NewAir AF330 Portable Evaporative Swamp Air Cooler with BuiltIn HEPA Air Purifier
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Our Price: $129.95 Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $96.00 (click here) Category: Home See more product details |
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Tools and Hardware Reviews of NewAir AF330 Portable Evaporative Swamp Air Cooler with BuiltIn HEPA Air Purifier
Customer Review: Don't waste your money
Summary: 1 Stars
I live in the southwest, and supposedly this thing works best a hot, dry climate. It topped 102 here today, humidity around 20 percent, but this machine did nothing to cool my room. NOTHING. I'm taking it back on Monday. Total waste of time. I'm sad and sweaty.Customer Review: Excellent for it's size
Summary: 5 Stars
This little unit is excellent for it's size! Living in an area where the temps get as high as 114* not many units would help, but this one made all the difference! If you are looking for a unit to help cool a room that doesn't get enough air or you need to cool a 12X12 room this is the perfect unit.Customer Review: Good Cooler, Couple of Issues
Summary: 4 Stars
The AF-330 NewAir Evaporative Swamp Cooler with Special HEPA Air Purifier is a pretty good swamp cooler with just a couple of flaws. As with all swamp coolers, it isn't going to make your room feel air conditioned, but in dry climates, it is good to sleep with it blowing over you, or it is good to get raise the humidity levels somewhat. Now for the good stuff first about this unit.
For starters, the 13-liter water tank means that you won't have to fill it as often. Most portable swamp coolers I've owned only had a 10-liter tank which means they don't last more than 8-hours on "cool." There's also an ice tray to add ice for additional cooling effect.
Next on the plus list are the air filter system. In addition to the standard foam filter, it comes with a HEPA filter and a carbon filter. Combined with the ION setting, this really seemed to make an improvement in air quallity. After a month of use, I haven't noticed the normal "swamp stench" that swamp coolers usually get. I don't know if those filters are the reason or not, but there you go.
The fan is much more powerful than any previous portable swamp cooler I've owned. Even at the low setting, the fan works pretty good when sleeping in front of it.
The controls are pretty standard. You get the 1-8 hour timer, oscillating louver control, 3 fan speeds, "cool" function (to activate the swamp cooler function), and ION control. The unit comes with a handy remote control which handles all features, which is great for controling the unit while in bed. ^_^
There were two negatives. The biggest is adding water to the tank. The portable swamp coolers I've owned before have had a convienent port on the side of the unit were one can add a gallon of water to the tank in a few seconds. This unit has no such port. Instead, water has to be added to the top of the unit where a small section is partitioned off from the ice tray to add water. As such, it only holds a small amount of water and the drain into the tank isn't very large. So it can take a couple of minutes to empty a gallon of water into the tank. That's pretty tedious, especially when you are tired and just want to go to sleep.
The other problem I had was with the documentation. As you note, the product description proudly mentions the carbon filter. The box the unit comes in proudly mentions this. And a carbon filter comes sealed with the unit. Initially, I thought that maybe this was some sort of water filter since I've used carbon filters for fish tanks and for water pitchers. However, there is NOTHING in the documentation that says anything about the carbon filter. The regular foam air filter and the HEPA filter are mentioned, but that's it. Since it didn't seem to obviously go into the water tank (that is a bit of a pain to get to) and it did fit the back panel where the air filters are, I put it back there. But does it go before or after the HEPA filter? Some documentation would have been nice.
The final negative about the unit is purchasing replacement filters. I found none on Amazon's site. Air & Water, the company from which the unit actually came, has a website, and while ordering the unit directly from them gives you the option to purchase additional filters, their website has no place to just purchase replacement filters. That's pretty stupid if you ask me.
Bottom line: There are many good things about this swamp cooler to include the HEPA filter, carbon filter, larger water tank, ION feature, and greater fan power. The lack of a good water input port, no information about the carbon filter, and a lack of ease to aquire replacement filters weren't enough to stop me from giving this an overall "buy" recommendation.
Customer Review: Good for small spaces
Summary: 4 Stars
Great Cooler for small spaces. Don't expect it be an Air conditioner.
Works well enough to cool the space but not really make it cold.
Customer Review: Good product but not for me.
Summary: 3 Stars
It does what its supposed to do. Humidity levels does rise and there's a cool breeze when you put some ice cubes in the storage box but that's about it. Well, the remote is nice too. Its definitely not an A/C. If you are thinking about getting this unit versus a portable A/C, then you probably need the latter. I returned the product within a few days and Air & Water were very prompt in issuing me a full refund. Kudos to their customer service. If you think you need an Evaporative Cooler, this is a pretty good unit. Just make sure its suitable for your surroundings. It just doesn't work where temperatures and humidity levels are already high.