Koldfront PAC701W Slim Design 7,000 BTU Portable Air Conditioner

I have a 14,000 BTU dual-hose portable air conditioner, but to use it in my bedroom I have to run heavy duty extension cords from another room due to the heavy electrical load. I researched which portable air conditioners use the least electricity, and this Koldfront model seems to be the winner at only 600W. I bought it specifically for its minimal power requirement.

The little Koldfront works well and surpassed my expectations on what it can accomplish despite only having half the cooling power of the bigger unit I have. It's not particularly stylish but not ugly either. It's really small, so it won't have a lot of presence in the room. I positioned it between the bed and the window and you can barely even see it it's so short. The sound level is decent, and definitely lower than the larger portable air conditioner I have. The tone of the sound is mostly air movement, but when the compressor runs it has a light, buzzy, reed like sound that is not objectionable. It's possible to sleep with this thing running near the bed. If I set the temperature control to a number in the 60's, the room stays between 71-72 degrees, so it seems to have a natural limit of how cold it can make a room. I think this unit is adequately powerful for a small/med sized bedroom, but it may not get a large bedroom as cool as you'd like, and it definitely couldn't handle a small studio apartment on a hot day.

CONSIDERATION:

It's a single-hose design and that means it will be sending some of your cooled room air to the outside. Because of that, replacement warm outside air will come in from around the doors and windows and wherever outside air has a point of entry to the house. Single-hose air conditioners are good if you have central air conditioning and have a problem room, or if you want to keep the thermostat higher in the rest of the house and have one cold room. If single-hose portable air conditioners will be your sole source of cooling in your entire living space, they will not work nearly as well as window units because window units don't cause warm outside air to move inside. Dual-hose portable air conditioners, which also don't suck hot outside air through the cracks, cost more and are usually the largest and most powerful ones. If you are cooling an apartment, I'd strongly suggest getting a dual-hose model.

FAULTS:

The button panel has glowing lights that light up the room when sleeping. You may need to tape something over it at night. It has a glowing orange LED temperature display, and unfortunately the clear plastic cover over the numbers has a texture that makes it too foggy to actually read the numbers. It's pretty annoying and negates the usefulness of the remote for changing the temperature. If you aren't standing close enough to press the temperature buttons on the unit with your finger, you won't be close enough to make out the shapes of the numbers in the fog. I consider this a design blunder and I knocked off one star from what would have otherwise been a 5 star review.

The warranty is 1 year parts but only 90 days labor. If you are trying to research this unit on the web, Koldfront is made in China for Edge Star. The distributor is Living Direct, which is located in America.

Overall, I'm quite happy with this purchase so far.

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