Whynter Portable Air Conditioner 14,000 BTU & Heater with Dual Hose Dehumidifier & Cooling Fan for 500 Sq Ft Rooms, Includes AC Unit Window Kit, ARC-14SH (9,200 SACC)

I use my garage as a hobby room, workshop, a place to think, and once in a while, just escape. Most of all I use it to do stuff for others, and this time of year, it’s impossible to work out there without sweating like crazy. It is an attached garage with a bonus room over and only one exterior wall, besides the wall with the overhead door in it. The door is insulated and the exterior wall is brick veneer, so I thought I might have decent results trying to condition it in some way. It is about 500 sq ft.There are no windows, and I was not cutting a giant rectangular hole in the brick wall, so a window unit was out of the question. A split system was an option, but I was looking at $2-3k and lots of work. I read all about freestanding AC units and settled on this one. I liked that this one had the dual hoses. That made sense, and I chose the heater to make the garage a 365-day space.It came UPS two days faster than the est. arrival date. The box was holding on for dear life when it arrived, but much to my surprise, the unit did not have a scratch. I let it sit upright overnight to let the coolant settle before plugging it in. I was lucky in that last year I had cut two 6” diameter holes from my garage into my crawl space to allow air to enter, and then be exhausted by a wall-mounted exhaust fan I had installed on the opposite wall. I was able to use those two holes for the AC inlet and outlet hose connections. With minor ingenuity, the AC hoses easily connected to the two 6” size damper vents I had installed there. I turned the unit on, set it to 72, and hoped for the best.Within about 6 hours, the garage was colder than the house. It has been working perfectly for almost 3 weeks. The garage is now just like any other room, and I’m hoping that by keeping it cooler, it radiates less heat into the rest of the house and offsets my AC costs inside. That remains to be seen, but it sure can’t hurt. Like any AC, it does bring the garage temp down, then cycles off when not needed. I’ve tried running the unit with the inlet hose just open to the garage, but the humidity climbed and it was not as comfortable as when both hoses were connected to an exterior space. The hoses included are super quality and the window installation kit is very well thought out, though I did not need it.The unit is slick. Very attractive. Intuitive backlit controls and remote. I do wish it had an app for my phone. It does have a 24-hr timer, but I’m having best results not letting the temp vary by much. The self-evaporation feature is working. I removed the rear condensate cap thinking it might drip onto the floor a little, but no drips. A little surface condensate collects around the cooling vent, but nothing major. I expect it will drip out the condensate outlet in heat mode this winter. It runs extremely quietly. It would not be an issue at all sleeping beside this thing.All in all, this unit has been worth every penny so far. It basically added a usable-all-year room to the house. Kudos to Whynter for making such a great unit and having an incredible delivery time. It came cross country to NC in a matter of a few days.Highly recommended! I’ll try to report back once I use heater mode or if there are any hiccups.Update December 2024:So I've had the unit now for two blazing summers and the cooling works perfectly. Just a great addition to my garage. No complaints whatsoever. Cooling is the main reason I bought it.It's been pretty cold lately and I've converted the unit to heat mode by disconnecting and capping the intake hose vent as the instructions say to do. I have taken the cap off the drain outlet and put a pan under it so it can drain out as needed. It heats really well for maybe 24 hours, but same as last winter, I am having some issues with it freezing up in heat mode only. I can remove the intake vent cap and see the ice on the coil inside. To clear the ice, I go to fan mode to let it defrost, then back to heat mode, etc. Not too much trouble, but it would be nice not to have to do that.I discovered this problem last winter when I turned it off one day and it made a horrible clacking noise. It was ice crystals hitting the fan, I guess. This year I wrote in just to see if I could find some answers. Along with a couple helpful users, the factory responded quickly to contact them, so I'll give them a call and see what they say. Ambient temp in the garage is about 55 deg F, so it should work. I'll report back.Another update, 24 hours later:I tried heat mode again without the intake hose vent cap in place. In other words, I tried running it with the intake hose disconnected, but the intake NOT capped. 24 hours later, the garage is so warm that I had to turn the temp setting down, and not a trace of ice inside. I guess the extra air flow prevents freezing. Drain working perfectly. I'll probably hook a garden hose up to the drain outlet and run it outside to keep the garage floor dry.

