What this is

Why it exists

The dehumidifier category is confusingly labeled by its own manufacturers. In June 2019 the US Department of Energy changed the test procedure from 80F to 65F, capacity ratings fell roughly a quarter on hardware that did not change, and a decade of buying advice is still calibrated to the old scale without saying so. Alongside that, a separate saturation rating measured at 95F and 90% humidity circulates freely - and in our own registry it runs from 2.4 to 3.1 times the certified figure on the same units.

The result is a category where the most basic question - how much water does this machine remove - has three different answers depending on which number a listing chose to print. The second most basic question, what it costs to run, mostly has no published answer at all: of the 21 current units we track, one prints a wattage.

This site exists to fix both. The pint ratings get reconciled against the official conversion table. The wattages get computed from a US government dataset with the formula shown. Everything is cited.

What is on the site

• Eleven roundups split by the decision you are actually making - the room, the capacity class, and where the water can go.
• The sizing pillar, including the 2019 DOE change and the official old-to-new conversion table.
• The drainage pillar, because the constraint that decides which machine you can buy is where the water goes, and almost everyone works it out last.
• The running-cost pillar, with a calculator whose every default is visible and sourced.
• Model references - compiled specifications rather than test reports, with a stated reason to skip each one.
• Troubleshooting, where the honest answer is usually that the machine is behaving correctly in conditions its owner did not expect.

50 articles in total, covering 21 current units, built on a dataset of 527 certified portable models from 136 brands.

Who writes it

What I am not

Not an HVAC technician, not a building scientist, not a licensed anything. There is no expert panel behind this site and no editorial team beyond me. Where a question needs a credential I do not hold - a sealed refrigerant fault, a structural damp problem, an electrical question - the honest answer here is that it needs a professional, and that is what the pages say.

The thing we say out loud

Every serious publisher in this category leads with testing. Reviewed has a PhD and a humidity chamber. HouseFresh bought 28 dehumidifiers and publishes a reproducible protocol. RTINGS bought and tested 21. That work is real and it is worth reading.

We cannot match it honestly, so we are not going to pretend to. Units we claim to have tested: zero. What we compete on instead is methodological transparency - a published, reproducible method, primary sources cited at the point of use, every calculation shown, and data that stays current. That is verifiable, it needs no laboratory, and it turns out to be the uncontested gap: our research found no competitor publishing computed cost-per-pint, and only one explaining the DOE change at all.

There is one competitor in this category publishing roughly 13,000 words and claiming to have tested over 50 dehumidifiers, with no author name anywhere on the site. A claim that big with nobody's name on it is worth less than a smaller claim with one. The full method.

How it is funded

Affiliate commission. The Dry Index participates in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, and when you buy through a link here we earn a commission at no additional cost to you.

Commission never determines a ranking. Where a cheaper unit is the better buy it goes first, every roundup names a product to skip, and we accept no payment for placement, no free products and no sponsored positions. The full disclosure.

Getting in touch

Email info@thedryindex.com or use the contact form. If you are reporting a factual error, a link to the source that contradicts us is the fastest route to a correction - which we make at the top of the affected page with a dated note rather than silently overwriting.

The Dry Index is published by Slate Mill Group. It is a national publisher with no premises, no service area and no customers - which is why there are no reviews of us anywhere, and why we have not invented any.