Vornado Element A Air + Steam Humidifier

After 1 week of use and one cleaning cycle, it began to flash "A1" which indicates that the power head, the part that contains the heating element, was not properly attached. Considering the way to attach the head is foolproof, I suspected that something had gone wrong. I decided to forego any attempt at warranty or return to Amazon as my curiosity had already gotten the better of me. Snapping off the top ring around the steam grille revealed screws, which I removed in short order, then the outer smooth white plastic enclosure slid up and off. The sheer amount of limescale that had built up *everywhere* within this device truly shocked me. See the first two images. The third image is the heating element from directly below. All the steam this device produces goes up and around the element. Eventually that will scale up, and the device will fail as the normal cleaning does not descale that part. Of course, that's irrelevant, as the rest of the buildup (shown in the other images) within the device will cause a failure in short order too. Keep in mind, I had owned this for one week. The true sin of this is how obvious this is designed to fail. I own another humidifier, a Vicks Vaporizer, the kind you get for $15 USD at the drugstore. The power leads are nicely sealed and totally isolated from the steam it produces, because water (especially hard water) is conductive and could cause shorts. In this design, Vornado decided that steam and electronics isn't that big of a deal, and every single bit of electronics inside this device is exposed to the steam. Nothing is spared, not the AC transformer for the heating element, not the AC to DC converter hastily jammed into a box on the side, not the fan designed to move the steam up and out of the device (NOT EVEN A VORNADO-DESIGNED FAN, BTW, JUST A COMPLETELY NORMAL CHEAP COMPUTER FAN), and most notably, not the small sensor which detects if the power head is properly seated. The sensor (as far as I can tell) is a magnetic Hall effect sensor. When I looked, it was not only surrounded by limescale, but was also sitting directly in water. Testing the sensor with my multimeter revealed that the sensor had indeed died, there was no reaction from waving strong magnets near it. I tested with another sensor I had from an Arduino kit and that one reacted quickly as soon as I passed the magnet within an inch of it. So yep, dead sensor. And the entire thing won't work because Vornado thinks I'm too stupid to align two arrows and twist. At this point I scoffed loudly and threw everything back into the box and out into the dumpster. Vornado, you should genuinely be ashamed of yourselves. Don't buy this product. Instead, buy the Vicks Vaporizer for $15 USD. Keep it descaled, and you'll never need anything else again.