Customer Ratings: 
List Price: $428.00
Sale Price: $299.99
Today's Bonus: 30% Off
The current Amazon description does NOT do this unit justice! What it tells you is the following:
Energy star Window Air Conditioner
12000 BTU cooling Capacity
3 fan speed
Washable Filter
Temperature Range from 62-86 F
Now, let me tell you what this unit REALLY offers!
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PROS:
First, it has a remote control. This is a big thing for us... we don't like to have to keep getting up and down whenever we want to change a setting... and settings it has! With the remote, you can not only change the temperature, but also set the timer, fan speed, sleep mode, and operating mode (cooling, fan, "drying" which I'll get into in a moment..., or AUTO)
It has a timer! You can set your air conditioner to shut off after a certain amount of time up to 24 hours in half-hour increments (one-hour increments after 10 hours). This is great for those of us who "accidentally" fall asleep while watching a movie or something with the air conditioner on... it saves a ton on electricity!
The vent is adjustable so you can direct the air. Pretty standard, but Amazon doesn't mention it.
Digital temperature display again, probably seems obvious, but again, Amazon doesn't mention it.
About that 3-speed fan they mention... that would be Low, Medium, or High... but you can also choose "AUTO", which will alter the fan's intensity for you depending on demand.
The filter is not only washable, the unit actually tells you when it needs cleaned, so you don't forget to check it.
It has this thing called "SLEEP" mode... where it apparently slowly rises the designated temperature by 4 degrees over a 1 hour period, then runs at that temperature for six hours before returing to the original temp. I suppose this would make it quieter when you're sleeping, but we don't intentionally sleep in the room we have this in, so it's not such a big deal to us.
Lots of other modes! Here's a description:
FAN mode works like a fan by bringing air in from the outside.
AUTO mode a "smart" air conditioner! Instead of just flooding your room with constant cold air until icicles form, this allows you to set a temperature and stick to it. This may be a standard function in newer air conditioners, but the one we've been using in our bedroom for years didn't have this, so you'd wake up freezing in the middle of the night. In AUTO mode, the AC starts cooling whenever the temperature in your room hits 4 degrees above your desired temperature, and it switches to FAN mode when the temp drops 2 degrees below that. This seven-degree range may seem broad, but it keeps your air conditioner from constantly turning on-and-off-and-on-and-off, like my grandma's nursing home AC used to do.
COOL mode standard air conditioner mode. This is similar to AUTO, except that you only have a two-degree range. The booklet offered this example:
Assume you set your temperature to 70 degrees.
in AUTO mode, it will COOL to 68 degrees, then FAN to 74 degrees, then COOL again...
in COOL mode, it will COOL to 70 degrees, then FAN to 72 degrees, then COOL again...
Basically COOL is the same as AUTO except it'll switch more often.
Then there's DRY mode now this is neat... your air conditioner acts as a dehumidifier, removing moisture from your home, which can make it seem drier without having to spend as much on electricity.
Finally, there's an ENERGY SAVER mode, which can be selected from COOL mode. When your desired temperature is reached, it stops cooling, the fan runs for another couple of minutes, then it "cycles" for two minutes every 10 minutes until the room temperature gets above the set temperature, at which point it COOLs again.
Oh, and it plugs into a regular outlet. This is great, because at the time we needed an AC, all the stores in our city were sold out of everything but 220s, which (I recently learned) do not fit normal outlets.
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CONS:
It's heavy. The UPS guy dropped it off and I couldn't get it inside until my husband got home. Also, the instructions tell you to screw it into your windows. My windows aren't made of wood, and I don't really want to drill into them anyway, so we chose not to do that. I'll let you know if it slides out or anything, but I think it'll be fine. We might prop it up outside with a 4x4, we'll have to see.
Installing it was really pretty easy, given that we didn't really follow the instructions. If you follow the instructions, best of luck to you.
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Please comment if you have any questions! I was leery about purchasing this unit when there weren't ANY reviews ANYWHERE, but we did... and I'm glad we did!
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UPDATE: ONE YEAR LATER.
A couple of comments have suggested this review sounded a lot like a manual. It probably does. We wrote this the day after we got the air conditioner, and wanted to help out anyone else considering buying the unit with as much information as possible. When you get the manual, you probably will not have to read it if you've read this review!
That said, we used this air conditioner for the lower story of our 1940s-era brick home, which does not have working central air. It was used for an area of probably around 650-ish square feet. Our home is not insulated, and any argon gas that may once have been in our windows is no longer there, so this is definitely not the "optimal home", but this unit worked for us. It is sort of noisy, but no more so than the 5000 BTU air conditioner we had from the 1990s. I love the different cooling modes that help us save money on electricity. We usually turn it off at night unless it's an especially hot Ohio night.
