Princess Gilbert—August 30, 2025
The unit is heavy, but I was able to manage to get it i to my house just fine. It is a large unit and it will take up room, so pay attention to the measurements. Overall, it is an excellent machine! I have been using it for just about a month. I am in NY where the summer has been humid and in the upper 80’s. I did have to use adhesive velcro and plexiglass in the window. I bought this specifically to use in my casement windows that open from the top and out. The plexiglass was used to act as a window frame to keep the outside out. I was able to get the velcro and plexiglass at Home Depot. It did take me time, but I am happy with home it turned out. The unit works well! It kept our living room cool during these hot days. When the fan is on full speed it is loud. I only had to connect the outtake hose. This way, the air from inside the house was being cooled and then exhausted out the window. The only issue I have, and this may be user error- the screws to attach the hose to the window plate are the improper size. They do not secure the hose to the plate at all. I was able to place it just right to connect it, but now it will not stay attached. Read more
Loulou—June 30, 2015
First of all this air conditioner changed our lives! When I first was in the market for a portable air conditioner I was very careful to research, research, and research. Yes I was slightly uneasy about ordering an air conditioner online, but called Amazon directly and asked about my options if after I purchased it and it didn't work well for us about the return policy's. Amazon ensured that if it didn't work out then I would be able to return it in its original packaging and because of its size they would have a shipping company come pick it up which I thought for a return they would try to make it as hard as possible to return. So Amazon is a win win in my eyes. My only issue was that this is listed as a Prime eligible product and with my limited Prime knowledge I assumed I would receive it in 2 days which I didn't. I took about 5 so that was a little disappointing. I am very glad I purchased this earlier than the summer or we would have been in trouble just in waiting in a hot house on this thing. Back to the unit… So set up was easy. I allowed for it to sit in an upright position overnight only because I was unsure how the shipping company handled it and wanted to be sure I did everything in my power to continue its longevity. (This is also listed in the directions) The hose connections were easy enough and because I have a taller horizontal sliding window I had an opening that I had to fill with particle board which wasn’t too hard to do. After I set it up I plugged it in and let it sit. The set up pamphlet does recommend buying a special filter to put into one of the hoses which honestly I haven’t done because I haven’t made an honest attempt to find them which I am sure you could at a Home Depot or Lowes. From what I have heard you can also buy insulation tape to cover the hose that produces a lot of heat, but this hasn’t been a problem for us. The Cooling… The cooling is pretty amazing. After reading several reviews I second guessed my decision about purchasing it because it seems like people have great success or great failure. However on our end this AC has cooled our lower level 2 story house amazingly!! Our house is less than 15 years old so it is insulated pretty good, but because our house is North facing we get most of our heat in the back of our house. This cooler sits in the front and cools a vaulted ceiling living room, kitchen and small dinning, hallway, and half way cools the master bedroom on the same floor. All of this area is about 1200 sqft give or take. I originally purchased this to cool the living room, kitchen, and dinning room, which is all open floor plan about 420-450 swft btw, but it cooled even more than I expected. To keep track of the temperature I tried looking on my thermostat for my Heater and it was almost always higher than what it really was I am guessing because it wasn’t cooler in other places in my house. It even kept us cool in 100+ degree weather. It was about 109 outside and the cooler kept it about low to mid 70 in the living, dining, and kitchen. As a side note we purchased a Frigidaire 5,000 BTU 115V Window-Mounted Mini-Compact Air Conditioner that cools a room upstairs and we usually leave the door open just in case it will help with the over all vaulted ceiling space. The Frigidaire is rated for a small room of 250 sqft so I don’t think it is helping too much with the living space, but so you have the full facts to make an informed decision I just wanted to add that in there. This unit is also great and I plan on writing a separate review for this one. However the sum up on the cooling factor for the Whynter is awesome!! We have owned it since the end of May so I can’t speak for its longevity so only time will tell. It is totally worth purchasing for sure! Con’s Honestly these con’s don’t really matter to me because the AC works so well, but I will add them in case they matter to you. As for the noise, yes it is loud. My house usually isn’t pitch quite so it doesn’t really bother me, but if you think about it there is an AC in your house! Central air conditioners are put outside for a reason. THEY ARE LOUD! So to me this doesn’t really stop me from using it. My dish washer is very loud, but you don’t see me scrubbing dishes by hand so I don’t have to hear the noise. Same goes with any other loud appliance in my house. Maybe if it was loud and didn’t cool my house I’d have a problem. The vent on