Frigidaire Mini Window Unit Air Conditioner
I rather tough it out with the heat, but since I use the computer most of the time I do need to keep the room cool to protect it from over heating and damaging the hardware. We cannot afford to install central a/c so we opt for the window units. Unfortunately our windows are too narrow for the majority of the window units except this Frigidaire mini one. It's also one of the cheapest.
The unit is about 15.5" wide so it fits our 23" windows. It has two controls on the left side. The top one sets the temperature with 7 cool settings. The bottom is the fan and cooling controls: low fan, high fan, low cool, high cool or off. There's a scroll wheel type control on the top that controls the airflow direction.
The noise is about the same as a vacuum to me. It's pretty noisy but it will get quieter when it goes into fan mode. The unit is automatically programmed to switch between cooling and fanning to keep the room to the temperature you set it to.Unless you set it to max cool then the a/c just keeps cooling till you turn it off or turn the temp down. I'm not a huge fan of it since the noisy level differs a bit, but its not anything one can't deal with.
It cooled my room fairly well and my room is small so it didn't take long. Installing is rather simple, but window units are heavy and bulky so having another person makes it easier. It comes with a strip of foam to stick between the window, but I usually don't use it so its thrown away.
Since the window I put it in is under a lot of greenery, I taped a piece of cheesecloth or netting over the grates of the unit. I did manage to cut myself on the back metal grating while I try to tape the net. Its like a paper cut so be careful. The net helps keep the inside clean of debris and bugs. The bad thing about this unit is that bugs can get in easily. The side wings do not fit snugly on my window so I have to tape the edges to keep bugs from getting in. Also the fan part of the wings aren't flush against the edges so I have to tape up the entire wing to keep bugs that manages to crawl through from getting into the house. Using all this tape is dumb, but I don't know any other way. There were some fat bugs that somehow got in so I rather tape everything and so far it has worked. Its a bit nasty to see bugs come in and get stuck on the tape, but its better than having them in my house. The bugs may not be much of a problem if you don't stay up late at night often. I stay up pretty late so the light of my room definitely attracts the bugs or at least that is what I assume. You can see the tape and maybe a bug if you look close in the photo I put in this post.
I've had this unit for two summers now and its still works well. So if you have small windows this one isn't too bad. I don't see any this small to fit in my windows so its hard to really compare it to anything. If anyone knows one that is better please let me know.
I've had this unit for two summers now and its still works well. So if you have small windows this one isn't too bad. I don't see any this small to fit in my windows so its hard to really compare it to anything. If anyone knows one that is better please let me know.
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