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(More customer reviews)The Soleus LX-140 is actually the third portable AC we had in the household. The fist, a discontinued Hampton Bay model worked well and is still operating in a second bedroom. The next, the Sunpentown WA-1010e, was terrible, could only cool the room by about 4 degrees, and broke after a year.
On to the Soleus. The most important thing in a portable AC is obviously cooling ability, and the Soleus lives up to its claims of being one of the more powerful units available. At 14,000 BTU, it has proven capable of getting my 150 sq ft bedroom down to 70 degrees on hot nights, and on sweltering summer days when it's in the upper 90's, it can drop the temp around 15 - 20 degrees if we completely shut out any sunlight and leave the unit runnign on high. This may not seem like a huge drop, but it's about the best one can expect from a portable unit. It is also capable of cooling our larger 300 sq ft master suite, although it maxes out at about a 15 degree drop when it's hot and sunny. Unlike most of the other portable ACs we have looked at and used, this one does produce a steady stream of pretty cold air, and while it is massively huger and more expensive than window units, it rivals them in cooling capacity.
Features - The unit has three fan speeds on all the settings and includes a dehumidifier and heater mode in addition to AC and fan. There is temperature control on the main unit that allows you to select anywhere between 61 and 95 degrees, which is a nice feature since some portable ACs just run and run until you are freezing in the middle of the night. If you set the Soleus to 71 degrees, it will run in AC mode until the room cools down, then it will switch to fan mode until the room warms up again. This is a nice feature that not all portable ACs have. There is a timer setting that can be accessed from the main unit, and allows you to run the unit for a specified number of hours. See the remote control section below for info on the 'time of day' timer. It's not the quietest unit in the world, but most of the noise is a result of the air being pushed through the unit rather than the annoying refrigerator noise you get from some. Light sleepers might not like it, but it drowns out the noisy neighbors with its rather non-offensive white noise. It could also stand to have better circulation features. There is a 'swing' mode on the remote that makes the vent rotate in an up and down direction, but it does not move side to side and the up-down differential is not all that huge.
Exhaust and drainage - The unit comes with two 6 ft plastic hoses that need to be stuck out a window so that it can exhaust the hot air. The dual hose method is supposed to make the unit work a lot better, and between the dual hoses and the high power of the unit it seems to perform superior to any other unit we have looked at. The hoses are a bit wide and cumbersome and could stand to be insulated, but they do the job. While the manufacturer claims the unit does not usually need to be drained, I find their statistics a little optimistic. While I don't need to drain it when I am using it at night to drop the temp from 80 to 70, on really hot and humid days the water reservoir will fill up and need to be emptied every 2 days. Unfortunately, a big design flaw is that there is no automatic shut off on the unit. While the 'drain unit' light will come on in plenty of time, if you ignore it for more than a couple hours the water will start to seep out the bottom of the unit and it will just keep running. I did this once overnight and woke up to find about a gallon of watter puddling on the hard wood floor with all the electrical cords lying in it - not the safest of situations. A second design flaw is that the drain is on the very bottom rear of the unit. If you place it on the floor, only a very very shallow pan can catch the water. There is a rubber hose that comes with the unit that can be used to drain the water either out a window or into a bucket, although either option feels a little poor white trash to me.
Power - At 1500 watts, the unit is a bit of a power hog. All AC units are, and when it's 110 degrees outside the electricity expense is well worth it. However, it should be noted that many circuit breakers and fuse boxes can be overloaded when you throw this unit on with a bunch of other stuff. We had to find a plug on a breaker that was separate from our other main electronics, because running this unit, a tv, stereo and computer all on one breaker was not going to work.
Portability - The unit is moderately heavy, although it does have wheels to make portability a little easier. The photos in the ads hide that it is a little deeper than you might think, and it's foot print is a rather large 20 x 20 inches. There are two exhaust hoses that reach about 6 ft in length, so it needs to be right under or right next to a window. We purchased a small table at Ikea for it to sit on so that the hoses extend straight into the window, which helps cooling capacity greatly since the primary exhaust hose is where all the heat from the room goes, and it can get rather warm. Extanding it to its full 6 feet greatly reduces the colling capacity of the unit, since that's like having a long tubular heater in the room. Better insulated exhaust hoses should be at the top of every portable AC designers list, but none of them seem to have them.
The remote that comes with the unit is so-so. It allows you to access most of the functions, although you need to point it straight at the unit or it will not pick up the signal. Even when the unit does communicate with the remote, it doesn't function 100% properly. For example, if I press 'mode' to switch from AC to fan, the unit will beep to tell me it received the signal. However, it may switch from AC to fan like I asked, or it may stay on AC, or it may switch to heater. Unfortunately you can't tell without looking at the top of the unit. There is also a timer setting on the remote that supposedly lets you program what time of day you want the unit to switch on, probably so you can come home to a cool room after work. This does not work all that well, since you have to remember to point the remote at the unit before leaving and hope it actually turns the unit on when it's supposed to. There is no clock or time of day setting on the main unit at all, so for this feature you have to depend on the remote 100%. The remote is not backlit, so it is hard to see at night.
Overall, the unit gets an A for cooling, a B+ for features, and a C- for remote control. Since my primary objective was to cool a room and getting around the difficulties with the remote is relatively simple, I would indeed recommend this to anyone looking to cool a 200 - 400 sq ft room.
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Soleus Air LX-140, 14,000 BTU Evaporative Portable Air Conditioner, 12,000 BTU Heater, Dehumidifier and Fan
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