that you can't see how much water is left in it. The clear area you can see in the photo is not part of the tank's interior. There is a blue light there that you can turn off or on, but it's very bright which makes it unsuitable as a nightlight, so in our house it's useless. To vary the amount of humidity it puts out, you simply turn the outlet spout for the mist, which allows you to block part of the outlet hole. It can put out plenty of mist. In my opinion, ultrasonic humidifiers are the best because they are quiet (except for a random dripping sound which I find soothing, like a rainy night) and they DON'T HEAT UP THE BEDROOM! But they sure don't last very longa winter or twobut others kinds of humidifiers don't last any longer.
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