12 out of 12 people found this review helpful.
Worth the purchase
Date of Review: Jul 28, 2007
The Bottom Line: Highly recommend this unit to anyone needing maximum cooling in a room not already burdened by high power usage.
I recently moved into a new home and allocated a room for all of my computers (I run 7 servers, 2 desktops and 2 laptops). As you can imagine, the room gets hot and the traditional AC can't keep up.
I decided it was time to buy either a window unit or a portable AC, but I wanted to research my options. Of all the reviews I read, the Sharp came with the highest recommendation. After finding it on newegg for ~100 less than anywhere else, I decided it was time to buy. Within 3 days it was here and I just completed set up last night.
As was mentioned by other reviews, the window kit is flimsy and requires the extension to be cut for use in any standard window. Over all it works ok and I was pleased to see it had a rain and bug guard, but the kit could definitely use more weather stripping.
As for the unit itself, I was fine with there being no controls as we are mostly remote driven in my house anyway. The moving louvers was a nice touch and the unit itself is very quiet. The unit immediately began cooling the server room down within 10-15 minutes right up until it tripped a breaker.
That's when I realized this bad boy is an EXTREME amp hog. Every time the unit would click the compressor, my server battery would report low voltage. Now I'm sure most people won't have this problem as they probably don't draw the same amount of power as I do from a single breaker, but at this point I have to down all non-essential systems while the unit is running to keep the power from going out. I plan to re-wire the room and put the plug the unit is in on it's own breaker, so this should fix the issue.
I don't use the dehumidifier option, so I don't know about all the complications behind draining the unit, but I'd assume it's as simple as hooking up a non-included drain hose.
In conclusion, I'd recommend this unit to anyone who needs some serious cooling power but only if you don't already have extreme power usage in the same room. (This might be a common problem with all portable AC units of this type, so it's not necessarily the fault of the unit)
