Frigidaire 8000 BTU Room Air Conditioner Review

Recommended with reservations

"My bedroom is 280-300 sq feet and juts out from the back, so in a sense it is single story (and has a ten foot ceiling). This unit should cool a 350 sq foot area. Doesn't even come close. Running continuously, it gets the room down to 76 to 77. Of course it is 93 outside in the day time and drops to 80-82 at night. By 1:00 in the morning, I get up and turn it up to 78 so it can cycle and thus save energy, otherwise it would just run constantly and never get down to 74. This unit will be moved to the study which is only a 110 sq ft room. It is SO LOUD it is like having a car front end in your bedroom...with the engine running. Cycle on and off and it is hard to get a good night sleep. Imagine sleeping and somebody suddenly starts a car in your room!

I read that a room like mine you should install a unit that is 50% higher than what you would expect based on floor space. I should have paid heed to the experts and not to the manufacture.

Is it a bad system? I don't think so, I think I gave it too much to chew on. I am going to get a 12,000 Btu unit. The other unit I bought (at the same time) is a 15,100 Btu system and it does what I wanted it too and generates probably less than half the noise. I knew I was giving that a mission impossible, so I knew it wouldn't really cool the area (see the review on the 15,100 unit). The 8,000 Btu does, however bring the room quickly down to 80 degrees and is VERY noticeably cooler when you step into it. It just kind of stalls at that point and only slowly gets cooler.

Note: The window units do save electricity over my central air. By air conditioning the rooms I use the most, bedroom, family room, study, I save $300 to $400 a month in electricity (see review on 15,100 Btu unit)."