Whether you have a damp basement or crawl space or a house that has a lot of wood in it, there are times you may need a dehumidifier.

A dehumidifier is similar to a refrigerator in many respects except that it takes the condensed water it collects and puts it into a tray or out a hose.

A typical house starts to feel rather muggy if the humidity gets over 65%.  In my case, I have a cottage that has wood floors, wood walls, and a crawl space.  I will ultimately end up getting a whole house dehumidifier but I wanted to get a portable one in the near term.

The one I chose was the Delonghi DE400. It can pull 40 pints of water out of the air per day (unfortunately it can only hold 10 pints at a time requiring frequent empting if you don't use the supplied hose and pump).

The user can set the requested humidity and it will run constantly until it reaches the desired level. 

This particular model comes with a hose and a pump that allows the user to pump water out of the unit to a drain which eliviates the need of having to empty the container. 

The ease of set up gave me a very favorable impression.  However, more research and more use have given me a somewhat less favorable impression of the uint.

First, even when it reaches the desired humidity level, the compressor turns itself back on every few minutes which is very taxing on energy and just plain annoying.  The unit is fairly loud which makes the regular restarting of the compressor that much more obnoxious.

Moreover, having taken a close look at the pump and how it's put together makes me wonder how long this pump will last. It's incredibly flimsy.  Having looked up user experiences on-line, sure enough, a massive number of people have the pump die on them after a few months of use. A decent dehumidifier (and this one lists for $279) should last decades without trouble.

The unit does have a very good display enabling me to see the current humidity level of a given room and it has done the job I needed it to do.  But I wouldn't contemplate having this in an area where people were going to be around and I am skeptical about its long term reliability.

My grade: 2 out of 5.