Portable Air Conditioners

Reviews

We like it for our spare bedroom! Working great! I highly recommend this product and seller!!

I love how my air condition was shipped in a timely manner. It really cools my room and I love how it is all digital and has its own remote control. Thanks!

Purchased it for bed room size 15' x 12'. Happy with the performance. However, installation manual does not have sufficient detail and need some improvement. It took couple of trials and errors before final installation due to poor quality manual. 5 points for easy installation and performance and 3 points for installation instruction manual.

I'll make this a quick review. This little window air conditioner, cools down my very hot bedroom. I live in Palm Springs, California, where it can easily reach 110+ degrees F in the late Spring, Summer, and early Fall. My bedroom has a big 42-inch plasma, that heats up the room, and I also have the sun shine on my room almost all day. This air conditioner was very easy to set up, comes with a remote control, and I'll finally be able to sleep in a nice cool (or cold, if I so choose) bedroom. I give this product an A grade.

I think this is the best value for 165 sq ft. Inexpensive, efficient (energy star), relatively quiet and does the job. I am very sensitive to noise, especially sudden sounds, but I could sleep with no problems. When the compressor turns on, it is not sudden, but gradual. If you can sleep during rain, you should have no problems with this unit. Another complain was water inside the unit. Yes, it is there and all AC's have it. However, it is on the outside and you can only hear (and see) it outside. It will take you about 30 minutes to install (some assembly is required). The instructions are somewhat confusing, but it is relatively easy - all you need is a screw driver. Comparing to my previous AC, this one is considerably lighter. The only problem I found was a narrow hole under the air conditioner. I am not sure why it is there, but I closed it with a piece of tape (included). I was planning to buy another unit, but my rooms are either much larger or the windows are too narrow.

Reviews

PROS about as small and light (50lbs) as they get comes with remote comes with window kit powerful fan thermostat very little assembly/packaging CONS no accessible drain pan machine itself only had power button (no controls) loud OVERVIEW I live in a 300sq foot studio with a 15 foot ceiling and a south-facing bay window. My apartment gets hot when it's sunny and is almost always damp/humid. I got the Koldfront because it was the only unit that would fit in my available surface area: on top of my kitchen cabinets. I already had ducting running through my cabinets to vent my over-range microwave, so I popped the Koldfront on top of my cabinet and tied the exhaust into my existing duct work. It takes the Koldfront about 5-7 minutes to cool my apartment down to habitable from digustingly hot. Technically, I think my space is supposed to be a little too big for this machine, but having it blow cold air across my ceiling seems to do a good job of displacing all the hot air, and since it's located high up, it should be sucking warm air out as it cools the condensers. I ran this machine for a couple of days at ground level and was less than excited about it's potential, I could actually feel a temperature differential about two feet off the ground between cold and hot air. But moving it closer to my ceiling made all the difference. When it was on the floor, all it did was move air and maybe cool a little bit. Now that it's at ceiling height I'm actually getting chilly. FAN SPEED There are three fan speeds: high is pretty loud, and low is still relatively loud. I've gotten used to it pretty quickly though, it pretty much acts as white noise, dampening external sounds. MODES AC, Dehumidifier, and Fan are the available mode settings for this machine. I'm happy about these options since you won't always need/want the condensers coming on and off, and you can dehumidify when it's cold out without turning on the AC. WATER RESERVOIR The koldfront is supposed to vent humidity out through the ducting, but has a water resevoir for high humidity situations. Unlike some machines, the reservoir isn't a bucket that you can remove from the machine. To drain the reservoir, you have to pull out a little plug at the bottom of the AC, which is about two inches off the ground. That doesn't give you much room to maneuver a drain pan. Fortunately, at 50LBS, it's not too heavy to put in the bathtub and let drain there. The lack of an accessible reservoir is a definite con though. Apparently the Koldfront is made to be able to hard-wire a drain, so that may be an option for some. I ran my machine on and off for a couple of days in San Francisco and it drained something like a cup of water. I don't know the total size of the reservoir, but the drain indicator lite hadn't turned on yet before I drained it. THERMOSTAT I've read some reviews complaining of an inaccurate thermostat on the KOLDFRONT, but mine seems to be about spot on. REMOTE AND LCD PANEL Don't lose the remote, or if you do, hope you had your Koldfront set exactly how you want to have it because there's no way to change settings without the remote. The remote itself is pretty intuitive, with power, up, down, mode, fan speed, Celsius/Fahrenheit, timer, and cancel buttons. And it comes with batteries. The LCD panel reads the ambient temperature in either Celsius or Fahrenheit until you press the up or down button on the remote, in which case it reads your preset temperature preference. There's a blue/green/yellow LED that indicates whether you're in AC/dehumidifier/ or fan mode, respectively. The information on the LCD is large enough to read from several feed away. ASSEMBLY Like most appliances, the Koldfront came with a cardboard cover over the packaging and plastic ties keeping it on. You just cut the ties and lift the cardboard cover off the machine. Inside, there's just a couple pieces of Styrofoam, the AC, and the window kit, plastic duct, instructions, remote, and two AAA batteries for the remote. The AC itself doesn't require any assembly, aside from plugging the duct in. The drain plug on mine had popped out, so I just twisted it back into place. There's a little more involved in assembling the window kit, but the instructions are pretty good on how to get that together. All you need (if your window is the right size) is a phillips head screw driver. The window kit is held into place by the weight of your window and doesn't need to be screwed into the window frame at all. CONCLUSION Overall, I'm happy with my Kodlfront. Mine arrived fully functional out of the box, and raising it to ceiling height has made it a lean, mean studio-cooling machine. It's a little bit bigger than I had guessed from the picture, but it's still smaller than most, and fit where I needed it to. It's loud, but inexpensive and has a built in thermostat and remote. Draining it is going to be a hassle, since I've moved it out of easy reach, but there's nothing else on the market that would have worked for me, so four stars for working properly, but not five, because of the lack of controls on the machine, the lack of a removable reservoir, and the loudness of the fan.

