After enduring five hot summers in my new place, I finally decided to get a portable room air conditioner to help beat the heat.
After a little bit of searching, I settled upon this Sharp unit. I liked its clean styling and the easy installation diagrams it featured on the outside of the box. The $50 instant rebate offered at the time also helped -a lot.
The unit comes with various panels to aid in the outside venting installation. The 5" diameter flexible hose seemed kind of g-normous coming out of the box. But its semi-rigid construction has a built in screw-like segmentation which makes it easy to hand twist the hose into the a) the unit itself and b) into the window adapter no tools required. How cool is that?
It took me about 20 minutes to install the window adapter and frame into my outside window (with just a bit of drilling and screwing).
But when I turned the unit on I couldn't believe 1) how quiet the unit was and 2) how really cold the air was coming out of it. Halleluiah!
My two cats watched curiously as I set the unit up. But they both managed to find favorite spots downwind which have now become their preferred nesting places during the day. Who says cats are dumb?
The a/c vents on the front seemed small at first. But they open automatically (to help keep the unit clean) and their limited size actually helps to increase the speed of the air flow for greater projection.
I've closed the doors to all of my other rooms to confine the cool air to the kitchen/dining room and living room. I have no idea how close this area comes to the suggested 400 square foot maximum. My place has built-in air-conditioning, but I'm really looking forward to seeing if I can do without it for the entire summer.
After living with a myriad of room fans and even an indoor dehumidifier (which was a lot louder and vented its own heat out of the back) I can already tell this is shaping up to be the most comfortable summer I've yet to experience.
The Sharp portable a/c comes with a hand remote which is used to control the settings. There is only a power switch and some indicator lights on the unit itself. I use the automatic control to set a desired temperature and the unit does the rest. Also, when the programmed temperature is reached the unit goes to a reduced output mode with a bit of cool air still coming out. Nice.
But even when the unit is running it is still a lot quieter than my numerous tower fans and my old room dehumidifier. It's also much, much quieter than my dishwasher. And almost as quiet as my refrigerator when it's going.
I also went outside to see how much air flow was coming out and it was surprisingly quite a lot. And the exhaust temperature was fairly warm which indicated to me how much of a heat transfer was actually taking place. Nice.
Since I use my dining table as my desk when I work at home having the Sharp portable a/c just yards away makes me as cool as I've always wanted to be year `round.
Will my overall energy bill go down by having this new Sharp portable a/c unit? I can't see why not since I'm not cooling my entire place. However, only time will tell.
For now I couldn't be happier or more comfortable. I think it's shaping up to be a really cool summer. If you can afford the up-front cost it's worth it. Please, don't miss out.
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Have you ever purchased something that turned out to be even better than you expected? Of course. Well that's the feeling I have with this quiet and powerful little dynamo. First, rather than repeat the exceptional lead review by Aaryanna, one which echoes my sentiments to a tee, I will add to her exposition by explaining the title of my review. PlasmaClusters! Who knew? Aaryanna had so much to say about the A/C's features she was too tired to talk about the ions. All I wanted was a sturdy and reliable portable A/C for my bedroom. I live in the San Fernando Valley of So. California and right about June 20th to July 1st when the temperature hits 95F for the first time, the daytime temps will seldom dip below 88 again until about, um I don't know, Labor Day. Night temps will mostly stay above 80F and can average 85F for a week at a time. I have a one bedroom apartment with the unit's own built-in wall air-conditioner in the living room only. Last year on the hottest nights I'd set up a three fan series starting at the air-conditioner with a second fan midway to my back bedroom and the final fan around the small corner leading into the bedroom itself. As you might imagine, this jury-rigged little setup was not only inefficient, but required me to run the wall A/C at full blast all night to get even four or five degrees of relief. Not cheap! You can imagine from Aaryanna's review, this A/C marvel is just what the doctor ordered. Now I wonder what took me so long.
What I didn't expect was the patented Sharp Ion Generator. What kind of of little doodad could this be? Fries with that double cheeseburger sir? Just Google Plasmaclusters, wow! This is no gimmick, hence the patent! There are pretty expensive Sharp Ion Generator units sold all over the world that do only one thing and very well at that. They scrub your air of harmful microbes, dirt, and pesky viruses in a patented way that has little to do with all of the other ideas you may have had about ion air cleaning machines. Are you ready for this? There is a "REFRESHER" function which when activated will cleanse the odors of any garments you choose to place in front of the unit, including simply placing the unit in front of your closet and de-odorizing your entire wardrobe. I won't bore you with particulars, that's what Google is for. Check it out.
