List Price: $499.00
Sale Price: $259.00
Today's Bonus: 48% Off
...I bought this machine for my apartment living room after my landlord refused to install a window a/c unit in it for "aesthetic reasons." (Who cares if it's 100 degrees and your tenant is boiling to death).
But I digress... PROS: The design is very modern-looking and doesn't take up a whole lot of space. It gets cooler and runs fairly quiet. Price of $249 can't be beat! (Bought somewhere else).
I have been running it non-stop from 10am-midnight for over two weeks with no issues.
The machine will turn off when water collects at the bottom; making sure you remove it before it works again. This has not happened to me yet. Running with no leaks or drainage.
CONS: The vents are on the top of the machine, so the air shoots up, not out. Takes much longer to cool a room. It cools my living room/kitchen by about 10 degrees. But to get a better/cooler outcome, I have to run my standing fan next to it so it can blow the cool air towards me. (Hate to see what my electric bill is going to be)!
If you have a smaller, enclosed room with closed doors, I'm sure it will be much cooler for you.
As far as installation, I could not remove the cap from the grated adapter; it refuses to come off. Perhaps there is a trick to it. So I'm not using it. Also not using the window piece to install properly because I have windows that swing open; not open up and down. So my window has to be open for this to vent. Not the best scenario. But okay for now.
Would I recommend this to a friend? Yes, if you have sliding up and down windows and smaller rooms to cool.
Click Here For Most Helpful Customer Reviews >>
I have a 14,000 BTU dual-hose portable air conditioner, but to use it in my bedroom I have to run heavy duty extension cords from another room due to the heavy electrical load. I researched which portable air conditioners use the least electricity, and this Koldfront model seems to be the winner at only 600W. I bought it specifically for its minimal power requirement.The little Koldfront works well and surpassed my expectations on what it can accomplish despite only having half the cooling power of the bigger unit I have. It's not particularly stylish but not ugly either. It's really small, so it won't have a lot of presence in the room. I positioned it between the bed and the window and you can barely even see it it's so short. The sound level is decent, and definitely lower than the larger portable air conditioner I have. The tone of the sound is mostly air movement, but when the compressor runs it has a light, buzzy, reed like sound that is not objectionable. It's possible to sleep with this thing running near the bed. If I set the temperature control to a number in the 60's, the room stays between 71-72 degrees, so it seems to have a natural limit of how cold it can make a room. I think this unit is adequately powerful for a small/med sized bedroom, but it may not get a large bedroom as cool as you'd like, and it definitely couldn't handle a small studio apartment on a hot day.
CONSIDERATION:
It's a single-hose design and that means it will be sending some of your cooled room air to the outside. Because of that, replacement warm outside air will come in from around the doors and windows and wherever outside air has a point of entry to the house. Single-hose air conditioners are good if you have central air conditioning and have a problem room, or if you want to keep the thermostat higher in the rest of the house and have one cold room. If single-hose portable air conditioners will be your sole source of cooling in your entire living space, they will not work nearly as well as window units because window units don't cause warm outside air to move inside. Dual-hose portable air conditioners, which also don't suck hot outside air through the cracks, cost more and are usually the largest and most powerful ones. If you are cooling an apartment, I'd strongly suggest getting a dual-hose model.
FAULTS:
The button panel has glowing lights that light up the room when sleeping. You may need to tape something over it at night. It has a glowing orange LED temperature display, and unfortunately the clear plastic cover over the numbers has a texture that makes it too foggy to actually read the numbers. It's pretty annoying and negates the usefulness of the remote for changing the temperature. If you aren't standing close enough to press the temperature buttons on the unit with your finger, you won't be close enough to make out the shapes of the numbers in the fog. I consider this a design blunder and I knocked off one star from what would have otherwise been a 5 star review.
The warranty is 1 year parts but only 90 days labor. If you are trying to research this unit on the web, Koldfront is made in China for Edge Star. The distributor is Living Direct, which is located in America.
Overall, I'm quite happy with this purchase so far.
