Customer Reviews

Whynter 14,000 BTU Dual Hose Portable Air Conditioner (ARC-14S)

5 star:		(18)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(11)

 

 

I got this to supplement the window unit I've been using for years and ended up just completely replacing the window unit.

Very robotic design, it stands around 3ft tall and is in fact rather slim once you take it out of the packaging. Came with all the necessary accessories to get it running immediately. Hooking it up and putting the hot air vent where my window A/C used to be was extremely straightforward.

We usually power it up after my daughter returns from pre-school and set the temperature to around 74F. It usually shuts off at about 2am when the room and outside temps are nice and comfortable. The air is extremely cold around the unit and gets a good sized room down to a nice temp really fast. It seems very quiet during the day with all the other sounds and my daughter has slept like a baby ever since we got it. I does emit a low hum when it's cooling but otherwise the fan sound is not noticeable to me. You can turn it on high for a few minutes but after awhile, that's overkill. It does a great job on a low fan setting once the room is almost at the temp you want it at.

I really like the idea of not having to use central air like in our old apartment. I think over time the utility savings will easily cover the cost of the unit. The best part is I can bring it with us if we ever move.

It's worked excellently for a couple of weeks now and I may just end up getting another for our own room.

Whynter Eco Friendly 14000 BTU Dual Hose Portable Air Conditioner

This has been a lifesaver during hot summer days. I agree with the negative reviews about it being noisy, but I have it in my bedroom and I got used to it after 2 nights. I sleep through it now. The LED is also very bright, but not so much that it keeps me awake. I took off a star because of the useless window mount. The hoses weren't long enough for it to reach my window, so I went to Home Depot to build a rig. Replacement hoses are EXPENSIVE, so I didn't buy them. The screws are very short and pop right out of the cheap plastic mount, so I'm using tape to hold them in place. I have since moved and now have casement windows, so I'm in the process of building a new mount in which I will screw the hoses directly into a piece of plexiglass which will sit in the window. I've read that this will work fine, so I'm not concerned about it. One of the negative reviews I read about this unit is that it failed to cool the space. It is designed to cool roughly 600 square feet (a small apartment) so it works fine for my place. I also use a fan to push the cool air into the other room. I like the look of the unit, as well as the fact that it can be a fan or a dehumidifier. I bought plastic tubing for the water collection tank, but it has yet to produce a single drop. The vent hose is doing its job.

I have a canopy tent and use it often during the summers here in Florida. I got this unit to provide a bit of repost to the heat/humitity and it did a wonderful job.

What caught my eye about this product was the low amp/voltage use. I connected a amp/volt monitor and discovered it pulled about 9.73 amps, a little lower than the 10.5 I saw in the user manual.

I connect a drain tube, so I can't comment on how quickly the water repository fills up. I do say it is the coldest portable AC unit I have ever used.

Defiantly a good buy.

This AC unit is amazing!I ordered it on a Saturday and it said "may take two weeks for delivery" but I received it by Thursday (bought through Amazon so shipping was free two-day).

PROS: It looks great! Compared to other portable units, it isn't heavy at all (whoever said it was must be a super light weight because I'm a 120lb, 5'6" girl and I got it up a set of stairs just fine, it only weighs like 70-ish pounds plus it has wheels, although it was a little awkward to hold on to because it is tall.) It cools super quickly, the room was 80 when I turned it on and it easily cooled it to 65 degrees in two hours. I live in New England where it isn't humid, but the summers get into the hundreds, I haven't had trouble with needing to pump water out of it, but I don't have to deal with humidity. The hoses are flexible, I don't have to have the AC directly in front of my window (it's about a two feet away from the hose holes in the window). The frame that holds the hoses in the windows was just perfectly sized for my (standard sized) window, but if my window was any larger I would've needed to jerry-rig it. The remote is super easy to use (although it doesn't light up).

CONS: The unit is a little loud, but still quieter than my old window-based AC. The hoses are a little clunky and are white so they stand out next to the unit. The LED is bright, but I put a sticky note over it and I don't have any problems sleeping with it. I use the remote instead of the buttons on the unit because they are easier to see (the labels for the buttons are etched into the unit so the writing is black on black, but I have a dark room, so light would probably fix this.)