One more note it came with foam padding to put around the window opening to more fully insulate from the outside air. This then stuck when we tried to remove it in the fall. We won't be using that this year.
I'm glad to see this review has been helpful to a lot of you. Please keep the comments coming if you have any more questions! It's really a fantastic value.
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We've all been through the AC Jig ... you buy a fancy name brand, you install it, and the problems begin. Given that this was the year to replace the two window ACs in the house, I decided to "go rogue" and order the SPT instead of a Fedders or Frigidaire or the like.
I'm glad that I did.
This is an amazing AC ... it's actually relatively quiet both on the compressor side and on the build side. Note that I did not say silent, but compared to other 10k-12k BTU units, it's like listening to ambient trance instead of techno. Nice. No longer do I have to walk over to the AC and slap it on the side to get it to quiet down the poorly engineered housings of the other, name-brand units rattle and squeak and complain too much and since I am no longer hitting inanimate objects, we're going to save a lot of money on therapy for me.
I like the remote (which you can use from 90 degrees to the side (apparently a miracle of modern technology that has escaped other makers)), the timer functions, and the dehumidifier mode ... very nice for cool yet humid days here in the backcountry. But what I really like is the QUIET.
PSif you do the install yourself, it's not a bad idea to caulk all around the unit to really seal it up. This may not be important to urban folks, but living here in the woods, any little beam of light that illuminates a path into the house will attract gnats, skeeters, and those ever-inquisitive sabre-toothed tigers and mastodons. So caulk around it so that you can enjoy refreshingly cool and quiet summer evenings without being disturbed by Mother Nature's little friends.
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I purchased this AC last May and it worked all summer, which was great.
So today, when it turned 85 degrees in NYC, we powered it up and it does not turn on.
I can hear the compressor turn on but none of the fans turn on.
I get on the call with customer service at Sunpentown, which is based in CA.
Got through, they had to verify with their Amazon rep. My purchase checked out but the warranty requires me to ship the unit all the way to CA. Pay about $100 out of pocket to ship it there.
I'm told turnaround for repair is 2 1/2 weeks. So add that to shipping time and other overhead, I'm waiting nearly a month to get a warranty repair? I wrote back to the rep, who will hopefully get back to me tomorrow, to see what alternatives I have. If this is the only option what would you do?
Lesson learned so far, don't buy large and heavy items online if you need the warranty.
Should have bought local. Will Amazon do anything to help ? Will try once I hear back.
The one star is mostly for having a product that works for one season. Will update once I hear back from their customer support.
*UPDATE* 5/23/13 I heard back from Sunpentown and they will not make any other accomodations. We called a local repair guy and got it fixed. $60 out of pocket, still cheaper and much much faster than sending it for warranty. After this experience, I doubt I will buy anything from Sunpentown in the future. This experience has left a sour taste. Hope you all found this review helpful. I actually bought this unit because of all the good reviews never thought I'd be one to write the bad review.
Honest reviews on SPT 12000 BTU Window Air Conditioner Energy Star WA-1211S
My 2nd floor apartment is in a 100 year old brick building and in the summertime it is like living in an oven . . . VERY HOT!!! Ten years ago I bought two 5000BTU ACs and because of the very high electric bills I used fans to save money. I saw this AC on Amazon (with great feedback) during the beginning of the 2012 summer and kept putting off placing the order. I have small windows (22" wide) and feared it would be too big to fit, also I am just a 5'5" -57 year old female and I wasn't sure I could lift it to install. Anyway, the ones Amazon had (with Prime)sold out and I figured I'd just suffer through another very hot summer but Amazon got them back (a little higher price but still on Prime) and they only had 13 left so I ordered it. It was delivered today and the package weight was 75# and it was a physical ordeal to get it in my apartment, and with the sweat dripping off my body I said, "OMG, how am I going to get this in the window???" I got it out of the shipping box and moved it into the livingroom and opened the AC box. It was only 19" wide and could fit into my window but it was still heavy (about 68#.) It took every ounce of strength I had but I put it in the window, put the sliding screens on, got it completely installed and turned it on. Today this AC has made me one very happy person. I feel like I am in heaven, a cool heaven. I didn't really read the manual so I turned it on and set the temp. and the cooling began. I set it on auto and it runs for a while, stops, a few seconds later it turns on again, runs, turns off, runs, and so on. People say it is loud but when you are used to screaming fans I'd say it is not loud at all. It took about 30 minutes to cool my very hot apartment into a comfortable place to live. I greatly recommend buying this AC because it works like a dream.
