Vicks SweetDreams Cool Mist Humidifier review

The Vicks SweetDreams Cool Mist Humidifier is an ultrasonic humidifier with the addition of a projector built in to fill your ceiling with the stars, sea life, or various African plains animals. It was, and continues to be a significantly better hit with my (nearly) three year old than I expected it would be.

Update: as of July 2022, this thing is still running… It’s a little surprising. Nothing but general cleaning.

As for the humidifier portion, having owned a fair number of humidifiers in my 40+ years on this planet there’s not a lot of difference between this and your average $40 humidifier. It does well, is quiet, you won’t be disappointed in the output, and the storage tank is just enough to last a couple of days assuming you don’t run it all the time.

They haven’t scaled down the performance of a decent humidifier even though it’s aimed at kids, which is something I’ve come to expect with other products. Comparing it to other $40 range humidifiers I’ve had, it’s about the same (but includes a light show and a scent drawer).

Quick side note here – photos of ours coming. Using stock photos at the moment. Uncertain if I’m going to be able to capture the light show as my camera makes it look like a messed up paint pallet, and all pictures of the item will come when there’s not a sick toddler sleeping next to it (writing this at home with stomach bug kiddo).

It has a drawer that allows you to put in a scent pad (sold separately, but one’s included.) This allows the humidifier to do what used to be only in the vaporizer realm and provide airborne VapoRub smell for up to eight hours.

We tried the included scent pad, the room smelled VapoRub-y, which is ok if you’re congested. I’m not sure what all smells can be used with it but I imagine you could probably use it as a nice smell masker for a kid’s room.

As a note, nobody was particularly congested that day, so I can’t tell if the scent pad had the same effect as VapoRub or not.

Look daddy! The Stars

Where this really shines is that my nearly three year old loves it. She loves going to sleep with the stars over her head. She doesn’t care too much for the other significantly more colorful slides that the product has, but I think that’s just what she digs.

I remember being about five or six and playing in a dark room with a Star Wars projector similar to this concept, so I guess I can relate to the joy at having three pictures rotate in and out.

The SweetDreams Cool Mist Humidifier does pretty good at projecting in a darkened room onto a ceiling, but the key point to that sentence is darkened. You’re not going to get much of a show if you are trying it in a lit room and the further away you are from the ceiling the worse the quality will be.

That said, dark room, on the floor, it’s quite visible.

Maggie’s quite fond of turning the thing on and changing the slides around (which can be done with a lever).

She also likes dancing in the cool mist and claiming she’s a cloud princess, but I’m not really encouraging that too much as she ends up damp after a while.

SweetDreams Cool Mist Humidifier issues

There are two issues I have with the product after a week’s worth of use. The first is that the lights are not able to be oriented. This means you have to rotate the humidifier around in order to get the pictures to not appear upside down for your kiddo.

The first issue wouldn’t be such an issue if it weren’t for there is no way to adjust the direction of the cool mist. Basically you point the mist the direction you want “down” to be. This means if I want this above my daughter’s bed, it will be raining down cool mist on her all night.

The inability to angle the lighting means if you’re up against a wall you might be projecting onto said wall.

Basically it would be really nice if something could rotate.

Cleaning, care, etc?

Other than the addition of a scent drawer, there’s not anything that requires any abnormal maintenance. It’s a good average humidifier, appears to be slightly easier to clean than most I’ve owned, and is otherwise what you’d expect in a good humidifier.

Can you turn the lights off?

Yes. Lights only come on when you press the button for them to come on. The whole lighting operation can be done by a two year old.

Should I buy the Vicks Sweetdreams Cool Mist Humidifier?

I don’t see a reason not to. That said if you’ve already got a humidifier and a ceiling projector there’s no reason to rush to it. I’d probably spend an extra few dollars and grab this humidifier for the kiddos though.

You can grab the Vicks SweetDreams Cool Mist Humidifier at Amazon