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Duux Bora Smart 30L Dehumidifier Review

Verdict

Duux may be a newcomer to home dehumidifiers, but the Duux Bora Smart 30L Dehumidifier is a brilliant effort. Combining an ultra-effective dehumidifier with smart controls, the 30L model is ideal for large homes or areas prone to damp. Duux’s app helps you get the most out of this device, giving you real-time and historic humidity data, and letting you set simple or complex running schedules. The only real downsides are a shorter warranty than the main competitor, and a water tank that’s a bit on the small side.

Pros

Surprisingly compact

Very effective dehumidifying

Excellent smart controls

Cons

Water tank could be bigger

Two-year warranty

Key Features

A smart dehumidifier for larger homesThis 30-litre dehumidifier is aimed at large homes, or areas with a damp problem. Its water tank holds up to four litres, but you can connect a hose for constant drainage

Smart controls and humidity sensorThe Duux Bora 30L has a humidistat, so it won’t over-dry your home. You can also control and schedule it via an app

Introduction

We’ve tested several Duux fans and heaters before now, but the Duux Bora Smart 30L Dehumidifier is the Dutch company’s first attempt at a dehumidifier. While it’s certainly not cheap, it does have a promising specification. Most notably, it can remove 30 litres of water daily. It’s also fitted with smart controls, letting you manage it remotely.

The Bora might not be quite as attractive as the MeacoDry Arete Two series, but I was surprised to find it’s some way smaller than the less powerful Arete Two 20L. Duux’s flagship dehumidifier also comes with caster wheels and a retractable handle, so it’s not too tricky to move it around the house. That said, it weighs nearly 15kg, and the handle isn’t especially comfortable, so stairs aren’t as easy as they might be.

This dehumidifier’s punchy 30-litre rating means it’s most suited to large properties, or for use in areas like a cellar with a damp problem. For about £50 less there’s a 20L model that’s more suited to regular family homes, although this isn’t any smaller or lighter. Duux sells both with the protection of a two-year warranty – while that’s not bad, MeacoDry offers five years on the Arete Two series.

Design and Features

Smart and unfussy design

Useful smart controls and humidistat

High powered dehumidifier

The Duux Bora 30L is smaller than it looks, with a fairly crisp and modern design. From the front and left it’s particularly clean, with almost no openings or vents save a tiny grid for the humidity sensor.

Front top product photo

Image credit: Trusted Reviews

The front lower section conceals the water tank, which has an easily read level meter, and a built-in handle to help you empty it.

Photo showing the removed water tank standing in front of the humidifier

Image credit: Trusted Reviews

At the Bora’s rear you’ll find a large air intake, covered by a washable filter with a replaceable carbon insert. While this isn’t a true HEPA 13 filter, it still helps to cut down on odours and various other pollutants in the home. Below it you’ll find the drain hose connector, along with a cable tidy for the 1.9 metre mains lead.

Rear product photo

Image credit: Trusted Reviews

Filtered and dehumidified air is blown out of a modest vent on the right-hand side.

Top, front/side photo showing the air output grille

Image credit: Trusted Reviews

This humidifier’s controls are clustered together on the top panel. There’s a simple numeric display for the detected humidity, which is also used when setting the target level, and features such as the off-timer. There are buttons to enable Night Mode, Child Lock and Laundry Mode, and to manually change between the two available fan speeds.

Photo of the top panel

Image credit: Trusted Reviews

Installing the Duux app gives you access to all the same controls from your phone, along with much more powerful scheduling. You can quickly tap and drag to set time blocks, for which you can specify the Bora’s running mode, fan speed and target humidity. It’s quick and easy to create, for example, different weekday and weekend routines, and not much harder to block out detailed hour-by-hour schedules should you need to.

Android screenshot collage showing the Duux app home page, Bora main page, and historic humidity values

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The Bora provides continuous, accurate humidity readings, so it’s good to see the app’s Insight tab. This charts humidity over various time periods up to one year, giving you a clear view of daily or seasonal trends. You can control the Bora by voice using Alexa or the Google Assistant. In theory, it’s also possible to use the Bora as a trigger for automations in Google Home, for example starting the heating or running fans when the humidity goes above a certain level. Unfortunately, I got a repeated timeout when linking my Duux and Google accounts, and eventually gave up.

