Well howdy, today I am going to take a look at a new humidifier I recently purchased, the Le Veil iCigar® DCH-60b. This humidifier is made for larger humidors and could fit nicely into a tower humidor or a large end table humidor. It has a MSRP of $199.95 but you can find it for around $170. I bought mine from Thompson Cigar and even used a coupon ( CIGAR20 ) to get another $20 off (might expire 6-30-2017 so if you are reading this in the year 2080, it may not work any more). Yea, I am still a cheap bastard.

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I figured I would just do a slideshow of the pictures I have so you can refer back to them as I tell you my thoughts.

Unpacking the Le Veil iCigar® DCH-60b was effortless and was held securely in the box so no parts rattled around or fell out. The first thing i noticed was how much bigger it was than I thought it would be. As you can see in the picture this unit takes up a good bit of space in my end table humidor that my buddy Mike gifted to me and I would not want this in a smaller 300ct humidor, even though it states from 300-3000ct. There is a flat ribbon cable that is synonymous with electric humidifiers so they can fit through the door, lid, or what not that close your humidor so it does not need a hole drilled to run power. The cable with this is long. LONG. It would easily reach from the bottom of a tower humidor to the top, even though the company suggests (I emailed them and asked) to keep it in the middle to disperse the humidity better. Now let watch something i think is cool.

Yea, time lapse! Yea, out of focus. Shut up. I think I left the auto focus on the lens turned on and it decided to focus on some of my movie collection rather than the important bit. You can still see how the gel crystals that come with it just soak up the water over a period of 20-30 minutes. If I had more crystals lying around I would have tried putting half the water in that it calls for to see if that could be the problem with the hygrometer (getting ahead of myself, you will read this shortly). plus maybe I would have had it in focus, doubtful but maybe. In the same email as above I asked them of the crystals could be replaced with beads but they never answered. I do not see why beads could not be used but it may throw off the water sensor. They do suggest replacing the crystals every year so maybe I will play around once the year is up or they dry out.

I wanted to post that picture out of the slideshow just to make sure you saw how far off the hygrometer was. Temperature was spot on but the humidity level was averaging 14% above what the Credo said. I put the Credo in a sealed container for 24 hours with a Boveda pack at 69% humidity, twice. First time it read 70% and the second time it registered 69%. I am pretty confident the Credo is almost perfect. I emailed the company again and they sent me the RMA information in the first response and then the second response was to hold the MODE button in while pressing DOWN or UP to adjust the humidity reading. Only problem with this is it only adjusts 10% so I am going to have to wiggle around the humidity level I want to match what it is reading. now for the Warranty information. I included a shot of the info in the slideshow and it basically states that if anything is wrong with it you can get a RMA to send it back but you have to include $10 for return postage. I hate this practice! I have seen this in the computer industry for a while and it is spilling over to numerous other ones. It is stating that if they send you a bad product you will have to pay more money to get a proper one. I understand shipping is not cheap but if the products are made good enough, the company would not have many RMA’s to deal with and therefore shipping costs should be negligible. This is all my opinion and if you disagree, well, you are wrong. Back to the hygrometer and the biggest concern is if you do not have a properly calibrated hygrometer in your possession to test this with, you may have very under or over humidified cigars, which could ruin your very expensive collection (or cheap collection like mine). On the 2-sided piece of paper that is your instructions it states this hygrometer is factory calibrated to 70%, ±1%. Maybe the ±1% was supposed to read ±15% (sarcasm, get over it).

We are up and running and until the humidity drops in my humidor I wont know how well it works to stabilize the interior humidity. Our weather has been so rainy I haven’t been able to leave the lid open to lower the humidity as it would just raise it.

This humidifier allows for a sub tank to be added which has a MSRP of $99.98 (although one place on their website it is $109.95 and the other is $99.98 so I guess buy the cheaper one). It is basically the same as the DCH-60b except it doesn’t have the hygrometer, cable and power supply. It seems like a good deal for a large humidor.

I do not like that there are no connections for add-on fans. You would think a huge beast like this would be able to add multiple fans to get better distribution of the humidity but it only has the connection for the sub tank. I don’t think it would be hard to splice in multiple fans, although I am pretty sure it would void your warranty.

PROS

• Uses crystals rather than floral foam
• Big enough to allow you to grow into larger humidors and not have to buy another humidifier
• Company responds to email pretty fast
• External hygrometer so you don’t have to lift the lid to check humidity or temperature
• Really simple to set up and use
• Affordable in terms of a large electronic humidifier

CONS

• Warranty that makes you send money to get a part replaced that did not hold up for the warranty period
• Hygrometer on mine is so far off it is ludicrous and could be detrimental to your cigars
• No spots for more fans
• 2 sided printed piece of paper that is the instructions

Would I buy this again? Probably. I can’t say a firm yes because I may not have bought it in the first place if I saw you had to send money to get a warranty replacement. That part really bothers me.

If you have any questions just ask in the comments or email me and I will answer to the best of my ability.