EdgeStar Extreme Cool 12,000 BTU Portable Air Conditioner

"We purchased in May to use in our daughters room. It is over the garage and southwest facing full afternoon sun. Now in August after consecutive 100 degree days and lots of 90's her room is cool and pleasant. Last year we had to move her to another room because it was so hot with the heat still coming from the garage and walls. We also added insulation and a new window which help some. The EdgeStar has been our best home purchase in a long time. We came back from vacation the room was hot and in 30 minutes it was cool.



We keep her door closed so the air is contained and run the ceiling fan as a supplement but don't really need it. We have not had to drain at all and have kept it on 76 and the lowest setting even on 100 degree days. Our daughter calls it her robot with it's sleek silver design. Overall our energy cost have not been impacted it is about the same if we were trying to turn down the air or come up with other solutions to cool the room.



Yes it creates some noise but it does not bother her and it's not like it is a lawnmower or something just a low hum. It sits on carpet. I am not a big guy by any means and I was able to pull the box upstairs without help and had it installed in about 40 minutes. From the outside the panel and hose does not look unattractive. The room faces the street and I was worried about appearance but I have asked our neighbors and none of them even noticed we had installed it.



Only cons I wish the exhaust hose was a little longer and more flexible. I would have like to have it sit more in the corner. I thought hooking it to the back was a little irritating. I also had to install some foam strips to make it tight and not let hot air in. Still the trade off is well worth it.



If you expect to cool a big open room then no this is not for you. THis is a big long room that runs the length of our garage. Again we keep the door closed at all times and walk in and other than the basement it is the coolest room in the house. To us money well spent and we watch our budget a lot. I had already wasted money on several other options. I will be interested to see how it works as a heater humidifier in the winter."

"I Bought this unit back in April. I've used it on a few hot days so far and the unit does what it says. It is a little loud, but no louder than my old window unit. I've had to play with the positioning to get the vibration to stop. I have a room that's 400 sq feet, second floor with afternoon sun. Also have a portable fridge, plasma TV and computer with monitor, so I have allot of high heat producing appliances to add to the cooling load...This unit keeps the room below 80 degrees during the heat of the day, and down to a comfortable 68-70 degrees at night while I'm sleeping, and dehumidifies well. I'm also VERY impressed with the power consumption, only 950 watts! That's allot of cooling for such a low power compressor. Also, when I don't need cooling takes me 20 seconds to remove the hose and window kit, and I have the breeze from outside! I also have plants in my window, and I hated having to move them in the summer, because the old window unit blocked out all the sun Very satisfied customer with happy plants here! Would recommend to all"

"I purchased two Edgestar portable AC units. My house is 800 square feet. Placed them on opposite ends of the house. Cools very nicely.

My favorite function is the timer. I set the timers for 9 hours. I go to work. When I get home the house is cool and I used less energy.



Only thing I wish it would do is power itself down when the temp reaches what you set it at. Fan always runs. If this feature was included I would have given 5 stars."

"We have a sun room that BAKES (DC Area) during the summer. Recently our dog started having "accidents" so we put him in the sun room while we go to work. During the summer it can get quite warm. We needed a way to cool the room off or we would not put the dog in there. This a/c unit does the trick! We installed the hose UNDER the window (going outside through a hole cut in the steel area of the sunroom. It was easy to install and had I used the included installation kit, it would have been even easier. The dog loves it. I come home and he is comfortable.



As a side-note, I have a similar unit installed at work in our server closet. Edgestar makes a dependable unit.



It is relatively quiet. I mean, you expect some noise when running an a/c unit, but it is not overwhelming."

"This unit has worked great all summer long. Installation was a bit tricky (I have a tall sliding window where I use it), and I purchased the "window extender kit" from this same web-site, which was a joke. The site says the extender kit works on most Edgestar cooling units, but it didn't even fit mine. I took a trip to [@] and it took about ten dollars worth of supplies to finally get a nice fit for the exhaust hose. Total time used for installing (this includes trying the extender kit I originally bought with the cooling unit and the trip to [@]) was around two hours.After the installation, I turned the unit on and cool air came out once the compressor kicked in. This took a few seconds the first time I turned the unit on, but every time after that, the compressor turns on immediately and starts shooting out cold air. I used the unit to cool my master bedroom during really hot days and pretty much every night while I slept. It did a wonderful job. Cools very quickly (on very hot days, it can keep the room at around seventy degrees). The timer on the unit was nice, so I could have it shut off in the middle of the night so it wouldn't get too cold. Overall I have been very happy with this purchase, and I was worried when I bought it seeing as though it was cheaper than most ohter units I was looking at. Below are some other things of note:-Some reviews have complained about the exhaust hose giving off too much heat. I noticed that it felt warm to the touch, but I had no reason to believe that it kept the room from staying cool. I do keep the cooling unit very close to my window, so the hose isn't very long.-Noise might be an issue for some. I personally like having something like a fan or air conditioner running while I sleep, so it didn't bother me at all, but if you are someone who is bothered by such things, this unit is as loud as my floor standing fan when set on medium. -The unit cooled my master bedroom extremely well. I use blinds and a curtain to keep as much sun and heat out as possible, and when the air conditioner was running, it would easily be ten to fifteen degrees cooler in my bedroom than other areas of my apartment.-As I've already mentioned, the "extender unit" for large windows they sell on this site did not fit my unit. I did not try to exchange the kit, or get my money back. If you do have large windows, I would suggest just going to your local hardware store with the smaller window kit that comes with the unit, and aske them the best way to extend it to fit your window. The one I had put together has worked great all year and it cost much less than the pre-made extender kit I originally bought."

"Pros.

Very satisfied with the unit itself. We haven't had to drain it once, it's not hideous to look at and it does what we bought it for.