Best Deals on Koldfront PAC701W Slim Design 7,000 BTU Portable Air Conditioner
Hi All..I live on the 5th floor of a 10 unit walk up in NYC. Pros: looks great, easy to use remote, the hose for me worked great in venting to the window, can move it easily per the rollers and easy mount into the window. Cons...I have a 400 sq ft studio, I was looking to have this cool down 200sq ft and it does bring the temp down by 7 degrees or so and that is it despite running it for several hours + ! Also, the cool air shoots up into the ceiling and not out into the room. I think this unit would be good for 100sq ft small room. It is a bit noisy when placed on high which is what I needed. I am now going to buy a window mount unit with 12000BTU.Honest reviews on Koldfront PAC701W Slim Design 7,000 BTU Portable Air Conditioner
After reading the rather not so impressive reviews for the Frigidaire 7,000 BTU portable AC, I decided to get this one instead. I wanted a unit that didn't break the bank but could cool my room within a reasonable amount of time. I just got this unit today and I'm doing a "after 2 hours of running it on high" review.I live in an apartment that has jalousie paneled windows and is overlooked by a property management company that is run by a rather strict person who won't allow me to do much, if anything to my apartment. Because of this, I felt that it was probably better for my stay here to get a portable air conditioner. I am using this for a ~120 sq ft bedroom with an outside temperature of 83 degrees and average humidity of 60-80% depending on the season.
ASSEMBLY
First off, the thing is quite heavy. I don't lift weights, so it was a bit difficult getting the thing to my front door. I strongly suggest using a handtruck or getting the help of a friend if you have to take this far distances. Once you can get it out of the box and onto a floor though, it comes with four casters attached to the bottom to easily roll it to where you need it.
Setup was pretty straightforward. Much like someone else did in their review, I had a hard time getting the exhaust cover off the grill window adapter. You will need a flathead screwdriver to get this thing off. Using my fingers didn't help.
Next, the manual states that the machine is supposed to come with two duct connectors that are angled. Mines came with only one the other side of the duct already had a straight duct connector screwed onto it (which can be taken off if needed). Kind of annoying, but not enough to dock off a point.
The window that I could use to exhaust air was located farther away from the unit than I expected. Just remember, you will be given a maximum of THREE FEET for the plastic duct itself, and you'll want to leave about a half foot of slack each for the connectors (the duct is plastic, hence the necessary slack). In other words, this will probably be positioned directly below the window you want to plug it into.
The window adapter is a PVC panel, but it comes with two extensions if needed. The adapter itself has a fixed and short length that should fit most windows. My jalousies were a bit bigger, so I used one of the two plates to attach it to the adapter to extend it to the perfect size for my window. This should be sufficient for most jalousie window users and also vertical and horizontal sliding windows.
COOLING ABILITY
Jalousie windows don't have the best air/sound insulation. There's lots of little cracks where air will escape/enter into windows and whatnot. This is why it's best to buy a unit that is slightly oversized for your use. As someone has pointed out, warm air will also want to come back into the bedroom you're trying to cool, so do your best to try to insulate as much of the area as possible. I'm a cheap person so I just used duct tape.
So after running this thing for a couple hours with the fan on high in cooling mode, my room which was initially at around 75% humidity (according to my weather application on my phone) and was 83 degrees (according to the LED readout) now is at 77 degrees. I haven't seen it drop any lower. I do run a high end computer gaming machine 24/7 that could be contributing to the heat load, but this unit is supposedly advertised to be able to cool a room that's 250 sq ft, where my room is 120.
That's a 6 degree temperature drop after 2 hours of cooling, which I suppose is okay, but I was hoping it could cool my room a bit faster. I might have to get a higher BTU unit simply because of the inefficient design of the windows in my room.
The vent for the machine pretty much points straight up at the ceiling. In theory this should work as cool hair tends to sink, but since I only care about having it cool *me*, this might be a design flaw that will annoy me, since I would prefer the vents just point at me. I'll probably deal with it once I get used to the way this machine works.
I'd say if my room was slightly smaller, maybe 100 sq ft, this AC would be JUST the right size, but as of now, I would try to find a way to borrow a 7000 BTU unit from somewhere and test it out in your room if your room is about my room's size and see if it'll help any. I MAY consider upgrading to a 8000 or 9000 BTU unit now that I know how this one works. I only run this unit when I get home from work in the evening and I'll probably only run it in the weekends if it gets unbearable, so for my purposes I think this thing is sufficient.
Hopefully this helps you guys make an informed decision about your machine. If your bedroom only contains something simple like a TV and nothing else, this machine is probably great for you, but I'll probably have to get a slightly stronger unit because of the massive amount of heat my CPU generates.
No comments:
Post a Comment