Review: SwitchBot Evaporative Humidifier (auto-refill)

Heating season is fully on, at least in Finland, and that means air humidity is usually something between 10-30% percent only. Suggested humidity for indoor space is 30-50% so I would need to generate another 20% RH for my house to actually be in healthy space. This would be a perfect time to test the SwitchBot Evaporative Humidifier.

Disclaimer: I’ve receive the tested device for free on reviewing purposes, but as always, the opinions are 100% my own and this does not affect the product review.

Specifications

• Physical dimensions: 380 x 200 x 400.5 mm   
• Water capacity: 4.5L
• Silent 18dB operation
• 7 types of antibacterial protection
• Max 750mL/h humidification output
• Automatic filter drying
• 22.5 hours of continuous use with one fill
• Auto-refill with SwitchBot S10

Setting up

First of all the device does not have humidity sensor on itself and it’s recommended to be paired with one of the SwitchBot hygrometers meters that is not included in the package (Meter Pro, Meter Plus, Indoor/Outdoor Meter, Meter). The hygrometer meter is suggested to be placed in five meters from the humidifier. So if you’re about to get one of the humidifiers, remember to get a hygrometer as well.

Once having humidifier set up and the meter in place, it’s time to plug the power and start up the SwitchBot app. Using the app we can search for our newly added Humidifier (and meter if not yet set up) and do the device pairing between those two. Once paired everything is operational. Very simple and similar as with any other SwitchBot devices.

Features

Feature wise the product has all the standard features one requires from a humidifier.

The humidifier has switchable speed with four selectable options: 200ml/h, 350ml/h, 500ml/h and 700ml/h. Switching humidifier speed increases its noise level in the same proportion. The slowest speed should be used on constant or nighty use to avoid too much background noice. When room humidity needs to be increased quickly, the high speed is the one to go. I tested the high speed humidifying in my 45m² room and it managed to increase the total humidity from 33% RH to 40% (7% increase) in about 40 minutes, so it really is quite powerful with the highest settings.

Switchable speed is accompanied by three different modes: sleep, humidity and auto. The recommended mode here is the auto mode: it does try to maintain the desired humidity related to temperature. Sleep mode keeps the device as silent as possible while humidifying your environment in the background. The last humidity mode will try to maintain desired humidity that can be set between 40% – 70% RH.

SwitchBot Humidifier has built-in filter that will stop impurities entering water and that way prevents external odours and bacteria growing inside. It also has automatic filter drying so bacteria grow is prevented on the filter as well. The main filter needs to be replaced every 240 hours and pre-filter requires cleaning every month. Other maintenance tasks that should be done is cleaning the water tank, water tray and the filter frame. SwitchBot app clearly indicates the tasks required.

Other noteworthy features

Timer. Humidifier has a timer that can be activated to humidify for 2, 4 or 6 hours periods. Excellent addition for non-smart usage or temporary humidifying the room.

Child lock. Locks all the buttons on the top. Won’t prevent the child knocking down and pouring the water on the floor though.

Light indicator. Will inform you if your room humidify is too low. Really nice feature lets you quickly see the humidify status of the room when walking by.

Integrating into smart home

The humidifier has nearly all the operation functionalities available through buttons on the top of the devices. But what truly makes it smart are the SwitchBot automations that can be made using SwitchBot ecosystem. You could switch your humidifier to sleep mode once night arrives or turn off the devices when no-one is home.

SwitchBot Evaporative Humidifier also provides Matter integration through matter enabled hub like SwitchBot Hub 2 or SwitchBot Hub Matter Mini. Current version of SwitchBot Matter integration only exposes on and off functionality of the device, so you really can’t make very complicated automations using 3rd party smart home ecosystems like Home Assistant.

SwitchBot also provides an API that has some extra features compared to Matter. Using the API it is possible control the modes, speed and target humidity. Using API needs separate integration to be built on desired smart home system.

Making the S10 as a butler aka. auto-refill functionality

If you own SwitchBot S10 fully automatic robot vacuum and have connected the watering station into plumbing system, the S10 to automatically refill the humidifier water tank! Using S10 makes the humidifier fully automatic, in theory, but it doesn’t remove the need of cleaning the water tank ‘daily’.

As the robot vacuum tank itself is small, the robot needs to make about 10 trips to transfer 2 litres of water. For full tank that means 20 round trips. As fun it is to watch the robot transfer water around, it might not be the most convenient way to do so, at least if there’s long a way from the watering station to the humidifier. There’s another catch as well, you can’t use cleaning solution with the watering station if using the refill functionality of S10.

Ps. It’s a great conversion starter for visitors to watch the robot start moving the water and filling the humidifier 🙂

Conclusion

As a humidifier it’s great, but it is worth of 239.99€ ? Well, probably yes if you are already in SwitchBot ecosystem and already own a S10+ robot vacuum. There’s not that much ‘smart’ in the device, but in the end, you don’t really need ‘any’ on a humidifier. Its job is to keep your air healthy and that’s what it does great.

Pros

• Does it humidifying job very well
• Using robot vacuum to fill the water tank is a ‘wow‘
• Really silent with slowest speed or nightly mode
• Filtering system

Cons

• Using robot vacuum to fill the water tank is not that useful in the end 🙂
• Only on-off functionality is supported with Matter
• Humidity meter needs to be bought separately

I won’t be giving out a smart home score this time as I really don’t have experience from other air humidifiers. In the end it might not be the best humidifier for money, but it’s doing its base job great.

Smart home score: n/a

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Ps. SwitchBot is having a Black Friday sale currently and this product is 25% off as well. It’s available for only 180€ at the moment!