Cons:

the window kit included with the product leaves a little to be desired.

The plastic is thin, (thiner than a double pane window) and it seems to me that a little tinkering with the insulation value here could reduce (even if only slightly) how hard the air conditioner has to work to keep the room clean.



Further, the way one panel slides/fits into the grooves of the other means that the main panel is slightly wider. This causes small gaps along the secondary panel when the window is shut flush to the main one. I had a ¼" thick gap between my window and half of my vent/windo kit. I wound up chinking the gap with thin strips cut from the styrofoam packing my ac came with for the cost of the unit, I felt I shouldn't have had to.



An easy improvement would be to enclose some "cut to fit" insulation strips that the customer could fit against the smaller vent panels to seal up the gaps left by the design.



My other gripe is the exhaust hose. Obviously something designed to vent out hot air is going to get warm...but if you have to extend that puppy much over 2 feet to work around your furniture/outlet design then watch out! It's like having a small space heater turned on while you run your ac! We started with the unit a good 2 feet away from the window so my husband wouldn't have to rework his home office and desk set up...big mistake... that corner of the room was easily 5 degrees hotter and only got worse as the ac ran and the ac would never shut off unless we set it up in the 80s! Not exactly comfortable.



We wound up buying a small table so we could boost the unit and put it close enough to the window that we could entirely collapse the hose...it's not about a foot long at the most. Then the room became noticeably cooler, the ac would shut down to the fan mode around 74 (where we wanted it). More importantly, that area of the room no longer felt like a heater was running!



....would it really be so difficult to insulate that hose somehow? Perhaps use a thicker plastic in the construction or include some sort of sleeve of thermal material...something...so it doesn't warm up the room you're trying to cool?



If I could give the machine itself a rating, 4 and a half stars easy.

But the window kit and exhaust hose that comes with it really leaves a lot to be desired for such a large chunk of cash so I'd only give that part of the bundle 2 stars tops."

".........I bought this unit because it was the best price for a 12000 btu portable AC. I have a fairly large room 14'X17' that has a vaulted ceiling. I had a 30 yr old window box AC(12000btu)in the room previously that made the room like an icebox (they don't make them like that anymore). The replacement is adequate for the space but I would recommend a few more btu's for a high beam ceiling. The pros are that I finally have a remote and the unit is fairly quiet (to me anyway, I love to sleep with white noise). The cons are that the window kit was not big enough for my window so I had to buy an extension, the internal temp gauge on the unit is off by about 7-8 degrees and it would be nice if the remote lit up. Otherwise the unit seems like a good product for the money. Plus CA was very easy to buy from and deal with......"

"I bought the Edgestar towards the end of July, for my younger brother who lives upstairs where the ac barely puts out cold air, if any. Here in Texas you can pretty well imagine how hot it can get, and he was baking. If it was 80 down stairs, then it was about 95 or 98 upstairs. His window also faces the west and becomes a sauna around 12:30 or 1 untill the sun goes down. I bought this unit and installed it when he wasnt there and when he got home, he couldnt believe how cool it was in his room. It took a couple of hours to get it down from the 90s to about 83, but it makes all the differnce in the world to him. The only complaint I have is that the material they give you for the window exhaust vent is pretty lame. As soon as you screw the vent to the window portion, it will strip out. Had to use some mega plummer's glue to get it to stay. Other than that, the unit rocks."

"I use this unit to cool my bedroom, as i work nights and have to sleep during the hottest part of the day. It is summer in the southeastern USA, so one can imagine how hot it gets. Temperatures regularly reach 90*F and higher, which combined with the humidity can make for heat index temperatures of 100* or more. Uncomfortable to put it mildly.Installation was relatively simple. I was concerned because my window slides horizontally, and thus required a vertical installation. But it was still rather simple. A little sawing and putting in of a few screws, and applying duct tape and i was up and running. Pros:it does a fantastic job of cooling my room, which is on the second floor and close to the attic. pre-installation said room was a solid 5-10* hotter than the entire rest of the house, which was hot and without air conditioning. I like that even on the lowest fan setting with the temperature set in the mid 80s, it gets the 15' x 10' room cool enough to be quite comfortable. The instruction manual is well illustrated and relatively easy to follow. Cons:Yes, it does make noise. Nothing too disruptive to me personally but this is a factor to some people. I primarily use it while sleeping and the noise is soothing i find, something akin to white noise. The unit is heavy. In box it weighs 60-80lbs and is large, so i had to get some help. As one might suspect, the cooling qualities are very directional. Even with the ceiling fan on, in front of it one can get quite cold, whereas to the side of it the temperature is a bit warmer, if still cool. this unit was pricey, but then again, the reviews were mostly positive, and i wanted to make sure that the AC unit i got provided immediate relief and i wasn't in the "hmm i think i should return this unit and try another one" carousel for what could turn into months. Apparently the plastic holder for the carbon filter warped in shipping because i had to destroy the plastic holder in order to put that part in. It has restored sanity to my life since i can now rest properly, so i'm finding myself very happy with the investment."

"I bought this unit to cool my apartment. My apartment is 750 Sq. Ft which is larger than the space it's recommended for, but with a couple extra fans I've found it to be quite effective. I can see why this AC unit is popular: It's effective, well-priced, relatively quiet, easy to operate, and relatively easy to install. It's only slightly obtrusive and would probably be impossible to engineer in a smaller size without sacrificing power The design of the vent is such that one really has to angle the entire unit to alter the direction of the air flow, but this is a minor complaint.

My only real complaint is the window extender kit I received does not fit the exhaust hose properly. It's hard to explain without seeing it, but the hose does not "lock" into the exhaust port in the extender kit. Fortunately it's a tight enough fit that this can be ameliorated with tape but it seems like an oversight. Otherwise I'm very satisfied."