Review of Arctic King 5000 BTU Window Air Conditioner

I manage to avoid using an air conditioner until this past weekend, when the temps were in the 90s, it was extremely humid and very uncomfortable. However, after digging our portable air conditioner out of the shed and getting it going, we discovered it developed a leak over the winter.

While this is something we can probably fix, my wife and I weren't in the mood to mess with it right now and, because we also didn't want water all over our living room floor, I decided to just purchase a cheap window AC unit instead and picked up this air conditioner at Wal-mart yesterday morning.

My primary reason for purchasing this air conditioner was the $116 price tag, which was about $30 less than the next most affordable choice. Since we are on a bit of a tight budget during the summer, I was trying to spend as little as possible and, because of that, there really weren't any other serious factors that weighed into that decision.

I did have two big concerns about this air conditioner when I purchased it. The first of these was installation. We just purchased new windows last year and I wasn't interested in an air conditioner that would require me to put long screws into those windows in order to be firmly mounted in place. Plus, if installation was unusually complicated, it would defeat the purpose of buying something like this instead of just fixing the portable air conditioner we already own.

This, as it turns out, proved not to be a problem. The air conditioner had some minor assembly required but that took about 10 minutes at most. And, when we put this in our window, we found it fit perfectly. It was securely in place without the need for screws, boards or many of the other items we needed the last time we used a window air conditioning unit. We had this in our window, plugged in and running in less than 20 minutes.

My other concern when I purchased this air conditioner was the fact it was only 5000 BTUs. While that would be more than enough for a bedroom, I wasn't sure if it would be enough to cool our much-larger living room/kitchen space in the front of the house. However, this also proved not to be a major issue. While the space I am referring to is fairly large, this window unit did a decent job keeping it comfortable. The temps outside were in the 90s. This air conditioner kept the living room and kitchen at about 70 degrees despite us never turning it above the "low" setting. While I'm sure there are people who would prefer it cooler than that, it was more than comfortable enough for us.

One thing that surprised me about this window unit was how quiet it was. I won't say it was whisper silent. But, considering what I paid for it, I was really expecting it to be louder than it proved to be. In fact, it was considerably quieter than the portable air conditioner it was replacing. This was definitely something I appreciated considering our house is usually a bit on the loud side to start.

Final Opinion: It's a cheap air conditioner and, because of that, I'm not expecting it to be a long-term solution for our house. However, it does a decent job of cooling and is easy to install (and remove) so, even if I only get a couple years out of it, I do think it was worth the money.

My Grade: A