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I've had trouble for a long time keeping my cigars in the 60 to 65% humidity range that I prefer. The interior of my humidor measures roughly 45"W x 27"H x 14"D. It's lined in spanish cedar, has two slotted shelves and two hinged doors that open the entire front side. I usually have 10 to 12 boxes on the floor, which is also where the Oasis II sits. The two shelves together hold eight mesh baskets. Each basket holds about 40 cigars, with a couple more boxes on the second shelf. All together I typically have around 600 cigars on hand.
I was using a much smaller Oasis XL Plus. During the winter heating season, it had to be refilled three to four times a week to stay in my target humidity range. The humidor is sealed and gasketed but is not 100% airtight. Tired of constantly refilling the XL Plus, I decided to try the much larger Oasis II. Wow what a difference!
With the Oasis II, I can now go over a month without refilling. It's reservoir is many times larger than the XL Plus. And with its top side reservoir cap, I can easily refill it without having to take it out of the humidor, as I did with the XL Plus to open its top half to refill.
The dual fans are another excellent design feature. One fan runs constantly to insure the moist air circulates evenly throughout the humidor. That eliminates any dead-air or dry spots, and ensures all the cigars are at the same level of humidity. The second fan kicks in only when its sensor tells it to draw more humid air from the reservoir. The remote humidity gauge has large, bright red numerals that I can easily read from across the room. I also have a second electronic humidity gauge with a wireless remote readout that typically reads about 5% lower than the Oasis II. I split the difference for an average of about 63%. Just a tad on the drier side because I prefer the feel that creates, versus 70%, which feels a little damp to me. But if that's what you like, the Oasis II can easily get to 70%+ and stay there.
It's fairly quiet, with a soft hum when nothing else is creating any sound in the room. Its foot print is about the size of two corona boxes, end to end, and a little more than two boxes high. The power cord and the cord for the humidity gauge are both long enough that I didn't need any extensions.
Overall this is a great product. It's a smart design with all the features a real cigar enthusiast wants in a good humidifier for a larger humidor. The Oasis II is a great value for its price and will in turn take excellent care of your smokes as they age over time.
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I have 2 large cabinet humidors, each holding about 1,000 cigars, stored in boxes and in a bank of cedar drawers built into the cabinet. Great cigars get even better with proper aging. Keeping cigars in good condition over time can also eventually correct minor construction problems like a tight roll, but no amount of care or time can fix a bad cigar. Aging cigars requires precise care, and I live in the Washington, DC area, where summers are very humid and winters are dry. Temperature control is fairly easy, but maintaining constant 68-70% relative humidity is a challenge. I use an assortment of passive humidification devices (I like Paradigm passive humidifiers), and in the winter, I add a couple of inexpensive foam or bead-filled humidifier cartridges to compensate for the dry air. When my house gets REALLY dry, I set up a conventional room humidifier outside my cabinets.One of my cabinets has an interior AC power outlet and one does not. On the middle shelf of the cabinet with AC power, I have had a Cigar Oasis II XL in constant use for more than four years. By the way, I'm going by the picture and the price for reference, as the product is listed here as the "Cigar Oasis II"; it is identical to the "Cigar Oasis II XL" that I own and which is the subject of this review. I have used several different active humidifiers over the years and the Oasis II XL has been the best and most durable of all of these, by far. The Oasis II XL does a very good job of moving air around the cabinet, which is key to keeping cigars fresh while avoiding mold issues, even in the far corners of the cabinet. I do not use any separate fans, but I frequently open up the cabinets and air them out for a few minutes every two weeks or so. Unlike most other active systems, replacement foam bricks for the Cigar Oasis II XL are readily available and inexpensive (you can get one for $10 plus shipping at cigaroasis.com -The Hydra LG replacement cartridge costs anywhere from $27-48). You can get absorbent floral foam cheaply from Amazon and other retailers (be careful; some foam bricks are designed to REPEL moisture and these are useless for humidification), and you can use this foam inside Tupperware with a perforated lid to construct a cheap and effective home-made passive humidifier. However, I've found that the powered machines work much better with a custom-fitted foam brick made for the unit. The Oasis II XL comes with a control unit, connected to the main housing by a long wire, that measures and regulates humidity, but don't depend on the accuracy of the built-in hygrometer. Use a separate calibrated hygrometer instead to figure out the correct setting on the control unit.
