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Amana AC083E Air Conditioner

The Story:

My old clunky Amana air conditioner died at the most inopportune time last weekend, as most air conditioners seem to do. Over 95 degrees with oppressive humidity. It was a few years old

and even in its prime was under whelming in performance. The entire family decided, never ever another Amana.

In sweltering heat, research was done on every low cost air conditioner in every nearby store. As we are on a budget what we needed was an 8,000 BTU window unit willing to work overtime at a meager energy cost with outstanding results.

We have been using this for the last day and it has made a huge difference in the comfort of us watching TV. We are using it for our TV room and the attached office (in fact it is really just one long room, 13ft x 36ft). The TV room where it is installed does stay cooler than the office but it is now cool enough to be tolerable in the office. My guess is the length of the room reduces the cooling effect so it might work better in a larger square room. Plus these two rooms are slightly larger than the 450 sq foot labeled on the box so that might also do it.

Living in the South, we have a need to keep cool almost year round. Except for a few months in the Winter when it gets chilly, we spend more money on electric bills cooling the house than we do heating it. We have had the same old air conditioner in the window for the past several years, and it was time to update to one that was more energy efficient and did not make as much noise. The Haier HWR05XC7 model was on sale recently at Walmart for under one hundred dollars, so we purchased it immediately. In fact, I think we may have gotten the last one at the Walmart store where we shopped. The price of this air conditioner has since gone up.

After researching for a portable, I decided to get this unit because 1) the stainless steel and 2) several 5-star ratings. Although I noticed there were some 1-star reviews as well, I figured perhaps just a few unlucky customers? Well, guess what? I’m now one of the unlucky ones. Paid approx $425 for the unit and pretty much got myself a big headache.

First of all, the unit is extremely loud! I have a small bedroom and the noise just echoes in my room. There is no way I can carry on a conversation when the unit is on, not to mention a good night sleep.

After suffering through last season’s inordinately hot summer, it was time to get an air conditioner for the house. We don’t have central air, and the problem with our house is that it seems to suck in the heat during the summer months, and doesn’t let it go unless you get the high-powered fans going to exchange the air. Even doing that though, it doesn’t cool it past the temperature outside, and when you are dealing with 100 degrees during the day, and 80 degrees at night, it just isn’t fun anymore, no matter how many fans you have in the house. We went out searching for an air conditioner after putting it off for quite a while, simply because we weren’t sure that we would be able to either afford the initial purchase or the electricity bill when it was running at full strength. In the end, both thoughts became quite negligible when suddenly we were feeling cool comfort during the hot months, and no longer sweating all over the place and dreading coming home at night.

I purchased this air conditioner last year during a particularly hot summer week. It was between 35 and 40 degrees Celsius the entire week (95 - 104 degrees Fahrenheit). I bought it from Home Depot for just over $500 CAD.

This air conditioner can also be used as a dehumidifier, or just as a fan. I have not used the dehumidifier feature, so I will only be focusing on the air conditioning and fan.

This is a great air conditioner! We bought this for our condo which had a very open layout, like a loft (high ceilings as well) and this AC unit cooled it quickly and pretty quietly even in the extreme heat. The buttons are self explanatory, so there is no way I could have gotten frustrated changing the settings.

The unit was easy to set up and worked immediately of course. It has never broken in the 3 years we’ve owned it.

It has the ability to fit in any window orientation as well as sliding glass door because of the length of attachment that it comes with.