So, I've got a great air conditioner, a great dehumidifier, a great room air venter, and a first class sleep mode no louder than a good frig. But who knew it was going to be one of the healthiest things I've ever had? I would have paid the same money for the A/C qualities alone. It's as if they threw in the Ion Generator out of their concern for my health! Who knew???
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I used the 2 reviews that were already here to help me buy this product. I was not disappointed. The Midwest is in the middle of a heat wave. I installed this unit around 6 PM and our berdroom cooled down enough to sleep well that night. The next night was even better, as we leave the unit on. We have a second floor bedroom that is above our garage, so there is heat coming from everywhere. We were freezing out the rest of the house using the central A/C, but now have turned that up to 80 degrees, and use this unit in the bedroom.
The unit is very quiet at night. We put the fan on low. It provides a very nice "white noise" which covers up the traffic noise very nicely. The unit works so well, we have to burrow into the covers. Plus the ion generator leaves the room smelling fresh and clean.
Unit is very heavy, so you need to be careful when you get the package. But once it's out of the box, it does have wheels so it does move around easily.
My only complanit is the part that attaches in the window. I had to trim some off the flange, as my window was narrower than the flange, so that weakened it a little. I'm going to build my own and attach the exhaust hose to that as soon as the heat wave is over.
All in all, I highly recomend this unit. We're sleeping better than ever.
Honest reviews on Sharp CV2P10SX 10,500 BTU Portable Air Conditioner With Automatic
******UPDATE 05/05/2013******
I was pretty happy with the price and how effective it is at cooling the room, but the rattling was really getting to me. This was a refurb for 250.00, so I expected that it may not be perfect. So I took the housing apart to find out why is was soooo noisy. Dismantling was actually very easy. After removing the 2 screws at the bottom front, the front cover slides up and I was able to get to most of the problem area's. All it needed was some new foam buffers where the plastics were touching (very cheap fix).
That probably should have happened at the factory when it was refurbed. For that they loose 1 star.
Still, it is a pretty great unit. I hope I don't need to contact customer support. That looked like it was going to be a pain (automated voice system), I gave up...
Original post:
I live northern New Mexico. Summers get into the high 90's for a couple months, it gets to 100 or just above for a few day per year. Our house was built in the late 50's. The AC unit is for the master BR, an old enclosure of a 2 car garage, with old metal casement roll out windows from the 60's.
As far as installation, it might have been easy if I had modern sliding windows, but I don't. The only part of the included window adapters (which seem pretty well made) that I could use, was the vent port. I opted to remove 1 pane of glass (from a six pane window) to fit a piece of plexi glass with a hole cut for the vent port. It worked perfectly. I have the AC unit right under it, with the hose going straight up to it.
There is a good bit of heat generated that goes through the vent hose to the outside which heats the vent hose up considerably. When sitting close to it, you can feel the hose cancelling out some of the coolers effectiveness. I bought a 6 foot duct sleeve at the home depot for around $6.00 to insulate the hose and that made all the difference (it simply slips over the vent hose like a sleeve, duh. Then some tape or zips to hold it). I can't feel any heat from the hose now (Sharp should probably include that with the cooler).
The cooler does definitely cool the room down with NO trouble. The biggest issue that I have with it is that the plastic housing around the unit can rattles A LOT if it is not positioned just so... I have to mess with it for a bit to get it to stop chattering. I now have it propped up in the back with a 1 in piece of wood to keep it quiet. Other than that it works really well.
I wouldn't really consider it portable. It's just a good alternative to construction to add ducting...
I would recommend this AC unit, but I would not pay $500.00. I paid 250.00 for a referb.
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Pros:
1. The unit showed up in two days!
2. Easy installation.
3. Cools effectively.
Cons:
1. I live in California and the weather has been quite warm. The unit's water tank fills up in 2-3 hours which automatically turns air conditioner off. To further compound my challenges with the unit, the only means to drain the water tank is wheel the entire unit outside. This is not an easy task due to the size of the unit. I would have expected a removable water tank at a minimum. Even better, would be a drain hose or other means to remove the water from the unit allowing it to run for longer periods of time required to allow this unit to cool the room. All in all, unless I am open to wheeling the unit outside several times a night to drain the water tank, this unit is ineffective for my requirements. The support line, although I received conflicting responses, indicated I can attach a hose to the water tank drain allowing me to drain the water tank either outside or to an indoor drain.
