Philips DreamStation 2 Heated Micro-Flex Tubing

The DreamStation 2 heated Micro-Flex tube keeps your air warm the whole way to your mask, so the moisture your humidifier adds is still there when you breathe it in. Unlike a plain hose, which lets that warmth bleed away into a cold room, this one heats along its full length.

It is also the narrowest tube Philips builds. There is noticeably less hose to shift around than the standard heated option, which matters most if you change position often through the night.

Key Features:

• Heated Full Length: A heating element runs the whole way, so warm humidified air arrives as warm humidified air.
• Rainout Protection: Keeps moisture suspended in the air rather than condensing into water inside your hose and mask.
• Adjustable Warmth: Set the temperature to suit your room, using a control that appears only when a heated tube is attached.
• Automatic Safety Cut-Out: Philips caps the air temperature on its own, so a high setting can never become an uncomfortable one.
• Same Six-Foot Reach: Narrower does not mean shorter, since this tube runs the same six feet as every other tube Philips builds for the platform.
• Automatic Detection: The machine picks the tube up through its gold pins, so there is no setting for you to hunt for.
• Six-Month Replacement: Philips asks you to discard and replace the tubing twice a year as a matter of course.

The Micro-Flex tube is ideal for patients who wake to water in the mask, whose bedroom runs cold, or who would rather have as little hose as possible on the bed beside them at night. It suits restless sleepers especially well.

Note: Philips also builds a plain performance tube at this same narrow width. That one is not heated and needs an adapter at the machine as well as the mask, so check the cuff reads HT12 before ordering.

What the narrow bore trades away

Philips publishes the numbers rather than hiding them. A 12 mm tube is rated to a full centimeter of water in static pressure accuracy and two in dynamic, where the 15 and 22 mm sizes hold half and one respectively.

Flow follows the same pattern and the gap widens as pressure rises. At 4 cm H2O the two sizes sit within a liter a minute of each other. By 20 cm H2O the wider tube is moving fifteen liters a minute more.

Reading the symbol on the cuff

Philips molds an identifier into every tube's connector, and it is the fastest way to know what you already own. This one reads HT12. The heated 15 mm reads HT15, the plain tubes read 12 or 15, and a 22 mm tube carries no symbol at all.

Anything with HT in front of it is a heated tube with electrical contacts inside the cuff. A plain tube of the same width looks similar from a distance but has a smooth collar and nothing to connect.

How the machine knows it is there

There is no tube type to select on a DreamStation 2. The heated tube temperature control simply appears on the screen once the tube is connected, and it is absent when one is not, which means the machine is detecting the tube through its pin connector.

Some listings still tell you to pick a 12 mm option in the DreamStation 2 menu. That instruction belongs to the original DreamStation, which really does have a manual tube selector. The DreamStation 2 does not, and there is nothing to set.

Here's everything that comes in the box.

• One Philips DreamStation 2 heated Micro-Flex tube, six feet long with a 12 mm bore
• One mask adapter for the tube's mask end