Hello everyone! Portable air conditioners work by taking the air from your room, cooling it, and blowing the hot air out through an exhaust hose attached to your window. But blowing hot air to the outside creates negative pressure inside your room which, in turn, pulls in more hot air from the outside (the amount of air blown out is equal to the amount of air pulled in). It is kind of self defeating. The portable air conditioner is able to cool your room as long as the air it exhausts is hotter than the hot air pulled in, then there is an overall cooling effect. But as the temperature outside increas, a small A/C unit may not have enough BTU to to cool the air enough to compensate the hot air being sucked in. I made the mistake of using a traditional web based cooling calculator to estimate the amount of BTU's needed for a portable A/C. If I had read the web page more carefully I would have noticed that these BTU calculators are for window/wall mounted air conditioners. The major difference between a window A/C and a portable A/C is that the window unit has its heat exchange coils outside and does not create negative pressure in your room (in other words, the cold air in the room is not directly diluted by warm air being sucked in from the outside). Without the negative pressure, there is no hot air being pulled in, so the amount of BTUs needed to cool the room is much less. Of course, even with a window A/C, warm air still seeps into the room but at a lower rate. I estimate that I would need at least 50% more BTU in a portable air conditioner than that shown in web based BTU calculator for my needs. So instead of the 8,000 BTU Koldfront unit, I should have gotten a 12,000 BTU portable air conditioner. Note: some portables A/C have two hoses, one for the exhaust and one for the intake so they do not create negative pressure. These units are more effecient and the web based BTU calculator should apply. Here are the key takeaways: 1. Unless you have a two hose model (which maintains neutral pressure in your room), these portable A/C units are inefficient and are more costly to operate than a conventional through the wall/window air conditioner. 2. If you can, try to get a two hose portable A/C unit. But if not, then you will probably need to increase the portable's BTUs by 50% (or 1.5x) when using a conventional web based BTU calculator. CompactAppliance tried to warn me but I didn't listen. What did you expect from a 13yr old? :-). 3. Do buy from a reputable dealer, such as CompactAppliance. They graciously accepted my return without any hassles. Be sure you always read the vendor's return policy (some have reasonable restocking fees but some won't take it back at all!) I hope this was helpful.

I bought this unit to keep my menopausal roommate comfortable in her room at the back of the house. I live in the central valley of California. We average over 100 the entire month of July, and upper 90s through August (just sayin', you guys who can get cooler than 78 by opening a window). My central air keeps the west end of the house tolerable most of the time, but the east end of the house just never cools off. So before she moves in, I tell her the back room gets pretty warm and she tut-tuts and assures me that she's one tough broad, and really she is. Only after three nights, she 'fesses up to not sleeping on account of she's so overheated back there. Begin the shopping for a small air conditioner. Here is what I found -- this one is pretty decent looking, it is very reasonably priced, it looks miles better than units costing twice as much. I shopped through Amazon, ordered the thing in 5 minutes or less and the manufacturer notified me within 24 hours that the unit was on its way. Well before the deliver-by date, the unit showed up on my front porch, well-packaged and in perfectly good condition. The only reason this is a 3 and not a 4 is that the set-up required some extra parts and finagling that we hadn't expected. On the other hand, two cranky, hot, menopausal women got the thing up and running within half an hour, and finished with a pretty decent set-up in another half hour the next night. Roommate says it's a little noisy, but keeps the room cool, looks pretty OK and is way better than sleeping sweaty. Her landlady says she spent way less than she might have for a better product. Both menopausal women less hot, less cranky and generally pretty pleased.