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Update: Thu, 20-Sep-2012
Well, the summer seems to be over here (haven't had a need for the AC for a week and a half or so), and we're still happy with this AC.
As I mentioned, we bought this 12,000 BTU SPT to replace a 7,800 BTU Panasonic (Panasonic CW806TU), and, surprisingly, it seems it may have actually saved money on our AC bill. Our AC bill, which typically cost, at minimum, $100/month in electricity during the summer months, averaged about $80/month with the SPT.
Now, there are many factors which determine how much it costs to run an AC (the most obvious of which is how many hot days you get, how hot it gets on those days, your price per KWH, etc.), but my thinking is that the SPT, having a greater cooling power, did not need to be on as frequently as did the Panasonic. When the outside temperature hit, say, 90° or higher, the Panasonic would basically never turn off, even with the thermostat set relatively high. With the SPT, we'd frequently set the thermostat to 76°, and if the apt. was hot, would stay on a good while until it stabilized the temperature, but would then cycle on/off periodically. Also, the Panasonic, when the outside temperature exceeded about 95°, would struggle to keep the room temperature at even 80°, while the SPT had cooling power to spare.
So, while it was using about 1060 watts while on, as opposed to the Panasonic which used about 680 watts, the SPT wasn't on nearly so often.
At this point, if this AC lasts at least six years, I'll be happy with the price paid for the performance we're getting.
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We bought this to replace a 14 year old Panasonic 7,800 BTU AC which was underpowered for the space for which it was used, so I'm comparing this SPT WA-1211S to the Panasonic. We've had this SPT for two weeks now.
As you'd expect, with an increase of over 50% BTUs, the SPT cools the room significantly faster. The air certainly feels a lot colder. How much of this lower temperature is due to the increased BTUs, and how much is due to (perhaps) the Panasonic getting weaker over time, I can't say. If the Panasonic did get weaker (needing a recharge of the coolant, as I've read), it happened so gradually as to be unnoticeable.
Also, the fan, on high, moves more air, faster, than did the Panasonic (which also contributes to the faster cooling). The downside though, is that it's also significantly louder; more, it seems to me, than can be explained by the higher CFM (cubic feet per minute). I attribute this to a lower construction quality (more on this below).
The Panasonic had an EER of 10.0, while the SPT is 10.8, not really that much more efficient than a 14 year old AC!
One problem we occasionally had with the Panasonic was that if it was used when the outside temperature was about 70° or below, the unit would ice up. Later, when the ice started to melt, it would fall off in chunks, hit the fan, and make a pretty loud thunk, unexpectedly! The SPT claims to operate in a 64-109° outdoor temperature range, which I presume means it won't ice up like the Panasonic did.
It has a "dry" feature, during which the unit is supposed to act as a dehumidifier. I was puzzled by this feature when I read of it. Did the AC use less electricity when in dry mode? Did the AC sacrifice some cooling in order to dehumidify faster?
Well, now that we own it, I can say that dry mode is a gimmick; all it does is enforce a low fan speed. I'm not sure how it behaves so far as maintaining a set temperature and the thermostat is concerned. The unit draws the same electricity (as measured by the P3 International P4400 Kill A Watt Electricity Usage Monitor) in dry mode as in cool mode, approximately 1060 watts. But, no matter to me, since I was skeptical of this "feature" from the start.
More useful, once the situation arises for it, is the timer feature which allows you to program the unit to turn on/off up to 24 hours in advance (for the first 10 hours in ½ hour increments, then in one hour increments).
My impression is that the SPT is built more cheaply than our old Panasonic. One example of this is the styrofoam which separates the exterior components from the interior components: this styrofoam is very thin. When you look at it during a sunny day, it's pretty translucent.
The SPT is better than most ACs I've used in regards to the ability to change the direction of air flow, both horizontally (very good) and vertically (excellent).
A bit of an annoyance is the beep the AC makes when you change the thermostat setting with the remote control: it's very loud! Perhaps, though, the loudness is meant to compensate for the loudness of the AC when set to high.
Overall, though, assuming the SPT continues to perform as it has thus far (we're less than a week into summer, and we've had to use it a number of times already; even a few times before summer started), and considering its cost ($316), I consider this a very good (4 star) purchase.
An AC is a longer term purchase than most things we buy via Amazon. I intend to update this review should any problems arise.