The Oasis II XL requires an internal AC outlet for power, which is only present in some large cabinets. The II XL also makes noise. It has two sets of internal fans, one which pumps out moisture and one which operates constantly, regardless of humidity, that moves air around even when additional humidity is not needed. Both fans make enough noise to hear across the room, even with the cabinet door closed. I wouldn't call it "loud"; it's quieter than the smoke-eating air purifier I use when I smoke indoors (yes, Mayor Bloomberg, I am a bad person. I also drink 32-ounce fountain sodas, cook with trans-fats and I manufacture and discard styrofoam as a hobby), but the II XL makes more noise than any other powered humidification unit. It's about the same volume as the internal fan on a Sony Playstation 3 when it gets really hot and kicks into overdrive mode. But the II XL gets the job done and has proven durable, with proper care.
I have tried other powered humidifiers, and some have been better than others. The Humi-Care XG1000 Pro died after only six months. The hygrometer in the control unit began reading wildly different humidity levels and it wouldn't turn on when it was dry, or off when it got too moist. It is complete junk -stay far, far away. The Moist-n-Aire is very powerful, but the dial used to set humidity levels is useless. I set it high enough to turn on, and it never turns itself off, and vice-versa. I still use it in the winter to manually raise the humidity level (like the II XL, it requires an internal AC power outlet), but I have to remember to turn it off after 15 minutes or so, or my cabinet turns into a rainforest. The Hydra LG is better, and it is very quiet, but the hygrometer in the control unit is unreliable and I must make frequent adjustments (as in every day or so) to ensure that humidity levels don't get too high or too low. I use it in the cabinet that does not have an internal AC power outlet because it can be powered through a paper-thin tape-style cord threaded through the cabinet hinge and into an AC power unit outside the cabinet. My Hydra LG has been working for about 2 years so far. It does a decent job distributing moisture. Surprisingly, the worst ones of all have been the smaller Oasis humidifiers, the same brand as the II XL. I owned three different small Oasis models over the years and they ALL broke down within a year. Only the Oasis II XL completely met my expectations. If noise is an issue, or you don't have an AC plug inside your cabinet, try the Hydra LG. It's not as powerful as the II XL, and it only circulates air when humidity is low (unless you buy an additional fan kit), but it's not bad. But with the Hydra LG, you WILL need to adjust the humidity levels VERY often, because the built-in hygrometer does not work consistently. I think the Hydra LG is made by the same company as the Humi-Care XL1000 Pro, so hopefully they have resolved their quality control issues.
If you can live with a little background noise, the Oasis II XL is a good choice, but it does require maintenance. Make sure you remove the foam brick periodically, and check for mold spots. If you see anything, then you need to buy a new brick, or at least treat it with a little bleach if the spot is very small. Just make sure you rinse the brick with distilled water thoroughly to make sure the bleach smell doesn't permeate your cigars, even faintly. Every month or so, wipe down the interior of the chamber that holds the foam brick and the bottom of the section that holds the motor and fans, using a cloth dipped in bleach, before rinsing with another cloth dipped in distilled water. Then dry everything thoroughly.
In the summertime, the challenge is REDUCING the humidity and the II XL's air circulation feature is helpful, as is putting pieces of dry Spanish cedar (which you can gather from used unfinished wooden cigar boxes) to soak up moisture. This is good for fine tuning humidity levels, but if you've got a serious high humidity problem, you should keep a room dehumidifier running near your cabinet. Every summer, I remove the Moist-n-Aire unit completely, and I store most of the Paradigm passive humidifiers in a large cedar cabinet. Bead-style passive humidifiers are supposed to soak up excess humidity in wet weather as well as distributing moisture in dry weather. I've found that this ability is overstated -don't count on it to absorb a lot of moisture. Damp, stagnant air can lead to moldy cigars and, even worse, tobacco beetles. As a cigar smoker, I try not to think about it, but even the best cigars have dormant larvae, which will hatch if the heat and/or humidity get too high. Fortunately, beetles don't migrate between boxes, so if you see telltale pinholes in cigars in one box, just remove that box from your cabinet. There are excellent articles elsewhere online that talk about the treatment of beetle-damaged cigars; sometimes they can be saved.
All of this sounds like a lot more trouble than it is. I've found that, after a few seasons of careful maintenance, a good cabinet humidor will "remember" the correct humidity levels and naturally gravitate toward 68-70%. Of course, it helps to keep the air moving (as with the II XL) and to air out the cabinets once in a while. Keep a few calibrated digital hygrometers within view, and change the position and location of your cigar boxes from time to time. Good luck!
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