N8N writes:

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.

Do you really need a heated deice mode?

We have a Chinese-made Whirlpool brand bought from Home Depot a few
years ago. It runs the fan only when it needs to, which is mostly when
the compressor is running (but see below).

It has electronic controls that do not restart the unit after a power
failure. That's actually an advantage in some circumstances, because it
means a momentary power failure while the unit is running will not try
to restart the compressor under running head pressure. What you
*really* want is electronic controls that, when power comes back on,
remembers that the unit was last turned on, waits a few minutes, and
then restarts automatically. But I haven't seen such a unit.

This dehumidifier will operate in low temperatures. The controller is
aware that the evaporator will freeze up, and periodically shuts down
the compressor while running the fan in "high" to defrost it. That
seems to work well enough, and doesn't require a solenoid valve or extra
plumbing like hot gas defrost. It doesn't just wait for the ice to
melt.

Dave