BLACK+DECKER BPACT14HWT 14,000 BTU Cooling, 11,000 BTU Heating Portable Air Conditioner with Remote Control

Good:
+ Cools the room fast!
+ Looks great
+ Doesn’t need to have the water emptied so often. Maybe once or twice during a hot season.
+ Easy to install and set up.
+ Not as noisy as I thought. The fan is quiet and when the compressor kicks in you turns up the decibels, but doesn’t bother me. Sounds like the AC units in the Las Vegas rooms.
+Exhaust hose and components seem to do a great job of not letting heat back into the house. Make sure the space between the unit and your window is fairly short.

What can be improved:
– Bright blue display lights will illuminate your entire room. I have to cover it with a magazine at night to keep it dark.
– The weather strips and seals that come with it are cheap and tear easily. Make sure you get them on right the first time. Otherwise, prepare a trip to your local hardware store.
– The 3 piece section that is put into your window isn’t even and gives for small spaces which allow hot air to enter. Easily solved by using some duct tape to seal it.

PS 1. Remember to let it stand for 24 hours before operating.
PS 2. This unit pulls 10.8 amps. Make sure that the AC plug you are using doesn’t strain your fuse box and cause it to trip. I used it where there were other lights, TVs and a Playstation running and it tripped my fuse box that was rated for 15 amps.

It’s very cool and so far seems to be very high quality. I am very happy with it.

The installation instructions say the kit will fit windows from 20.5″ to 59″. It also says cutting will be required if the window is smaller than 20.5″. Now, I’m not a mechanical genius by any means, but when you have two slides, each being 27.5″, cutting is going to be required if your window is smaller than 27.5″. So I have no idea where the 20.5″ came from. But there’s also the vent hole to take into account, and assuming you don’t want slide B to cover the vent hole, the smallest window this kit is going to fit into (without modification) is about 38″. Moreover, assuming we ignore the existence of slide C (which the manual does), if you have two 27.5″ pieces, you’re not going to make anything 59″ long. So given that you’ll need at least an inch of overlap to connect slide A and B, the largest window this kit will fit into is about 54″.

My window was about 35″ wide, so I had to cut a few inches off slide B. After I did that, the kit fit just fine. Now, for some reason, the manual says you should cut slide A for smaller windows. I have no idea why they’d suggest that. Cutting slide A will in no way help the kit fit a narrower window, i.e., a window less than 38″ but greater than 27.5″, so don’t cut this piece. You have to cut slide B if your window is less than 38″, because slide B will cover up the vent hole otherwise. If your window is really narrow, i.e., less than 27.5″, then it would make sense to cut slide A because you wouldn’t even be using slide B at that point.

For cutting slide B, I used my circular saw with a standard wood cutting blade, and I went slow. If you’re going to use a circular saw with a wood blade, clamp the slide down firm and go slow. It worked fine for me, but I wouldn’t recommend it if you have other options. A blade with smaller/more teeth would be better.

As far as the actual unit goes, it gets cold. That’s the most important thing to me. While this is my first portable air conditioner, I’ve used a number of window-mount air conditioners in the past, and one thing you never want to do is have to return one. So if it gets cold and is otherwise usable, then I’m mostly happy.

The only reason I didn’t give this unit 5 stars is the thermostat doesn’t seem to do anything. I put it on 70, and let it run 5 hours. It got my bedroom ice cold, and the compressor never shut off. It must have been 60 in my room at that point. So the unit doesn’t seem to care what the temperature is set at. That said, I’ll probably just use it on the max setting and turn it off when it gets too cold. It’s just not worth the trouble to return a bulky/heavy item like this over a thermostat problem. It gets cold, and for that I’m thankful.