Customer Ratings & Reviews

Not really portable and poorly designed for vertical sliding windows. -1 star for fairly quiet operation and 1 star for (alleged) energy efficiency. I think if you have a horizontal sliding window that is dedicated to this AC and the unit can sit right in front of said window, then this may be a good choice for you. -The window kit is designed for semi-permanent installation with adhesive foam seals. (This could be nice if the foam seals were actually sized correctly. They were considerably shorter than the window sliders, and too thin to be effective.) I had to use styrofoam packing and duct tape for a temporary seal. Regardless, you can’t move the “portable” AC from room to room with this kit. It’s really no more portable than a conventional window AC, except it has wheels. -Manufacturing flaw with window slider “A” which holds the hose. It seems that the vertical window adapter was an after thought and therefore the slider is cut manually to fit this adapter. -Vertical adapter has a piece that juts out and cannot be installed without removing your window screen. -Bugs can enter through the exhaust hose and the many gaps from this poor design. -The hose is too stiff and the unit must be parallel to the window or the adapter pops out of the slider. -oh, and have fun with those instructions! After all that hassle, it’s not any faster or colder than my 10+ old real portable AC, yet much larger footprint and way less convenient. What a disappointment. I’m hoping to exchange for a AC more suitable for temporary vertical window installation.

Unbeknownst to me, this ARC-1230WNH model AC unit was shipped to me from the Best Buy Return Center. After installing and powering the unit up on the day following its receipt, I discovered the unit was faulty via an error code that could not be cleared by resetting the air conditioner. Initially, as the error code flashed on the LCD however, the unit pumped ice cold air and cooled my 198SF den (8' ceiling) from 86° to 75° in less than an hour. It worked great for about 4 hours, but ultimately had to be returned to Best Buy. I was initially very impressed with this particular Whynter Air Conditioner based on the overall reviews it received. But after a night in with this bad boy, I immediately ordered another one despite the issue and inconvenience with the first one. I absolutely recommend this air conditioner with the caveat that it incorporates an abundance of pioneering technology. And as a result, may be more likely to have an issue with one of its systems or components. That's just the nature of technology.

Don’t look anywhere else this AC will cool your room in matter of seconds

This unit is awesome. So much better than the lower model. My apartment stays very comfortable and cool. Excellent choice.

I installed it through a sliding door. Fairly easy installation. It is quieter than expected.

Ordered a new one, got a 'open-box' pre-owned one, the box was so mis-shapen, damaged and wrapped up so badly. (see photos). Even the 'previous owner's UPS label was still on there). I returned it and the customer service staff could not believe BB would ship this out like that. Also appears BB had not posted my previous review on this three days ago. second time I've had to review. Next time I'll ship to the store and pick it up if not damaged.

Received this last week at the start of a local record string of high temperature days, so after getting it installed and waiting the recommended 4 hours sitting upright before turning it on for the first time the indoor temperature was already over 90F. Nonetheless, the unit cooled my space, which is almost the 600 sq ft recommended maximum for this device, down to a tolerable temperature within an hour or two. It continued running pretty much full time for the next week, when the early heat wave finally broke, without problems. While only time will tell about it's longer run durability, I am impressed with the unit so far. Having only used window a/c's thus far and having no available floor drains to drain this portable unit, I was unsure of the best way to go about this when and if it became necessary. I emailed Whynter's customer support to inquire about the the capacity of the internal drain pan so as to know what size container would be needed to capture the drained water as this is mentioned nowhere I found in the manual. They responded the next day that the internal reservoir was 2 pints. After noticing that the lower drain plug is almost in contact with the floor, though, I saw no practical way to fit any such container below it. But if and when draining it becomes necessary (it made it through the whole week of the heat wave, running in cooling mode by day and dehumidifier mode, still vented outdoors, by night, without needing drained) I figure I can just disconnect the venting hose from the window kit and wheel it to my front door then just drain the water out onto the exterior steps. From my experience thus far I would make two main recommendations for improvement. First, I think the window kit could be made more flexible regarding the different sizes of window openings it supports without having to be cut. For example, since the width of my hung window was about 2 1/4" less than the length of the "window slider A" piece (the one with the opening to which the vent hose connects), I had to cut that much off the end of slider A so as to fit it in my window. Not a big deal and I had known this would be the case from my advance research, but it doesn't seem like it would be a big issue to perhaps instead make the slider pieces a bit smaller and have 4 rather than 3 of them. Some guidance in the manual as to the best way to cut this material would also have helped; since the pieces seemed to be made of some sort of plastic, I used my jigsaw with a 14 tpi blade to cut the end off piece A and to recreate the notches at the end which were necessary for the piece to tuck fully into the channels in my window. This worked OK, even for me as not much of a carpenter, but it seems like a fairly simple design change would have made it unnecessary. It also seemed less than ideal that both of the other window slider pieces (without the vent hose opening) were almost the same length as the piece with the opening, which means that one of them would also need to be cut in order for the kit to fit a window opening that was wider than the slider A piece length but by less than the length of the vent hose opening. Finally, it seemed odd that the vent opening in slider piece A was not centered vertically within the window slider A piece but instead much closer to one side than the other. This would have made it impossible to connect the vent hose to the opening if I put slider A into the window with the side closer to the opening at the bottom as it would have been blocked by a small lip at the bottom of my window frame. The second recommendation I would make thus far would be to make it possible to use the smartphone app to connect the a/c to my LAN and control it via that LAN _without_ requiring me to allow either to app or the a/c to access the full Internet. While I am probably both more networking savvy and privacy and security conscious than most consumers, I frankly see no reason why anyone should be required to supply their email address and grant any home appliance uncontrolled access to the full Internet when all they might want to do is use their smartphone through their local area network rather than hunt down the supplied remote. There is already a sticker on the side of the unit with the MAC address of the a/c's network adapter, so one can easily give it a fixed LAN IP address in their router and limit the a/c to the local network only, but the app used by Whynter instead forces everyone to first create an account on some anonymous server to even connect their a/c to their router. As soon as I found that the app would not even allow me to begin without creating an account and allowing both it and my a/c to connect to untrusted external servers, I immediately uninstalled it and will just have to stick with the remote control until and unless this is someday made more privacy and security respectful. As such, I see the connectivity of this a/c to be more of a disadvantage than an advantage, as it forced me to pay for extra hardware over which it does not permit me full control. I suppose that is the average in today's world, but some more enlightened developers do still provide workarounds for those of us who have the skills and privacy/security concerns to configure such limited access ourselves. So, I recommend the air conditioning functions thus far, but would not recommend anyone who cares about their privacy and network security to use the app or connect this device to their router.

