First of all the question you need to ask yourself is, do I need a
portable air conditioner? The answer to which only you will be able
to provide and it will vary on certain criteria such as is this
going to be a commercial purchase? Do you live in a all year round
warm weather climate etc? Thinking about your situation logically
should dictate whether you require a portable air conditioner.
As to saving money there are various ways that you can do this and
we will be looking at each way in further detail:-
Choosing the right brand for you
The Soleus LX-140 is actually the third portable AC we had in the
household. The fist, a discontinued Hampton Bay model worked well
and is still operating in a second bedroom. The next, the Sunpentown
WA-1010e, was terrible, could only cool the room by about 4 degrees,
and broke after a year.
On to the Soleus. The most important thing in a portable AC is
obviously cooling ability, and the Soleus lives up to its claims of
being one of the more powerful units available. At 14,000 BTU, it
has proven capable of getting my 150 sq ft bedroom down to 70
degrees on hot nights, and on sweltering summer days when it's in
the upper 90's, it can drop the temp around 15 - 20 degrees if we
completely shut out any sunlight and leave the unit runnign on high.
This may not seem like a huge drop, but it's about the best one can
expect from a portable unit. It is also capable of cooling our
larger 300 sq ft master suite, although it maxes out at about a 15
degree drop when it's hot and sunny. Unlike most of the other
portable ACs we have looked at and used, this one does produce a
steady stream of pretty cold air, and while it is massively huger
and more expensive than window units, it rivals them in cooling
capacity.
Features - The unit has three fan speeds on all the settings and
includes a dehumidifier and heater mode in addition to AC and fan.
There is temperature control on the main unit that allows you to
select anywhere between 61 and 95 degrees, which is a nice feature
since some portable ACs just run and run until you are freezing in
the middle of the night. If you set the Soleus to 71 degrees, it
will run in AC mode until the room cools down, then it will switch
to fan mode until the room warms up again. This is a nice feature
that not all portable ACs have. There is a timer setting that can be
accessed from the main unit, and allows you to run the unit for a
specified number of hours. See the remote control section below for
info on the 'time of day' timer. It's not the quietest unit in the
world, but most of the noise is a result of the air being pushed
through the unit rather than the annoying refrigerator noise you get
from some. Light sleepers might not like it, but it drowns out the
noisy neighbors with its rather non-offensive white noise. It could
also stand to have better circulation features. There is a 'swing'
mode on the remote that makes the vent rotate in an up and down
direction, but it does not move side to side and the up-down
differential is not all that huge.
Exhaust and drainage - The unit comes with two 6 ft plastic hoses
that need to be stuck out a window so that it can exhaust the hot
air. The dual hose method is supposed to make the unit work a lot
better, and between the dual hoses and the high power of the unit it
seems to perform superior to any other unit we have looked at. The
hoses are a bit wide and cumbersome and could stand to be insulated,
but they do the job. While the manufacturer claims the unit does not
usually need to be drained, I find their statistics a little
optimistic. While I don't need to drain it when I am using it at
night to drop the temp from 80 to 70, on really hot and humid days
the water reservoir will fill up and need to be emptied every 2
days. Unfortunately, a big design flaw is that there is no automatic
shut off on the unit. While the 'drain unit' light will come on in
plenty of time, if you ignore it for more than a couple hours the
water will start to seep out the bottom of the unit and it will just
keep running. I did this once overnight and woke up to find about a
gallon of watter puddling on the hard wood floor with all the
electrical cords lying in it - not the safest of situations. A
second design flaw is that the drain is on the very bottom rear of
the unit. If you place it on the floor, only a very very shallow pan
can catch the water. There is a rubber hose that comes with the unit
that can be used to drain the water either out a window or into a
bucket, although either option feels a little poor white trash to
me.
Power - At 1500 watts, the unit is a bit of a power hog. All AC
units are, and when it's 110 degrees outside the electricity expense
is well worth it. However, it should be noted that many circuit
breakers and fuse boxes can be overloaded when you throw this unit
on with a bunch of other stuff. We had to find a plug on a breaker
that was separate from our other main electronics, because running
this unit, a tv, stereo and computer all on one breaker was not
going to work.
Portability - The unit is moderately heavy, although it does have
wheels to make portability a little easier. The photos in the ads
hide that it is a little deeper than you might think, and it's foot
print is a rather large 20 x 20 inches. There are two exhaust hoses
that reach about 6 ft in length, so it needs to be right under or
right next to a window. We purchased a small table at Ikea for it to
sit on so that the hoses extend straight into the window, which
helps cooling capacity greatly since the primary exhaust hose is
where all the heat from the room goes, and it can get rather warm.
Extanding it to its full 6 feet greatly reduces the colling capacity
of the unit, since that's like having a long tubular heater in the
room. Better insulated exhaust hoses should be at the top of every
portable AC designers list, but none of them seem to have them.
The remote that comes with the unit is so-so. It allows you to
access most of the functions, although you need to point it straight
at the unit or it will not pick up the signal. Even when the unit
does communicate with the remote, it doesn't function 100% properly.
For example, if I press 'mode' to switch from AC to fan, the unit
will beep to tell me it received the signal. However, it may switch
from AC to fan like I asked, or it may stay on AC, or it may switch
to heater. Unfortunately you can't tell without looking at the top
of the unit. There is also a timer setting on the remote that
supposedly lets you program what time of day you want the unit to
switch on, probably so you can come home to a cool room after work.
This does not work all that well, since you have to remember to
point the remote at the unit before leaving and hope it actually
turns the unit on when it's supposed to. There is no clock or time
of day setting on the main unit at all, so for this feature you have
to depend on the remote 100%. The remote is not backlit, so it is
hard to see at night.
Overall, the unit gets an A for cooling, a B+ for features, and a C-
for remote control. Since my primary objective was to cool a room
and getting around the difficulties with the remote is relatively
simple, I would indeed recommend this to anyone looking to cool a
200 - 400 sq ft room.
