Die, heat! Die!
Written: May 01 '01 (Updated May 05 '01)
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Pros: Easy to clean; very effective
Cons: Difficult to install; hard to drain
The Bottom Line: If you can't take the heat... Buy a Panasonic!
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| owling's Full Review: Panasonic CW-C60 Air Conditioner |
I cannot handle the heat. At all. Not even a little bit. From age 6 onward I grew up in Vermont, most of that time up in the hills and forest. Even after we moved to the city we only needed an air conditioner for about one or two weeks out of the entire year. It was fabulous.
Then I moved to the Boston area for college, and everything went to hell. It gets hot in April (no, really, we put one of our air conditioners in last week - because we needed it). It stays hot well through September (and sometimes into October). It's humid. It's nasty.
Okay, I know you people closer to the equator are really laughing at me now! But while I've lost some of my tolerance for cold, I have been totally unable to develop a tolerance for heat. It doesn't help that heat aggravates my asthma like nothing else. Or that I sometimes don't sweat right, so my body temperature won't always go down on its own (cold baths are my salvation). Thus, we need air conditioners. We have a three-bedroom apartment (if you can really call that third bedroom a bedroom - personally I like to call it a closet), and we have four air conditioners. One for the kitchen, because when we cook it gets hot. One for our office, because we both work in there, so it gets hot. One for our bedroom, because it's impossible to fall asleep when it's too hot. And one for our living room, so we can stand to sit out there long enough to watch a movie or conduct a roleplaying run.
Each of the four air conditioners in this apartment is a different brand or model. The one in our office is an old Panasonic. The one in the kitchen is... well I don't remember, but I think I've had it for about six years now. The one in the living room we bought used, and we like to call it "Air Conditioner Fett."
(This is sort of an elaborate joke. A friend used to call anything black and imposing "Darth X," for example "Darth Air Conditioner." The air conditioner is so HUGE that it qualifies for imposing, but it's very gray instead of black, so it reminded us more of Star Wars' Boba Fett than Darth Vader. Hence, Air Conditioner Fett.)
ACF could cool half of the apartment all by itself if we dared to turn it on high. It's so heavy we don't remove it during the winter - we just put plastic over it. It's also a really bad air conditioner to put on a cheap surge protector - it arced on the last one and melted its insides.
The one in our bedroom is my favorite - the Panasonic CW-C60YU. It has two fan settings and three air conditioning settings. I don't think we've ever had to turn it above low for the duration of the night; maybe medium for a little while before bed just to quick-cool things down. It easily chills a 12x11 room without effort, and I'd be very surprised if it couldn't handle a much larger room.
Better yet, just flip up the front grate and you can easily remove the filter pad for cleaning, and put it back just as easily. No other air conditioner filter in this apartment is so easy to clean. It's also much quieter than the other air conditioners - most of the cooling power of ACF, but you can actually have a conversation nearby!
I only have two minor problems with it. The first is that it's a heavy air conditioner; the only one we have that's heavier is ACF. The other two are noticeably lighter. This makes it a little difficult to install at first. We found we needed two guys to get it in safely, so you might not want to do it by yourself.
The other problem is that water does condense and collect in its innards. You can remove the plug on the bottom to allow most of it to drain, but note that I said most. You'll still want to tip it a bit before removing it from the window, and you'll want to put it down on a towel when you first take it out.
Ultimately, though, this is a very effective air conditioner, and the high energy efficiency rating means that it doesn't hog the electricity like ACF. So if you need a little refuge from the heat this summer, try the Panasonic CW-C60YU. Us, we're moving up north, to the hills and forests. But yes, we're bringing our air conditioners with us, just in case that isn't enough!
5800 BTU
EER 11.0
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 340
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Epinions.com ID:
owling
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Member: Heather Grove
Location: Maryland, USA
Reviews written: 689
Trusted by: 264 members
About Me:
Too many boxes to unpack, too few shelves...
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