I've had three previous portable ACs. This Whynter is the best so far!For a start, it has dual hoses. That may initially seem to fall somewhere on the scale between "so what" and "what a pain", but you actually WANT dual hoses. Here's why:Normal air conditioners are installed with part of the unit inside (think of it as 'the cold part') and part of the unit outside (or 'the hot part'). The 'hot part' contains the compressor -- similar to the engine of a car. It provides the power for the machine but, in so doing, generates a lot of heat that has to be removed somehow. The 'hot part' is cooled by the movement of air. It is said to 'breathe' because it takes in cooler air and expels warmer air.When you have a single hose portable unit, that hose is only used for 'exhaling' the hot air. That means that the 'inhaled' air to cool the mechanics will have to come from your room. So the air that you're paying to cool is being used to, in turn, cool the motor and then being 'exhaled' out that single hose in the window. Because it is constantly drawing air from the room and expelling it via the hose, a single-hose unit will create a vacuum in the room you're trying to cool. This means that doors won't really want to close, much of the air-conditioned air is being expelled and your home will begin to draw in the hot air from outside in order to equalize the interior air pressure.Dual-hose units, however, have one hose dedicated to each part of the 'breathing' cycle - one hose for 'inhale' and one for 'exhale'. That means that your air-conditioned air stays put right in the room you're trying to cool, and that's a Good Thing(tm). The result for me is that -- while I live in a top floor, full-sun-all-day apartment in a breezeless section of Los Angeles (a.k.a. "a Broiler") -- my bedroom now stays shockingly cold and I wind up turning this unit off in the middle of the night to avoid frost bite. Other (single hose) units had to run 24x7 through the warmer months just to keep the room livable. Comfortable was never an option.What's more, the Whynter is a much quieter machine than I've had before. You have to understand that there is no such thing as a "quiet" portable AC (because the 'hot part' is in your personal space). So if you're trying to maintain library silence, this will not work for you. It is louder than a fan but still MUCH quieter than any previous portables I've owned.I also like that Whynter eschewed silly and unnecessary moving parts (motorized louvers, for example). Those things always broke within weeks of heavy use anyway and eventually caused rattling annoyance as I waited for the previous machines to die.All air conditioners create condensation -- moisture that collects from the humidity in the air on the cooled internal parts of the machine. It's why you always see window air conditioners dripping -- they're expelling condensate. This unit collects that condensation in an internal tank, heats it up and evaporates it out the 'exhale' hose so that -- in all but the most humid conditions -- you never have to empty the bucket. That is also a Good Thing(tm); however, all units will need to be drained at some point if you use them long enough and in a wide enough variety of weather patterns. Most portable ACs seem to have considered placement of the drain plug in an "Oh crap! We forgot the drain plug!" kind of way. But the Whynter has the drain situated conveniently on the back of the unit, and high enough off of the ground that you don't wind up having to dig into the carpet to unscrew it. My previous unit's drain plug was mounted so low that when placed on carpet it became entirely inaccessible. That won't be a problem with the Whynter.Whynter's remote control is perhaps the best I've seen for a portable AC. It has its own little LCD display to show you the current state of the machine that stays wirelessly in sync with what is happening at the unit. So if you use the unit to turn the temp to 75F, for example, the remote will also show a target temp of 75F. That's a neat feature that means you can lay in bed, grab the remote and know how you want to adjust it based on its current state. This is yet another Good Thing(tm). But it could be a bit better. If the LCD glowed at night when you press a button so you can read it without turning on a light, that would be helpful. It would also be nicer if the keys had a more distinctive feel that would allow you to grab it in a dark room, find the button you want by touch and adjust the unit quickly. As it is, you have to have some external light source to be able to see what the remote is telling you.I've also previously had portable ACs that were clearly channeling Vegas when they designed their onboard LCD displays. Nobody wants an "All Singing! All Dancing!" animated LCD mere feet from where they're trying to sleep. Fortunately, the Whynter's display is just a placid blue with simple to read black characters. Much less obtrusive but, again, it isn't perfect. For a start, the LCD is positioned on the front of the unit instead of on the top. If you happen to be no more than 24" tall then it is right at eye level. But if you're taller than that you'll need to take a knee or a seat to see the LCD. A position on top of the unit would have been a much better design choice. Also, the LCD is backlit whenever the unit is running and that isn't something you can change. You're just going to have a blue light in the room when the unit is on, full stop. And when the unit is turned off but you still need the display (like when you're setting the timer function to turn the unit on later in the day), the LCD doesn't light up so it is difficult to impossible to read without a flashlight. My preference would be that the LCD only lights up when you press a button, then turns off after a few seconds so you can have a dark AND cool room. My quick hack solution was to affix a piece of cloth that hangs down over the display, but that disables the remote control (because the receiver is somewhere in/around that display). So I can either have a dark room or a remote controllable AC. That is sub-optimal.On balance, I still give this a 5-star review because it just does what you want it to do -- cool the room -- and it does it very well. Its comparative quiet operation, dual hose configuration and exceptional cooling prowess far outweigh the little design quibbles I have with the unit. Especially when you consider that the next step up in machine design/quality/power (Movencool) is six times the price of this unit! Plus the Amazon Prime shipping? It's a no brainer. This is the unit you want.