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Whynter Eco-Friendly 12,000 BTU Dual Hose Portable Air Conditioner, Frost White (ARC-12SD)
Had a need to cool a 380 sq ft study/workroom at our summer home with day time temperatures between 72F-88F. Central air conditioning available but extremely wasteful in a 2500sq ft house. Refused to consider window given prior bad experience (let's just say it took a long fall). This would be my 2nd Whynter portable in less than 10 years. My first one was an odd looking unit that worked wonderfully for years before we gave it away when we had to relocate to overseas.
The shape and design of this unit was agreeable and generally understated. The only hint of technology was the display LCD band that runs along the top half of the a/c. Standard size for a portable and a hint bulkier given the dual hose design. Although termed portable, it is not something you can carry around the house with one hand.
Installation was uncomplicated and the user manual was adequately helpful in completing the window exhaust setup. Understanding the display indications was initially confusing but a quick flip of the user manual was enough to get me comfortable. Remote control is simple and good to at least 15 feet away.
I powered it up during a warm afternoon. I was duly impressed. Sometimes, powerful is probably not the right word. The unit had sufficient fan speed but the actual coolness of the air from the unit was what made the difference. It was exceptionally cold. I was comfortable in a matter of minutes and had actually feeling cold in less than an hour. It's relatively quiet and I've not been bothered but it whatsoever. Several weeks in and it has been performing to expectations.
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Whynter Eco-Friendly 12,000 BTU Dual Hose Portable Air Conditioner with Heater, Frost White (ARC-12SDH)We bought this back in September and took it out again recently for the heater function.
Nicely designed unit that has a clean modern look. The display is a concealed LCD band that is simple and understandable without an overload information and meaningless statistics. Although easy to roll around, be sure to get help when lifting up above a foot. The window kit was good quality and overall setup was considerably easy. Just hookup the hoses to the kit and fit the kit snugly into the window opening.
Cools wonderfully. I use it specifically in the baby's room and occasionally in the study. The dual hose design helps with the energy efficiency and overall cooling or heating out. Both rooms are about 18x18 and this unit has no problem cooling down a 95F room to a comfortable temp in less than 30 mins. I'm surprised that the cooling throughput of this unit is actually 20%-30% faster than another 14000 BTU that I have. Nothing scientific but even my wife notices the significant difference.
The heating option is not for heavy duty heating but it works perfectly as a spot heater when you don't want to crank central heat up too much.
To sum it up, this is a surprisingly efficient unit albeit slightly bulky but gives great bang for the buck.
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Cooling: 5 out of 5Noise: 4 out of 5
Setup: 2 out of 5
Maintenance: 3 out of 5
Cooling: 5 out of 5
This AC unit is used in my office on the 12th floor of an older office building in downtown Cleveland, Ohio. In the case of this older building the HVAC is less than consistent, but the windows do open. Last summer temperatures in my office reached the high 90s on some days. As we are a business formal firm the sauna-like environment in the office was not conducive to wearing a suit and achieving any reasonable productivity. This year, with this AC unit in use for the past three weeks, the office has remained a comfortable 70F with low humidity even on the hottest day we have had yet this year (93F).
Noise: 4 out of 5
The fan and compressor on this AC unit are a bit noisy, but I think that the noise level is to be expected as the unit has excellent air flow and cools & dehumidifies my office (about 200 sq ft) quickly while helping cool the rest of the suite (about 875 sq ft) too. With the AC unit running on high I have been able to speak on the telephone two exceptions only twice have I had to switch the AC unit to a lower fan setting in order to hear the other caller(s) on the telephone. This with the unit about five feet from my desk. I have not had any issues with conducting face to face conversations in my office with the AC unit running on high.
Setup: 2 out of 5
Setup did not go was well as I had hoped. The dual hose system is nice and connects to the AC unit very well. However, the screws provided to connect the hose assemblies to the "window kit" were worthless. The hose assemblies popped out immediately. Also the window kit covers a maximum of 36 inches my office window opening is 42.5 inches. With a little effort I was able to fix these issues. I used #6 stainless steel bolts, nuts and lock washers (all available at Home Depot) to attach the hose assemblies to the window kit that was supplied with the unit. I also attached a Lexan (Plexiglas) "extension" to the window kit (also with #6 stainless steel hardware) that was supplied with the unit. So the window kit works well now and has retained much of the adjustablity with which it was designed. I recommend stainless steel as the hardware will be exposed to the elements and non-stainless steel hardware will likely rust over time. The hoses are also reasonably flexible so I do not have to keep the unit directly in front of the window I use to vent the unit.
Maintenance: 3 out of 5
Although the hose assemblies are designed to detach easily from the window kit (a feature that was unaffected by my use of the stainless steel hardware) the hoses do not come off easily (or, in my experience, at all). This creates a problem if one wants to inspect or clean the hoses (say if there are insects in the hoses, etc.) as the hoses will not detach from the window kit unless the window kit is dismantled. Also there is a condensate tank in this unit (that was not clear in the description when I bought the unit) that is not easy to empty. The drain plug is all the way at the bottom of the unit at the back with less than an inch of clearance to get a pan (or whatever) under the plug in order to drain the condensate. However, today is the first day I tired to empty the condensate (I did this to see how much condensate the unit had collected the condensate warning light was not illuminated) and there was hardly any condensate in the tank after three weeks of use. I see from the description of this model on other websites that the dual hose system allows this AC unit to discharge most of the condensate to the outside via the exhaust hose and from my experience that system works very well. So hopefully draining condensate from the tank will not be an issue in the future.
I am pleased with this AC unit and would recommend the unit to others.
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I am reasonably happy with the unit. It was easy to setup and cools one room quite nicely. So the negative comments I have are more like the 5% I do not like. Keeping that in perspective, the items I would like changed are as follows:The unit is a bit noisy. 54dB vs the Sharp 43dB. The Whynter is always running with the sound increasing when the cooling unit is on. I understand the Sharp turns on and off.
The 6" plastic pipes that connect the unit to the window adapter are very robust. They are a bit tricky to hook up and quite long. I replaced them with ordinary 6" stove pipe 2 adjustable elbows and 8" of straight pipe. This allowed me to get the unit as close to the wall as possible and minimize the resistance of the pipe itself. I haven't seen any evidence of condensation.
The unit front panel is not labelled and the remote is poorly labelled. I had to keep the handbook around to see what the LEDs and remote buttons meant. After a while simple things like changing the fan speed are easy to remember. But anything else requires having the manual handy. This was very poorly done.
This has nothing to do with the unit itself, but it does not cool multiple rooms well at all. I have a bedroom and office across the hall from on another on the second floor. Getting the cool air over to other room requires a number of fans and that does not seem work very well. The temperature differential can be 5 or 8 degrees. Still trying to figure out how to fix that. So buying a portable for multiple rooms requires some additional technology.
This is the first portable air conditioner I have owned so I have nothing really to compare with. So not sure my expectations were realistic. All in all I am as happy with the Whynter as I could expect to be. The only problem I believe I have a right to be annoyed with is the remote and unit display. Cryptic.
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The cooling ability is also rather impressive. I put it in my study/guest room which is about 225 or so squarefeet on a a hot evening, I would say 87F. and shortwhile later I was feeling extremely comfortable. It a slightly loud when on highspeed and is a awkward to lift vertically but other than that I am liking it plenty.
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