Frigidaire 50 Pint Dehumidifier w/Wifi

Why it's worth it

A 50-pint unit that handles a damp basement, a laundry room or a whole floor without drama. It runs on a schedule, drains through a hose if you want it to, and lets you check the humidity from your phone instead of walking downstairs.

It's sized for the room most people are actually trying to dry out. Fifty pints a day is the sweet spot for a basement that smells musty and shows condensation on the walls. You set a target between 35 and 85 percent, and the digital humidistat cycles the compressor to hold it there. Published reviews and manufacturer specs put this class of unit at roughly four hours to pull a mid-size basement from swampy down to about 45 percent.

The drain port is the feature you'll appreciate most. The bucket holds about a gallon and a third, which fills fast in a genuinely wet basement. Snap a standard garden hose onto the continuous drain port instead and you never think about it again. That matters most in the first week, when a wet space runs the unit almost non-stop before it finally settles into a normal cycle.

From our review of 5 dehumidifiers for home use, by David Sinclair, Managing Editor

What we like

• +It's sized for the room most people are actually trying to dry out
• +The drain port is the feature you'll appreciate most
• +It keeps working when the basement gets cold
• +The smart features are the useful kind

What to know

• –Getting it onto your Wi-Fi can be annoying
• –It's a little louder than the quietest models here