The Only A/C That Doesn't Make Me Sweat When I Install It
Written: Jun 16 '01 (Updated Jun 26 '01)
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Pros: There's a remote control . . .
Cons: . . . that serves as yet another perfectly useless piece of clutter.
The Bottom Line: It keeps Mrs. Sloucho cool and doesn't strain my back when I lift it.
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| Sloucho's Full Review: Sharp AF-R509X Thru-Wall/Window Air Conditioner |
I own four air conditioning units, and the Sharp AF-R509X is easily my favorite. I like it because it's so light that Mrs. Sloucho and I have never once bickered while installing it--not in the three summers that we've owned it. We always bicker as we install the other three air conditioners. And since we invariably wait until the Philadelphia heat becomes unbearable before installing our air conditioners, I generally feel as if I sweat more during the installation of a single heavy unit than I would during the course of an entire summer.
As I hauled the R509X up from the basement to our second-floor office yesterday, I decided that I would sing its praises in a review:
Of BTUs I sing, and the unit
That wafts me with coolness from my window.
That is the song I would like to sing, but apart from its lightness, there's not an awful lot to get teribly excited about regarding the R509X. Still, let's try to dwell on the positives, shall we?
Durability
Certainly it's durable. Mrs. Sloucho and I bought it two days after moving into our 19th-century house in June of 1999. It kicked off its third summer of use yesterday and has never coughed or sputtered or even hiccupped. Considering that its surface is mainly plastic, it has held up astonishingly well to bruising semiannual trips up and down two flights of stairs and the extreme fluctuations in temperature of a poorly insulated (and somewhat leaky) basement.
Efficacy
During the summer of 1999, we installed the unit in our bedroom (10' X 14') because my parents stayed in our bedroom when they came to visit--and we didn't want them to know that the rest of our house was uninhabitably muggy. It kept the bedroom so cool that we decided to try it in our office (14' X 14'). Between the increase in the amount of air that it has to cool and the fact that it now runs during the day (instead of mainly at night), it's no surprise that it never quite manages to cool my section of the office. But Mrs. Sloucho, whose desk is right beside the window in which it is installed, is quite comfortable.
Sound
The dull rustling noise that the unit makes when running has been categorized by another reviewer as loud, which seems misleading to me. While it is the kind of noise that drowns out the sound of crickets and speechifying squirrels and passing vehicles and all the other noises that creep in when your windows are only partially blocked by large pieces of machinery, it is not the kind of noise that is likely to interfere with sleeping or listening to music or watching movies. When I was in graduate school, I owned an air conditioner that shook my apartment and sometimes roused me from a sound sleep with its very clever impersonation of a train wreck. I know what loud is; I've worked with loud; and the R509X, gentle reader, is not loud.
The Programmable Thermostat with Timer
We are only allowed so many pleasures in this life, and God has arranged things at our house so that we cannot enjoy air conditioning for the two and a half minutes that it takes to prepare popcorn in the microwave. Our power goes out if we try to run the microwave and any two air conditioners at once. The fact that our microwave and three of our air conditioners are made by Sharp has led us to conclude, with a scientific precision that you simply won't be able to find elsewhere, that Sharp products guzzle power. There may be data to the contrary, data suggesting that poorly wired houses built in the 1890s have problems with all kinds of appliances, but I say 'Hah!' to your data.
Although I'm sure that the main reason people like to have timers on their air conditioners is so that their homes will be cool when they return from work, I've always been sort of scared of allowing my appliances to dictate a schedule to me. I'm the sort of idiot who couldn't just ignore the A/C and decide to stop for a drink after work. Nope, I would have to race home to turn off the A/C first. And once I got home, I would want to put on my slippers. You know how it is.
But it's nice to have timers on your air conditioners when you have a problem with frequent power outages around your house (unless you live in California, in which case I can only say, "Tough luck, buddy"). And even though our R509X has never actually managed to cool our office down to the point that it could shut itself off, it used to do so frequently in our bedroom. We usually set the A/C to 64 degrees, and when the room reaches that temperature, the machine shuts itself off. I'm not environmentally conscientious enough to do without A/C, but there's a little green man in me who appreciates that feature.
Not surprisingly, the machine has its shortcomings, which range from useless to irritating. I'll start with its most pointless feature:
The Remote
I have no idea why Sharp doesn't make a cheaper version of this air conditioner without a remote. I don't know how much more it costs to include a remote control with an air conditioner, but even if it's a paltry five dollars, I would rather have my five dollars back than yet another useless piece of garbage floating around my office. Maybe there are people out there who surf temperatures the same way others surf television channels, but I can't imagine that they're numerous enough to warrant whatever R&D budget Sharp allocated for this superfluous feature.
The Louvers
As is pointed out by another review, the louvers are more decorative than functional. You don't really have much control over which way the R509X will spit air at you apart from choosing which window to install it into.
The Screwholes
Part of what makes the R509X so light (and therefore good) is that wherever possible, metal components have been replaced with plastic or fiberglass or some opaque substance that is probably carcinogenic and non-biodegradable, but that I couldn't possibly know the name of without a degree in chemical engineering. I'm not particularly concerned about the biodegradability of things I put in my window; in fact, I rather like to see my air conditioner standing up to the rain and not sprouting alfalfa. But I wish that the screwholes for attaching the machine to the window had been re-enforced with some kind of metal, as it is easy to crack them when you accidentally overtighten the screws.
It keeps Mrs. Sloucho cool and doesn't strain my back when I lift it. What more could I possibly want?
Well, five bucks for my remote control. Any takers?
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My review of the much larger (8500 BTU) AF-R908X can be found here:
http://www.epinions.com/content_28804025988/tk_~HP004.1.12
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 270
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Epinions.com ID:
Sloucho
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Member: Mike Davis
Location: Philadelphia
Reviews written: 199
Trusted by: 248 members
About Me:
Read my reviews in order to heal the sick and control the weather. Seriously.
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