We just had a record-breaking heat wave. I live in a poorly-insulated house that becomes hot in 85-degree weather, and we hit 100. (Just north of Seattle, WA.) This A/C did a great job of cooling two small rooms (cool one room, move the A/C to another room, cool that one, then back again, for about a week).
Some observations:
1. You MUST vent a portable A/C out a window or into a drop-ceiling, or you just pump the hot air back into the room.
2. Portables seem to work better when elevated (hot air rises, so this helps keep the "convection effect" going by getting closer to the hot air).
3. It's a little noisy. Adding rubber gasket material to the vents reduces the noise a lot by damping the vibrations.
4. An A/C's BTU rating must match the room size, or the unit simply won't work right. This is true of all A/Cs, and seems to be somewhat critical for portables.
5. It acts as a dehumidifier, which means that you have to drain the water tank regularly or the unit will shut off until you do. (An indicator light tells you when you need to drain the tank.)
So, for those who need to cool small rooms, I think this is a good buy. It has been for me.
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Follow-Up on Aug 28, 2009:
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I just put the a/c into the garage to store until next year. This thing worked beautifully in the small rooms, but I didn't try it in any of the larger rooms.
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Follow-Up on Aug 31, 2010:
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I just put it into the garage to store until next year. This year I used it in one of the larger rooms because I installed a window a/c in the smaller room, and it did a decent job of keeping the place cool. So far I've had two seasons of trouble-free cooling, so I'd say I got my money's worth. I may buy one more next year for my studio.
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So, I live in a studio. Not very big at all. You would think this air conditioner would be able to handle keeping it cool. Well, not so much.
Regardless of how low I set it, or how long I kept it running, it kept my studio at 78 degrees. It was actually a better deal to shut it off, open the windows/door and let the air circulate. It actually got cooler in there once I did that.
Moreover, the hose you connect to the window vent is an eye sore, and isn't flexible enough to let your place the unit somewhere convenient. So you end up having to leave the A/C unit in the middle of the room instead of neatly in a corner or against the wall because the vent hose doesn't allow otherwise.
This is pretty much the worse purchase I have made in a LONG time. Worse of all, it doesn't even make sense for me to return it. The seller charges as 12% "re-stocking fee". Moreover, I would need to carry the huge 70+lbs box up and down stairs to get it back to my work so UPS can pick it up. The box is very flimsy once you remove the nylon ribbons that it comes sealed with, and doesn't really allow you to transport it without spending some money on repackaging.
So yeah, I'm stuck with a $300 70+lbs paper weight. Good times.
[EDITED 07/30]: So I was contacted by the seller (CompactApplience) and their conclusion was that my studio was too big for the 8,000 BTU rating. They actually let me return just the A/C unit without having to worry about packing all the awkwardly-shaped pieces, and reimbursed me for everything, including shipping. Although I've decided NOT to try a different unit with a greater BTU rating, I'm leaving this review here so that hopefully people looking into buying this or any other unit are aware of the importance of considering the size of the room you're trying to cool down when you choose the unit BTU. I was remotely aware of that, but didn't look too much into it, and you saw what happened... Luckily for me, the seller handled the situation superbly well. A happy ending, after all. :)
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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.
Honest reviews on EdgeStar Ultra Compact 8,000 BTU Portable Air Conditioner - White
Listen up, everyone!
When buying an air conditioner you MUST make sure that your room is the adequate size for the unit that you are buying. It seems that a lot of negative reviews are due to the following: Too much room, too little BTUs. It is the same with gas mileage on a car. You can't expect to get 35 mpg highway while driving 70 mph with a fully loaded car. However, most portable air conditioners overrated their cooling power by 50% (see a Kid's review). So, when you buy an AC always buy 50% more BTUs than is recommended (8,000 BTU recommended unit should be 12,000 BTU). With that said I would recommend this Koldfront AC unit.
Pros:
Very portable and lightweight
Low noise
Easy to use controls
Price
Has a timer
Compact
Cons:
Will only cool a small room/area
Needs to be drained (DON'T believe what the instructions state)
Should be set on a table or set higher than the drain hose
Does not do a good cooling job when it is humid
So, if you have a small area to cool, live in a low humidity area and want a QUIET portable AC under $300 then this is the one for you.
Find helpful customer reviews and review ratings for EdgeStar Ultra Compact 8,000 BTU Portable Air Conditioner - White
I bought the Koldfront 8000BTU portable AC unit to cool a small, 150 sq ft drum room in my garage. I live in South Florida, so it does get a quite hot and humid. The room itself is completely isolated from the garage, but if not cooled, it gets up into the 90's in there. I built the room and installed an exhaust vent and PVC drainage line for the AC unit. The first unit I owned ran ~12 hours a day (off at night) and worked well for about 12 months. It maintained a dry, cool (~70-72deg) environment for my drums. Then, it stopped cooling the air. The fan worked, but no cool air and no condenser water. I called the company, and though very responsive on the phone, said the unit was out of warranty. So... I purchased a second one for about $260. This one worked fine on the same settings for about 6 months before the same thing happened. I may be stressing this unit, but 6 months? Come on... If you need this unit for long term cooling, I recommend going with something more robust. Otherwise, it probably works fine for limited applications. Hope this helps.