the AC is nothing to be impressed with. I have read that the vent shoots the air straight up. I don’t seem to have that problem. Yes there aren’t very many ways you can control where the air goes, but you can direct it up and down. If you don’t want it shooting straight up you can move it down a notch and it isn’t. Not sure if people thought this would prevent max air flow, but we don’t seem to have a problem. Now the remote is another problem. I have read that if you use the remote you have to keep using the remote because if you switch to the buttons on the unit the remote doesn’t know what the unit knows. This is very true and annoying. However because of where I have the unit positioned behind my couch the remote can’t find the signal to the unit because it is blocked so we pretty much don’t use the remote. Again, not an issue for me because the unit works so well and the only reason I have to push a button is to turn the unit on or off. Not an issue. As for draining due to the dehumidifier. We live in a dry state with low humidity so this hasn’t been a problem. No sure how I would drain it if I needed to, but I have found plenty of YouTube videos on this unit so I am not concerned about it at this point. Portability. Now this is a portable unit per say, but it isn’t really practical to roll around the house for us. I initially thought we could use it for our open floor plan area by day and in our master by night, but to move this, then refit for a different sized window and then do it all over again and again every morning and night it would be a pain in the butt. However if we leave our master bed room door open it cools down enough to be comfortable instead of otherwise sweating as we did before. This AC really did above and beyond what I expected! Now would I recommend this to others?? Heck yes!! It does a great job cooling and we turn it on early in the day so that it keeps the house cool and we don’t have to worry about being uncomfortable. I am able to cook and this AC still can keep the house cooler and us comfortable. We are able to cook/bake for short amounts of time and still be comfortable in 90+ degree weather, but in the 100+ degree weather we found cooking is not an option if we want to stay comfortable and not sweat. We also have blackout curtains and blinds that help to insulate the heat which makes a huge difference so for those that this AC is not working for I would question placement of the unit as well as how insulated your house is not just in between the walls but for window coverings too. We found that using brown colored vertical blinds blocks out the heat way better than the white ones did. I also suggest another unit portable or window-mounted unit to help work together with this unit. If you want a cooler house and don’t want to foot out the bill for central air you should think about other ways to keep it cool because even 2 of these units would be cheaper than central air for us! Hopefully you find your solution because this was it along with the Frigidaire 5,000 BTU 115V Window-Mounted Mini-Compact Air Conditioner for us!!! Good luck and sorry for the unorganized review! Read more
Mark L.—November 28, 2023
I have purchased two of these units. The first one lasted for five seasons, and then stopped working when I started it up for the next season. I had no problems with its function until that time. The second unit was purchased and used summer of 2022 as I recall. When I pulled it out for the second summer, it would not start up. I did have a warranty that I purchased, but that did not come in to play since it was a little less than a year from when I had purchased the unit and was still under factory warranty. Customer service at Whynter helped me with the process of taking off the outer casing to look for any loose wires. There were none. At that point they simply sent me a new AC unit and I have disposed of the old one. So, customer service was very helpful, but I did need to use some basic tools, mostly screwdrivers to open up the unit so that some of the inner workings were visible. I then took pictures of those and sent them in via email attachment in reply to the person helping me. These units are quite heavy so you would want to take them to the floor you’re going to use them on and simply keep them there after installation. It’s not something I would want to carry up and down the stairs twice a year or even just once a year if possible. The unit works very well. It cools nicely and the thermostat does shut down the cooling function once it’s achieve the desired temperature. Remote control worked well for me. Installation is not real hard as long as you can use some basic tools once again. I did have an unusual situation, so made a Custom opening to the outside from my unit . I used wood and the plastic they provided for their standard unit. Most people will not need to do that though! The fact that they simply sent out a new unit was a real relief. It was getting quite hot and sending it in to get fixed and then having them send it back would’ve been a long time without AC! That was much appreciated :-) It does cool a fairly large area, and therefore it can have some pretty good wind speed on the fan and make some noise doing so, but it wasn’t excessive in my opinion. I could understand a unit failing after five years as being probably within the normal life expectancy of a unit although I would hope a good number of them would last longer than that. Since my second unit failed after one season, that’s why I gave four stars instead of five. Customer service was however, five out of five stars:-). Read more
