Philips Baby Climate Centre review

8 July 2006 11:22 GMT / By Stuart Miles

The Philips SCH580 Baby Climate Centre promises to help improve the air quality in your room by adding moisture to the air and protect little ones from irritation, dry and itchy skin, chapped lips and dry, sore throats.

The system works by pumping cool air in the room, which is created by the unit by firing ultrasonic waves at the water to make it evaporate.

For the hardcore techies out there this is done by using an ultrasonic frequency oscillator to break up the water into tiny particles. The ventilation system then blows out these water particles (mist) into the dry air where they evaporate to give the required humidity. At full rate, the unit actually pumps out 250ml of water per hour.

Doing it this way, Philips ensure that you aren't adding additional heat to the room that you're humidifying as well as being able to achieve an almost silent operation. In addition you won't be steaming up the windows, walls or furniture either.

Set-up is simple and simply requires you to fill the unit's reservoir with water and turn the unit on. To compensate for varying humidity levels, the unit can be adjusted to pump out mist at varying degrees and you can even change the direction of the mist output rather than having to move the humidifier itself.

Finally for tired mums and dads there is an automatic switch off sensor so when you run out of water the unit isn't just oscillating thin air for hours before you wake up.

According to Philips, when the relative humidity level of your baby's room is below the comfortable zone of 40-60% the humidifier should be switched on. So you know when this is, Philips has bundled a simple hygrometer and thermometer in the box, however until you buy the unit you won't know if you need it or not.

In fact so far in our tests every room in our house as been within the "comfortable zone" suggesting that its £60 not well spent.

That said, in a closed room the Baby Climate Centre does make a difference to the humidity when turned on as we soon managed to raise the humidity of a room by 10% within a couple of hours.

Verdict

Before you rush out and buy every gadget under the sun for you kids, we would recommend investing in a hygrometer first so see if you really need one. In our home it appears we don't.

If you do, then this will get the job done, is easy to use and requires minimal thought.

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Review Recap

Made by: Philips
Price as reviewed: £60
The good: Easy to use, variable output strengths, directional nozzle
The bad: Do you really need it, hygrometer and thermometer analogue not digital
Quick verdict: Not a must have baby gadget for every home, but if there is a need this will do the job.
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