Saved us during a ridiculous heatwave! Was able to cool our room to 77 degrees during a week of 110-15 degrees. Overall it's a quiet unit with the inverter and the remote works well. The only quirk would be the discharge hose and putting the adapter together for a vertical sliding window. I wish the hose had more flexibility for room placement. I would recommend it for anyone needing to remain cool!

My wife and I are in an upstairs apartment for now until we find our forever place. This apartment is always Very hot and humid , even on mild day's. The Whynter ARC-1230-WN is an absolute surprise and shock to be quite honest. Have had experience with portables in the past, they weren't the best! But this unit is a performer!! It puts out cold air as well as our old 18,000 BTU window A.C. did, we have had day's in the upper 80s and 90s already and this has been keeping this 850 SQ.FT. apartment nice and cool and comfortable all day and night. It is Very Quiet, The inverter technology controls the compressor rpm's and keeps everything running at it's most energy efficient at any given time. We would absolutely buy this again. Well worth the money, Was Also rated one of the top Three "Consumer Reports' best overall performers in Portable A.C. unit's for 2024!!

So far so good! I got this for the AC which runs well and is nice and cold. The motor/fan sound is not irritating like others I’ve had, and the dual hose makes it noticeably more efficient in cooling the house than the last one I had that did not have this feature. This will be really useful for the coming summer.

We had a ~5 year old Honeywell unit we had been using in an upstairs finished attic space that did mediocre at best during the brutal Midwest heat and humidity. It just seemed like the unit wasn't doing as good of a job as it had in the past which wasn't really that good in the first place. It was still blowing nice cold air but it just couldn't handle the space we were using it for. This Whynter unit is quieter and seems to move more cold air into the living space than the other one (promising) and has some more modern and helpful features like controlling the unit remotely using an app. We are just using the unit for cooling so far and it seemed to work well. To be fair I waited till late evening when things started to cool down before I took out the older Honeywell unit and installed the Whynter unit. So perhaps I can update this after things warm up the next day and the heat and humidity ramps back up again. I know some mentioned how awful the install was but it seemed pretty straightforward to me and aside from a bigger exhaust port for the dual hose assembly and larger window adapter panel everything looked really familiar and made sense. I will probably go back and add some weather stripping around the dual hose where it snaps into the adapter panel to mount into the window just to provide a little more sealing from the outside air. At least so far though it seems like this unit it overall performing better than our old one! I will add an update after things heat up today and see how it does! Overall so far though a great product and seems to be exactly what we needed!

Received unit in July, delivered to our door. Doing the install was a bit of a challenge, a the hose in/out panels were only designed for "standard" windows. I had only a sliding glass door. Some improvisation required, but it is done. Works very well to cool bedroom 12 x 15. Hose-in-hose design is ingenious. Hose attachment is awkward, but works.

*Keep in mind this review is being left with it only being used a week* The A/C blows super cold and is fairly quiet. The only reason I gave it 4 stars is because there a several inconveniences in how it was designed. But even with some design flaws, to me all that matters is it blows cold and runs good which it does so far!!

This portable AC unit exceeded my expectations. Setup was quick and straightforward, and it started cooling the room within minutes. It runs very quietly, which is perfect for sleeping, and it keeps my bedroom consistently cold even on hot days. Highly recommended for anyone looking for an efficient and hassle-free cooling solution.

Bought for my 800 sqft appointment, works perfectly. App is super easy to setup. Only downside would be how large the house is and the inability to move it easily while venting.

The best AC for LA weather! I replaced my 6 year old model with this one. It is such a difference not only in cooling but the electricity bill. The best part of this AC is the ability to connect to my Alexa enabled devices. This AC has become a great addition to my smart home appliances!

It works as advertised. I like the smart features. I linked the downloaded phone app with google speakers so that I can control it with my voice. If I am away, I can still control it with my cell phone. The unit is reasonably quiet. I like how the auto mode works which saves energy. The instructions for the dual hose connection could be better written. There are two separate attachments to connect to the window slider part A. The one to use depends on if the window is a double hung window or a slider. Separating the information for the two types of windows instead of presenting it together would make it easier initially to understand what to do.

This model works well and much more energy efficient than my 6 year old whynter model. Keep my living room and kitchen at a comfortable temperature. We've only hit 85 degrees outside so interested to see how this works at 90+. Quiet machine and don't really notice when it's at its highest speed. Pretty pricey but I'd say it's well worth it!

The two-in one hose is really excellent--takes up much less space in the window and when being stored. Small profile unit as well. The room cooled within two minutes of the unit being turned on. Really good quality machine.

A bit complicated to set up but has very strong cooling and is somewhat quiet compared to similar units.