Overall I love this unit! I would definitely reccomend it!

Whynter Eco Friendly 14000 BTU Dual Hose Portable Air Conditioner Heater

This Whynter unit has impressive cooling effectiveness. I am currently using it in a small guest house that is not attached to the main house. The guest house itself is not huge, I was estimate at around 275sqft. The area that it is being used in has poor insulation and get warm fast during the day and cold just as fast in the evening. I'm glad we picked the heater function version and it has already come in useful. It defintely cools well and is surprisingly quiet for a portable unit. The install was just as expected for a portable with no fuss. Everything is working perfectly and I hope it stays that way. I would give it top billing as of now.

I installed this unit today and despite the inadequate instruction manual (I could have used more step by step pictures) it was a pretty easy process hooking it to the window (it comes assembled except for the window hoses). I thought the plastic window hose adapter and plate should have been constructed of metal since it will be exposed to the elements and also has threaded screws to hold it in place, but it fit the window and the hoses connected just fine so I hope it holds up over time.

Once it was turned on I could feel the effects immediately. I use it in the upstairs master bedroom which always stays warmer than any other room in the house. The room went from 84 to 70 degrees in no time. I bought this to replace an old window unit in order to not have an unsightly AC visible from the outside of the house. The only downside is that I thought I might be able to slide it into a corner (the unit has wheels) but the hoses do not seem flexible enough to move it anywhere except farther or closer to the window, no angles. It is also very,very heavy so plan on unpacking it in the room where it will be installed.

The remote has symbols that you will have to memorize instead of words but does give the option of not using the controls on the face of the machine (three fan levels which can be used alone,temp setting,timer setting in hours,dehumidify, and auto off). It also has a carbon filter which helps with odors in the room. I found this unit to be attractive and not detract from the decor of the room although it has to sit directly in front of the window. As to the noise,it is not prohibitive or deafening, no more so than the window unit,just background humming which I've already gotten use to. The LCD lights ARE neon bright as some other reviewers mentioned but only at night in a dark room and the light panel is so small it is easily covered.

Overall, I am very satisfied with the units double hosed cooling efficiency and think it an excellent alternative to window units and it will help save some money on cooling bills when I don't want to use the central air system and thus, will in time, pay for itself.

First of all, when the UPS guy delivered the box I thought "did I buy a small roof top unit!" the box is large but not representitive of the actual size. It was double boxed with extra material at the top and bottom. The box showed signs of "rough handling" but the unit was in perfect condition with all the parts boxed seperately.

The unit itself is not terribly heavy, but I wouldn't want to be carrying this up and down stairs on a regular basis. It has caster wheels which move the unit easily over my wood flooring and carpeting. I like the silver & black finish, more than the appliance white that you see on other models.

The installation instructions leave alot to be desired. It's not difficult, just follow the diagrams and ignore the written content. The window mounting adapter is so-so. It has sliding panels on either side that allow you to fit the unit to your window. If you have a double hung or sliding window; up to 36", you'll have no problems, a casement window (crank out) will require some creative means. I wish the material had been a little more heavy duty. It fits snugly on three sides: top, bottom and right, but the left side (which butts up against the sliding window) did leave about a 1/16 of an inch gap in some places. One thing I was NOT impressed with was the following statement in the directions "Install the window plastic panel into the window. If necessary use duct tape to better secure the panel", DUCT TAPE, are you kidding me! that is NOT an acceptable solution to me! The two included hoses are flexible and long enough for placement of the unit directly to the side of the window with mayble two feet of length, and you if want, right in front of the window, you might get four feet.

