Whynter ARC-12SDH 12,000 BTU (6,884 BTU SACC) Dual Hose Cooling Portable Air Conditioner, Heater, Dehumidifier, and Fan with Storage Bag, Up To 400 sq ft in White

I live in a southern California where 10 months a year, it's pretty nice. But I also live a bit inland, so about two months a year it gets unbearably hot. I was toying with doing a whole house air conditioner (3-ton, aka 36000 btu/hr), but the bit for doing it up to code was well past ten g's. So I started to research alternatives.Since I have sliding windows, I really couldn't use a window air conditioner. There are casement air conditioners sized to fit sliding windows, but the selection isn't as good. I wasn't really considering a portable air conditioner because I only knew about single hose units and there were too many drawbacks.The idea of a single vent portable air conditioner is pretty attractive until you consider the thermodynamics of it: all of the heat producing parts are in your house -- which means that you have to cool them too. And even though the gets vented to the outside, that air has to come from somewhere... like that precious cool air that you just made. And all that air being blown out the window has to be replaced, which means hot air is being sucked into your cool room under the doors and through various air leaks. In short, while you're trying to cool the room you're fighting against the heat from the compressor, the cold air you're throwing away, and the hot air that's being sucked in. A single hose air conditioner is the worst way to cool a room short of leaving your refrigerator door open.*** That's why you *want* a dual hose air conditioner. It solves two of the three big limitations of single hose portable air conditioners: it uses outside air for the condenser (hot side) core airflow, so it doesn't waste your just cooled air, and it isn't replacing that cooled air with hot air. The hot side stays hot and the cool side stays cool. Sure that pesky compressor is still getting hot, but the only way you're going to solve that is to buy a window air conditioner.So, needless to say I'm quite happy with my purchase. It gives me 1/3 of the cooling of a whole house AC, for less than 1/10 the cost. Granted I can only cool one room at a time, but this means being able to get a good night's sleep rather than being miserable two months a year.One other technical things I'd like to talk about: drainage. The act of cooling will draw moisture from the air. This unit gives you two options to get rid of it. For low humidity climates, it is designed to drip to a pan at the bottom of the unit. As the hot-side air is drawn over it, the water will evaporate again, pass over the condenser (hot side) coils and be vented to the outside. You *want* this to happen: moisture laden air holds more heat than dry air, and will pull more heat out of the hot side coils. Thus letting the moisture fall to the drip pan at the bottom and evaporate again will cool more efficiently than if you drained it off and let dry air pass over the hot side coils.However, if too much condensed water accumulates in the drip pan, a float switch shuts off the compressor. Which happens in humid weather.For mid/high humidity areas, there is a drain port halfway up the unit with a garden hose fitting. There is already plenty of water vapor in the air for heat transfer: no more is needed in the drip pan. Thus you should just drain it: I took a hose fitting and a meter of clear plastic tubing and ran the drain output into a glass jug (see attached photo). In two evening's use, I got about 1.5 gallons out of it. (See other attached photo) That's almost 6 liters of water that was in the air making things muggy. I was amazed over how much water came out of the unit.The remote is pretty nice. I can leave it on the nightstand and turn on/off the unit without getting out of bed.One more thing, this particular model is also a heater (actually a heat pump). It can warm your room in winter, providing the outside air is above 45 deg F. It won't work as a heater in Minnesota, but can be used on southern California winter days to take the chill out of a room and where the whole house furnace would be overkill.Now to deal with some of the objections I've seen in other reviews:1. Size. It's 12000 BTU/hr, that's bigger than many/most air conditioners, but it is not enough to cool your entire house. It does make 200 sqft into a meat locker though. Most would agree that it should adequately cool 400-550 sqft.2. Noise. Now that we're all used to whole house AC and climate controlled offices and cars -- where all the moving parts are tucked out of the way -- we forget that all that equipment makes noise. It's not quiet/silent, but it's not too loud either. I usually run mine about 3 hours before bedtime and turn it off. There is a timer so you can run it for an hour or two after you turn in. Even if I had to run it all night, I'd rather sleep with the fan and compressor noise rather than tossing and turning and not sleeping from the heat.3. Water/dampness. There were a lot of complaints about the unit stopped working in humid weather. That's because the condensate could accumulate in the drip pan and the limit switch would shut off the compressor. The solution would be to drain the moisture from the upper drain port. The second water complaint was that the unit would leave a puddle on the floor. Again the same thing. The drip pan is just that: a pan. If you tip the unit, water will spill. (Don't ask how I found that out.) If you're not on a level surface, you may be spilling before the limit switch shuts off. If you have that much water production, maybe you should be using the upper drain instead.4. Lights. This would be *MY* biggest complaint. They're pretty bright. In fact they keep me up at night more than the noise. Worse yet, there are no labels explaining what they mean. Which means RTFM if you're wondering what the purple LED means vs the blue one or green one. And you have no idea what the fan speed is or other indicator lights because they're all blue, just different positions for different settings. Not quite enough to drop my rating from 5 stars to 4, but close.