Performance

Excellent dehumidification

Decent air circulation

Moderately high power consumption

I tested the Duux Bora Smart 30L Dehumidifier in a four-bedroom family home, where it quickly became obvious that it’s a very effective dehumidifier. Set to the default target of 50%, it didn’t take long for its water tank to fill up – in fact it was a little too quick, suggesting the tank’s four-litre capacity isn’t really enough.

This dehumidifier was very quick to lower the relative humidity on my upstairs landing. You can see that from the precipitous drop in the blue trace, starting around 11am, in this chart from my Tado Smart Thermostat.

Duux Bora Smart 30L Dehumidifier screenshot showing humidity drop

Image credit: Trusted Reviews

This also helped lower the humidity in connected rooms, such as my son’s bedroom.

Android screenshot showing falling humidity, according to a Tado thermostat

Image credit: Trusted Reviews

I wanted to see how the Bora 30L compared to the MeacoDry Arete Two 20L that I tested at around the same time, so I set them both to run together in the same location. It was no surprise that the more highly rated Bora collected more water, but I was impressed by how much more. After two hours the Bora 30L’s tank held 757ml, compared to 396ml for the Arete Two – nearly twice as much.

Dehumidifiers aren’t usually particularly effective when it comes to circulating air, but the Duux Bora 30L has quite a powerful fan. On its lowest setting I measured a wind speed of four metres per second (4m/s), 15cm from the output. One metre away this had fallen to 1m/s. The higher fan speed was even more blowy, delivering 5m/s up close, and 2.4m/s from one metre.

This would have helped the Bora’s performance with laundry drying more if the airflow wasn’t angled upwards at about 45 degrees. This dehumidifier’s laundry programme combines a high fan speed with constant dehumidification in a four-hour programme, but I found that the stream of dried air almost completely missed washing hanging over a radiator. At the end of the programme, the Bora had lowered the humidity in the room from 69% to 59% and removed more than 1.2 litres of water from the air, but my washing was still quite damp.

Android screenshot showing rapidly falling humidity, according to a Tado thermostat

Image credit: Trusted Reviews

There are downsides to the Duux Bora 30L’s power. While it’s not unduly loud – indeed, it’s Quiet Mark approved – the sound of its compressor isn’t completely masked. Additionally, like most dehumidifiers, some vibration passes down through its castors, which can lead to reverberation on suspended floors.

This dehumidifier also uses quite a bit of energy – running constantly I measured a peak of 416 watts, and a minimum of 28W with the fan only, running at its slower speed. It consumed 1.7 kilowatt hours (kWh) during the four-hour laundry cycle, equivalent to about 42p at December 2024 rates. That’s less power than I’d expect a traditional vented tumble drier to use, but it’s more than you’d pay to run a modern heat pump tumble dryer. Bear in mind that in normal use, dehumidifiers cycle on and off once they reach their target humidity, so the Bora 30L’s average power use would typically be lower.

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Should you buy it?

You want a very effective dehumidifier

This is the most effective dehumidifier I’ve tested, so it’s perfect for large properties, or those plagued by damp. It’s got great smart controls too.

You want a cheaper humidifier to buy or run

This isn’t a cheap device, and its powerful compressor means it’ll cost more to run than smaller units. It’s probably overkill for smaller homes.

Final Thoughts

The Duux Bora 30L is a ruthlessly effective dehumidifier, managing to squeeze plenty of water out of the air even when it’s not particularly saturated. It’s more than on top of the basics, then, so it’s great that Duux hasn’t slipped up when it comes to the controls. It’s easy enough to use the Bora’s own control panel, but also simple to control it via the app. Having powerful scheduling and useful historical data is great, too.

Personally, I’d be happier if Duux had found a bit more room for a bigger water tank, with the four-litre one fitted barely enough to make it through a whole day. I’d also prefer it if the Bora came with a longer warranty, or if it was possible to extend it cheaply. Nevertheless, this is an impressive dehumidifier overall.

Trusted Score

How we test

We test every dehumidifier we review thoroughly over an extended period of time. We use standard tests to compare features properly. We’ll always tell you what we find. We never, ever, accept money to review a product.

Find out more about how we test in our ethics policy.

Used as our main dehumidifier for the review purpose.

We test energy usage to see how much each dehumidifier will cost to run.

We test how often the dehumidifier has to be emptied and how easy this is to do.