CASE ELEGANCE Cherry Finish Spanish Cedar Humidor with Magnet Seal and Humidifier Gel

This cigar box is definitely cheap and not solid cedar, but that's not a bad thing! Solid cedar boxes are very expensive and unnecessary in my opinion. If you want to keep your cigars humid, you just need a box that can hold the humidity in and this box accomplishes that. That being said, the included accessories are trash and you need to know how to setup a desktop humidor properly.Step One: You need to season any wood humidor you get and this box is no exception. DON'T do the wipe down method for this. Just buy the Boveda 84%RH humidor seasoning pouch. Trust me when I say the wipe down method doesn't work.Step Two; I recommend getting the bluetooth Govee hygrometer so you can check the humidity without opening the box. Don't forget to calibrate whatever hygrometer you end up using! Some of them can be over 10% off out of the box! Boveda makes a hygrometer calibration kit but if you're okay with an error of +/- 0.3%RH, then just putting the hygrometer in a small airtight container with a regular boveda pack will work just fine. The calibration kit is if you want a smaller error range of +/-0.1%RH.Final Step: Throw away the included humidifier bead cup. I've used these before and they just aren't as reliable as Boveda pouches in my experience. I live in a dry climate so it's nice to know that when I throw a 75%RH Boveda pack in this humidor, it will stay at a constant 70%RH. Depending on your climate, you might need to use a stronger or weaker pouch. Just experiment until you find the one that works. In a very humid climate you might need a 65%RH pouch, for example. Boveda just gives you way more control than the humidity beads.

I am new to the cigar hobby. Needed a reasonable priced humidor to store a few cigars.This box looks great. The magnetic seal is very good.The analog hygrometer that came with the humidor was useless. I did the "salt test" 3 times and tried to adjust the hygrometer --- it was WAY off and couldn't be adjusted correctly. I threw it in the trash and got a HygroSet II digital hygrometer (which passed the "salt test" --- no problems at all).I took my time "seasoning" the box. I used a clean cotton cloth soaked with distilled water and wiped the wood inside the box (lower part of box only) several times over the course of several days. Just got the wood damp --- not soaked!After several days of applying the distilled water I put a Boveda 84% humidity pack in the box (60 gram packet).The humidor is working great --- so I give it 5 stars despite the fact that the supplied hygrometer is worthless.Feb 2019 Update --- Have been using this humidor for about 10 months or so. It has done EXACTLY what it was intended to do --- store cigars at the proper level of relative humidity. Have been using BOVEDA 72% (60 gram packets) to maintain the "proper" environment (after initial seasoning of the box). Has worked great!My ONLY complaint is that it IS a bit small ---- other similar humidors with MORE capacity can be found online for the same (or less) cost.

So here is my pros and cons which in fact are someone skewed as this was my first humidor. I’ll try to give some advice so you can maintain humidity in this little desktop.Pros: doesn’t smell bad. Smells like cedar (thank goodness), Nice finish on the outside. Great little humidor if you’re already experienced. Cons: All the stuff it comes with is junk. The foam humidifier without modification, the gel crystals, and the analog hygrometer. (I bought the analog hygrometer version without realizing there was a second option eitherway you’ll want to upgrade)Here is some tips: be VERY careful when seasoning your humidor. I got slight warping and i hardly wet the inside. Luckily i managed to keep humidity after studying a LOT. Took me a month to be exact because i wasn’t buying the proper amount of products.So what you want to do is this: Buy a good hygrometer not some 5 dollar one here on amazon. What i ended up buying was both a junk 5 dollar one and Govee blutooth smart device. Turns out after calibrating the 5 dollar hygrometer is was 6% off. So i was always counting my fingers. When i finally got around to the Govee Hygrometer (which was today); i was able to monitor the humidor without opening it. So my box is cool now and i can check the stats on the app. You can find the Govee Hygrometers here on amazon.So my suggestion for humidification is heartfelt beads! Yes, even over boveda packs but if you do buy boveda packs buy more than one of size 60 (I was using just 1 size 60 and it wasn’t keeping the humidification level). This little humidor may or may not leak and heartfelt beads do the trick. You can buy them here on amazon or on heartfelts website. I bought a half pound bag of lone beads and also the smallest size tube (which has beads in it). The reason i bought the bag of beads was to convert the STYROFOAM HOCKEY PUCK. So with that all said and done. Remember to wet your beads with distilled water and keep all beads within the humidor at the same relative humidity dont mix. I live in a dry climate so bought all my beads in 70%RH.Last bit of advice. Buy at least 10 or 12 cigars to fit in here. As more cigars help the humidification process a bit better and meeting the maximum amount halfway is still pretty good.I hope this helps everyone starting out. I had to trial and error to hell trying to figure this out. Best of luck! Remember not a bad product. Just upgrade almost immediately!