Once installation is complete, you just plug in the unit and turn it on. It took about one minute before the compressor came on and cold air came pouring out through the top mounted swivel outlet. This unit cranks out seriously cold air! It's cooling a finished attic space of 225 square feet and another adjoining room of about the same size. I placed a fan by the door between the rooms and it cools both of them great. When I started the unit it was about 85 degrees in both rooms, within an hour it had both down to the high 70's and within another hour it was down to the low 70's. When the unit is running on maximum fan speed it can be a little loud, but this is relative to the individual. It's louder than a window or wall mounted unit, but remember, this is a 14,000 BTU air conditioner that's in the room and pumps out seriously cold air, I'll accept that slight trade off. One thing about this unit is the double venting system, two hoses, you can feel an appreciable difference between the exhaust (warm) and intake (cool). This is one of the reasons this unit is so efficient.

Bottom line, the installation instructions stink! but once it's done you'll never have to do it again, unless you move it. If you want COLD air, are cooling a room of 550 square feet or less and don't mind the elevated noise, than this is the unit for you.

Don't expect this product to cool a large room. I custom fit a peice of plexiglass as an insert for my screen on my window so the hoses would attach right due to my oversized windows, which cost me 50 dollars at a local glass shop. The hoses are hard to unclipped but if you just twist the hoses instead of trying to depressed the clips the hoses will come right off. I have a kitchen attached to a large living room seperated by a wall and have the unit in the far corner of my living room, and a fan in the arch way of the rooms and it cools both rooms to a comforable temp of 75-79 with an outside temp of 90 degrees. The unit never stops to maintain this temperature. Am I beating the heat with this unit?Yes. Am I laying on my couch with my comforters?No, but if this unit was used for average room I am sure it would freeze the room quick. I would buy a larger unit if I had the money but this unit will suffice.

First off, Whynter shipped this air conditioner like it was a glass egg. The packaging was double boxed, and each box had double stacked cardboard making the packaging near invincible! From California to mid-west, ordered monday morning, received friday afternoon.

I am using this air conditioner to cool a room that has approx. a continous heat output of around 10K BTU. I installed the air conditioner on a shelf so the cold air output acutually spits out its cool, conditioned air near ceiling level mixing in with the hottest air in the room first, and if ever used allows simple drainage of the water resevoir (never needed to drain yet). The extendable exhaust hose was opened up to its max length and exhausted out a window. The intake hose pulls air from another room with ambient air so as to not take any conditioned air out of the room and just exhaust some of it out. I set this air conditioner on 78 degrees and the lowest (of 3, high, med, low) fan setting and it keeps the room perfectly cool. This air conditioner took almost no time at all to cool a room that is constantly 98-100 degrees and approx. 960 CUBIC feet. down to a continuous 75 degrees in every corner of the room. For the over zealous, the engineering on the shape of this air conditioner is everything I had been searching for also. The sides are a perfect perpendicular/parallel, smooth rectangular shaped that 'could' be mounted in between a wall also, making it very easy to 'seal' the cold air business section in the room and the rest of the A/C on the outiside of the rooms wall. I am very satisfied with this air conditioner and it has met and exceeded my expectations.

Whynter 14,000 BTU Dual Hose Portable Air Conditioner (ARC-14S)

First time user of a portable air conditioner. Desperately needed some cooling in my west facing apartment. I simply refused to get us an obsolete window air conditioner. I'll admit that I didn't quite know how to operate the unit, I thought that all you would do is to plug it in and it would magically cool the area. I wasn't quite getting the cooling I hoped for and called Whynter tech support to figure out what was wrong. They were nice enough not to laugh at me for not hooking up the exhaust hose to vent the hot air. I basically left the unit running in th room and allowed all the heat to vent into the room from the back of the unit. Connecting the window kit and exhaust was a simple setup and after 10 mins, I started noticing a real change in the temperature.

The unit runs fairly quiet, but being impatient, I set the fan to maximum and like any fan you can hear it. I'll take some noise over the heat, any day or night. Not too bothersome for me, but it's obviously not Dyson Air Multiplier silent.

The unit weight over 70lbs so it's not easy to carry up stairs. You'll need two people to get that done. Otherwise, I'm more than satisfied with the product and it is by far superior to window units in every aspect but compactness. I would still get another portable if I ever had to. Good item in by books.