This unit was purchased for an 18x12 room with basement size/type windows on an upper floor that also has no heat.The unit cools the room.The unit doesn't seem any louder than any other air conditioner I've encountered.The window kit was easily cut down to fit, and installation was easy.That said, this unit is a pain in the you-know-what and if I had any other options I'd be pursuing them.There's a five degree variation before the unit turns on. So if you have it set to 72, the room can be 77 before it turns on. So if you're a cold-blooded ice monster like me, to keep the room cool enough, the unit has to be set colder than you actually want it.The lights on the display are not only ridiculously bright, they are also bright blue. Blue lights are the most disruptive to sleep, and when I say the lights are bright, I mean if I sat close enough to the unit I could read a book. I used a piece of the window kit and some duct tape to cover the display, and the light still comes through.The book says the unit "might" collect some water while cooling. Almost makes it sound like this is not a common occurrence. Without exaggerating, the unit only runs 3 to 4 hours without needing to be emptied. I am in Maine and the last couple days it's been in the upper 80's with humidity in the low 30's and dew point in the mid-to-low 50's. The unit ran from 2130 to 0030 last night, and then from about 0830 this morning and shut off just before 1 because it was full of water.Not only does it need to be emptied practically constantly, the drain is not even a full inch off the floor. The instructions say to put a "flat pan" under the unit to catch the water. A paint tray is too tall, the only thing going under that unit is a cookie sheet (probably best if one with sides is used). I have mine up on a set of 4x4s right now so I can drain it, but in the interest of not having to babysit the stupid thing constantly, I will most likely find something to lift it onto so the water can drain into a bucket. This will, of course, render the casters useless.In addition to the above, whatever the water collects in inside the unit is not closed. So if the unit has shut off because it's full of water, and you're trying to get a reasonably sized container underneath the unit to drain it, the water will spill. Everywhere. Ah ha! You're thinking. I'll just get a hose and drain it that way! Unfortunately, grasshopper, only gravity is emptying that tank.And finally, the best bit of ridiculousness, when the unit is sitting level, all the water won't drain out. To get all the water out the unit has to be tipped backward to completely drain.I don't know if all portable air conditioners are this "difficult," but this one certainly is. I do not recommend, especially for the price.Update 07/02/2016: Put the unit up on a series of blocks to make draining it easier because it was shutting off so frequently. In the 24 hours after it was raised I got about a quart of water out of it, and haven't gotten a drop of water out of it since. Was it possibly because the unit was new? The world may never know. If it stays dry I will probably come back and update my review and give it a higher rating.Update 08/06/16 - I officially hate this unit. I have a 5 qt pot that needs to be emptied every 4 to 6 hours (7 to 8 if I'm lucky) because this thing produces So. Much. Water. On the plus side, my cats enjoy drinking the collected water and I have one very clean spot on the floor when the pot overflows. On the minus side is everything else. I am going to need a 5 gallon bucket under this thing if I want to only empty it once a day instead of 2 to 3 times a day. The room is cool, but I don't know if the work to keep it running is worth it. Under current conditions with the drain plug in it shuts off after two hours because it's full of water, with a loud and annoying beep before it does (to make sure you wake up to know it needs to be emptied).Update 12/16/16: This was purchased specifically because it has the heating option. Unfortunately the thing has stopped working less than a year after I purchased it. At the tail end of summer when I managed to build a frame to support the unit so it would then gravity drain into a bucket, the A/C went wonky on it and would only run at specific fan speeds. There was a period in between when I needed A/C and when I decided it was cold enough to need the heat (during which time it sat, plugged in, and off in an upright position) and the heat will kick on for approximately a minute (if it kicks on at all) and then shuts off. Huge, HUGE waste of money. I will be contacting the manufacturer and wasting my time there to see if it's under some sort of warranty that they'll find a way to not honor, but I am not holding my breath.