N8N wrote:

Subject says all... need a dehumidifier, preferably quiet and with low
temp operability. After searching on Amazon, I can't find a single
brand that I feel confident purchasing. Probably the one with the
least negative reviews was Frigidaire and I'll be returning one of
those this afternoon because it doesn't work properly and Frigidaire
apparently doesn't have real customer service personnel, only an
annoying automated answering system.

is there *anything* that doesn't suck? Anything at all? All I see
are comments like "I had this for two weeks and it died" "loud, rattly
POS" "doesn't really have a deice feature, just shuts off until the
ice melts" yadda yadda yadda.

nate

I can't give you advice based on experience with the specific
dehumidifiers mentioned below BUT . . . A few months ago I did some
research on basement dehumidifiers in anticipation of replace my ageing
one when it dies. . . it's still running.

I think the feature you are looking for as far as not "just shuts off
until the ice melts" (which is what my current one does until the
basement warms up) is called "hot gas defrost". It's a feature common on
high-end (mucho $$$) dehumidifiers but, from what I could tell, not that
common in sub-$500 ones.

I found only 2 brands that offerred economy-level dehumidifiers that
appeared to be "relatively" reliable and had hot gas defrost:

1. Comfort Aire -- models BHD-501D (50 pint), BHD-651D (65 pint)
2. Whirlpool -- models AD50USS (50 pint), AD75USS (75 pint)

I don't know how noisy those are -- I was looking for something for an
unfinished basement so I didn't care much.

HTH.