When we bought our 1950's brick house we really weren't thinking ... we saw it in April, when the Virginia spring was upon us and all was cool and pretty. Fast forward to 3 summers in this house, and we are dieing. The main part of the house stays reasonably cool thanks to all the trees, shade and brick - but the 2 upstairs bedrooms are insane. All of the heat rises, and even with ceiling fans, parts of the summer it was impossible to sleep.

We needed a window unit air conditioner.

So we headed where we always head when we need home stuff -our local Sears. There we found a deal on a Kenmore 73055 Air Conditioner for around $150. Looking at the different models in the store, this particular one has a lot of what we wanted - enough strength to cool a room, small hallway and into another bedroom and quickly; quiet enough to sleep; easy to install and maintain; and with a remote (yes, we've gotten so lazy these days).

Taking the Kenmore 73055 Air Conditioner home and installing was easy enough - I was able to help hold the unit while my husband put in our bedroom window, add some screws and the 2 side panels slide right in slots on either side, and we were done! Cool air cometh!

Sears markets this unit by stating:

""Chill your living space quickly and easily with this remote controlled unit. 3 electronic fan speeds, 4-way air direction control, and easy-access tilt-out filter."

There are a lot of features to this air conditioner (I suggest you click the Details link found here above the review itself, it's all detailed and that way I am not simply repeating all of the information you might need). I'd like to touch on some of our favorites.

The keypad is all electronic - no old dial for us. There are a lot of buttons and it can take some playing around with to figure out all of the features (I suggest sitting down with the manual after you first install - I know we've held onto our manual as we still refer to it from time to time). Main features include a digital temperature control (and it displays the current temperature), fan and air settings, levels of cooling (low, high, etc). The temperature can be adjusted digitally in one degree increments - so yes, you can get to know the difference between a 60 degree room and a 62 degree room. The lowest it can go is 60 degrees. There is a Power Saver feature that allows the unit to cut on and off, a fan feature for when you don't want to use the AC, and an Auto feature that allows the unit to work on its own to keep the room at a given temperature. There is also a timer function and a sleep function.

The Kenmore 73055 Air Conditioner comes with a remote - and the remote has less keys and so may be easier to use and navigate. IT is designed in a nice, easy to follow order, and the keys are uniquely different from each other. Some of the additional features include setting the unit to switch to fan when it's reached desired temperature, a "quick shot" of cool where the unit will turn from fan to AC every few minutes to give blasts of cooler air. I usually use the remote 99% of the time - it is easy to click from my bed and has all of the features that I need.

The air comes out the top portion of the unit and has very nice fans with guides to turn them any direction. We point ours toward the middle of the room and out toward the bedroom doorway (the unit is in the window closest to the door). It's cooling capacity is 5,600 BTUs/hr. and we have found it to work plenty well for us. It also carries an energy effiecent rating of 11.0 EER and is Energy Star compliant. We have not noticed a huge or noticeable jump in our summer bills from using this - we use this unit mainly only at night, and then not every night. The yellow sign with this unit states that the change in your electric bill should only be about $33 a month.

We have noticed that it cools our room very well, and will get to the hallway and into our son's room. This works mainly when we turn the unit on a few hours before bed - which gives it time to cool these 3 areas. Our room is always noticeably cooler, with our son's room being comfortable. This was important to us - our son is 4 and has Asthma, we did not prefer to have a unit blowing right on him or in his room. With the cooled room and his ceiling fan he is plenty comfortable.

It is not the most quiet window unit air conditioner I have heard - but for $150 I am not complaining. We could have went with more expensive models but didn't. I cannot alternate between the AC part and the fan part - that change in noise always seems to wake me up. So we generally leave it on AC. It can surge louder and quieter and we do have to turn up our TV a little when using it, but for the comfort it's really not a problem. I can fall asleep to it, though usually we turn this unit off before going to sleep, and the cool air circulated (with the addition of our ceiling fans) generally keeps us comfortable most nights.

I do highly recommend the Kenmore 73055 Air Conditioner - when looking for a unit this year for our guest room we had no hesitation in thinking to look for this model again. We purchased this early last summer and so far are using it again this summer. It works well, we now know the ins and out of it, and it's a name and unit we can trust.





Recommended: Yes

Amount Paid (US$): 150.00