I've had this AC for about one year and I hardly use it. It's much better to wait until the outside cools down and open all the windows. Like many one-hose portable AC units, the Koldfront draws air into the room from the outside or the rest of the house, which effectively creates a negative pressure into the room. The end result is that you bring as much warn air into your space as you cool down. My room is 144 square feet with 8 ft cielings, so it is not a particularly large space. According to my digital thermometer, my room cooled down by one degree after 5 hours of running. It went from 79 to 78 degrees F. After 5 hours, the unit stopped working and just blew warm air. I live in Southern California, which is not a particulalrly humid environment, and outside was only 85 degrees. If you do buy a portable AC unit, MAKE SURE IT IS A 2 HOSE UNIT.

This is a great, economical portable AC unit that has been a blessing in the Texas heat wave and drought of 2009. We are so dry that all I did was plug it in. No extra water, no venting, it just sits there in the middle of the room and cools. I don't know what all the griping is about except that folk must not have priced these units elsewhere. It was easy to set up and the instructions were clear and in a booklet. The unit saved my life one night when my Central AC went out. It weighs 55 pounds and is on wheels. Best bargain I have found! Home Depot's cheapest offer was an evaporative cooler. Ugh! If we ever have winter, I can put it in a corner until spring.

Reviews

It numbs a bit, so the pain when epilating would not be so severe, but there's still a great deal of pain left.

I bought this spray to use with my epilator on my bikini line. This spray smells really, really bad and it stings the skin. I applied it by spraying onto a cotton swab first so I could avoid certain delicate areas, but no matter how careful I was it still dripped all over the place. It didn't seem to numb the areas I targeted for hair removal, but all of the delicate areas it dripped on were numb for almost 24 hours. AND the unappealing smell lingered long after I had showered. Oh, and I used the whole entire bottle in one go. The hair removal was just as painful and the overall experience was terrible. I wouldn't recommend this product to anyone.

this is not the same degree of numbing that you would get with a local injection, but as far as a topical spray goes, it is very good. i use it for tattooing and it takes the edge off and does not interfere with the ink/color. i have tried many different things but this one is the most effective (i don't really know why but it seems to absorb into the skin while others do not).

I have been using this numbing spray for a long time for at-home bikini waxing (brazilian). This product will not take away all of your pain, but it will definitely take the edge off and reduces the sting just like in the description. I do not know what the effect would be on other areas of the body, since I've only used the spray on my privates. I wax or depilate other body parts without any pain relief. The smell of this product is very nice it's very easy to apply. Don't buy this if you're expecting a completely pain free hair removal after using this product. But there is a huge difference between not using any numbing product and using this spray. I would not wax without it.

First of all, let me say this is great for temporary relief of cold sores. (Note: this isn't the "correct" usage, I am not a doctor) That being said, I didn't find that it relieved much of my pain from waxing. It is topical (as the product states) and it doesn't sink much farther than superficial into your skin. It's great for facial waxing on fuzz, but not really anywhere else on your body that has deeply rooted hair.

Reviews

The first thing you see when you open the package is : PLEASE DO NOT RETURN TO STORE; they then give you information of where you can get help. The unit does not cool as it claims. We have one that does not cool. It sits here, waiting for a "reply" on how to return the unit to the manufacturer. We are out $$$. Don't waste your money on this item.

Reviews

Works best when used in a closed-in room, with the windows shut. Much appreciated during this past summer in Tucson, Arizona.

This is a good alternative to a window unit, although you still have to vent it through a window, but its easier to move from room to room. It takes about 30 mins. to cool off a small room from 80 to 72. The controls are easy to use (I never use the remote) and the auto setting does a good job, although the fan never shuts off only the compressor. The unit is quiet enough to watch TV in the same room. I don't sleep with it on, but I don't think it would be that disturbing. I live in an area with very low humidity so I can't judge how well that evaporative unit works but I've had no problem with it.

This portable A/C unit works very well and very fast! I would recommend this product to anyone.

I bought this product about a month ago and love it, no problems so far and it gets the job done. I like that it is small in size but don't let that fool you, it can cool a room just fine. I love that I have not had to empty any water from it either. I have it in my living room which is about 500 sq feet and it keeps the average temp in the room at about 71-74, just right. Good bang for the buck, I would say.

The title says it. We received the first unit and it never blew cold. We let it run for 24hours nonstop with the cool setting turned on (not-auto). That didn't help. The temperature outside was consistently cooler by severla degrees then in side the 200sq foot room the unit was in. At one point it was 86 inside with the unit on, and 84 outside. Replacement arrived yesterday and I haven't had a chance to try it. The retailer air-n-water was very accommodating and sent replacement first with pre-paid shipping for the dead unit.