Discount Amcor ALTL12000EH 12000-BTU Portable Air Conditioner with Heat

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This is the most terrible piece of electronic/small appliance/ home equipment I have ever had to deal with. The unit is ridiculously heavy, and therefore difficult to move and very frustrating and difficult to position near windows of various heights from the floor. It heats the room as much as it cools, rendering it as "useful" as a fan sucking in air in a window on a hot and humid day. It does this because the pipe that "vents" to the outside radiates heat through itself. The hot part of the A/C unit is still in the room with you, not hanging out the window, and therefore renders the cooling ineffective.

Go to insulate this trash thin plastic pipe, and its fitting cuff teeth that fasten it to the back of the unit snap off. It is poorly built, over-priced, and a frustrating waste of money and time.

The graphical display on the unit takes a thorough re-read of the manual to interpret all its obnoxious symbols for operation. I cannot wait to bring this back and retrieve every wasted nickel spent on it.

My advice to you is to buy a window unit. If you must get a "portable" one, don't buy Amcor. They Amsuck.

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I purchased a NanoMaxA12000EH several years ago to cool a large bedroom of around 300 sqft. The equipment is advertised for up to 400 sqft. Presumably more than adquate for this application. Window units are sized at about 20 btu per sqft or in this case 6,000 btu. To be immediately noted is that it takes a lot more btu per square foot for this and other portable air conditioners to achieve the same outcome as a window unit half the size in btu.

So how did it work? Not well at all. On a hot day starting with the room in the mid 80 degree range with say 60 percent humidity it cannot cool the room down. It may drop the temperature 1 degree per hour. If we cool the room with a fan it can drop the temperature from say 78 degrees to 74 degrees in 2-3 hours. It of course provides comforting cool air if you focus on you.

A call to AMCOR support revealed that the technician thought I was definitely at or above the limit of its capacity at 300 sqft.

In use it is easy to see why it is slow. It adds considerable heat load to the room through the exhaust tube and in particular the large plastic attachment the connects the tube to the window vent. This plastic can be very hot to the touch and it is of course inside the room. The tubing is less hot however I have it as close to the window as possible (2 feet) to minimize the length the tube is played out. Presumably a long stretch of tube will also generate a lot of heat like a dryer duct. In sum, the unit is adding substantial heat load to the room severely compromising cooling efficiency. I addressed this issue by placing wet towels on the tubing and large plastic fitting. So long as they are wet they do keep it cool.

I also learned from the service rep you cannot operate the heating feature without also having the tubing installed in the window. Of course on a cold day you probably do not want an insert in your window.

Since the compressor, fans, etc. are inside the room it makes more noise than a window unit.

The filters (3) are white so it is easy to miss seeing that they should be cleaned.

On the plus side it is easy to roll around and install the vent in the window although I had to upgrade the insulation around the edge of the window insert to keep hot air that was vented circulating back into the room. I looks nice and it avoids having an unsightly window unit sticking out of a front window.

In sum, if you want cooling you are well advised to get a good window unit many of which are not that hard to insall. This unit would be best used in a room of 200 square feet or less.

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Purchased my Amcor ALTL 12,000EH about three years ago. Wanted one to cool and heat my windowless two car attached garage. I decided to set it up on a work bench and vent to the attic area rather that cutting a hole in a wall or door.

Living in coastal Georgia it does get the temperature to comfortable level in both summer and winter.