List Price: $673.00
Sale Price: $449.00
Today's Bonus: 33% Off
Think very hard before buying this machine. We bought it with the hope it might actually cool down a room, or at least keep a room comfortable, but alas nothing of the sort was achieved. Instead we are left with a frightfully noisy and large thing that fails simply does not work.
It is besides a very poorly engineered machine, demanding that one spends half an hour at a time just adding or subtracting one of the hoses depending on how hot it is outside. And then one is left to refit it to the window, which cannot be done without copious amounts of unsightly gaffer tape. The instruction guide is so idiotically conceived as to explain, with an entire page of the booklet, how to fit batteries into the remote, yet not a word was written on how to connect any of the hoses, nor how to adjust the vent.
It should be a crime that such a machine be allowed to be sold. Do yourself a favor and buy something, anything, else.
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I've got this unit in my bedroom, it's a small room of about 300 square feet. I live in Florida and it's very hot and humid for a large portion of the year. Works great, it's quiet, I've got several fans and they all make much more noise than this unit does. Even my little 12 inch desktop Sylvania is louder. It's a quiet humming that doesn't disturb. Keeps the room cool and blows cold air. It can keep my room at below 70 even in 100+ degree weather.The dual hose system is nice, but it's been too hot for me to use it much. The manual recommends using a single hose if the outside temp is above 95, and it has been for a while here. I have used it that way on a couple of occasions when the temperature dropped into the low 90s. It does cool faster with both hoses hooked up, but can effectively cool my room even with a single hose with no trouble. It just takes a few more minutes to cool off. Switching out hoses is simple and only takes a moment to do. You just twist one end into the back of the unit and insert the adapter end into the window mount. If using single hose mode, the intake vent should be covered with one of the supplied vent covers.
It's also not a huge power draw. Heating mode does take quite a bit, a little more than 1200 watts, but cooling is a little less than 1000 watts. It's about the same as running my PC.
The manual is horrible and it's not made clear that you may have to do a bit of cutting to the window mounts for the hoses to get them to fit your window frame. It's the worst thing about this product, but looking up the instructions for another similar unit online did fill in the holes the user manual for this unit had.
For example, I had to use the instructions from another company's similarly designed dual hose AC to discover that the intake vent should be covered when running in single hose mode. It's not mentioned in the manual at all. Another tip is to extend the end of the intake/exhaust hoses out a bit before trying to screw on the window exhaust/intake adapters. The manual doesn't mention it, but they don't screw on properly unless you extend the hose a little on the end.
I considered taking a star off for those issues, but the unit is good enough to forgive them. It wasn't difficult to figure out what to do just based on how the parts fit together. The initial installation instructions are the only area that suffered. Operating the unit once installed is clear enough. It doesn't explain how to hook up the hoses and the window mounting section. It's not hard to figure out, but it did cause a moment of frustration. Once I figured it out, it mounted into the window with no trouble aside from a bit of trimming on the plastic sliding section [no tape or extra materials required].
It's an excellent product, well designed, and it works as advertised. It won't cool off a house, but will keep a 350 square foot room comfortable with ease even in extremely hot weather. The instructions are poorly written and not nearly as detailed as they should be, but as I said, filling in the holes with a user's manual PDF from another dual hose AC was easy to do and filled in any information gaps left in the poorly written instructions. I shouldn't have needed to do that, but it's not a problem with the unit itself.
It's a great AC unit with a horrible user manual. Worth every cent I paid for it, and I really don't think poor technical writing justifies a ding in the score. The unit itself is exactly what it says it is, and does exactly what it says its supposed to.
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