Amcor AMC10000

The Amcor AMC10000 is a good priced air conditioner, at 10,000 BTU it cools my livingroom/dinner to a comfortable level within about 30 minutes, and so long as you have the curtains closed where the sun is coming through it will make the room feel very cool within 1 hour.

I had purchased a cheaper A/C from Argos which was there own brand and it was useless even if it was 9,000 BTU, with anything you buy you get what you pay for and the Amcor unit I purchased does a great job for the money.

The amount of moisture it removes from the air is quite amazing, in two hours you can empty easily 1 litre of water from the drainage tap round the rear of the unit, plus you also get a water collector tray for easy collection, plus foam strips so if you exhaust the hot air like myself, where the window is open there's a hole in the foam for the exhaust pipe to go through, then you just adjust the window so the foam fits snugly, therefore stopping hot air breaching the opening.

My room is 20ft long by 13ft wide and 7.1/2ft high so it's well within the limits of this unit.

Like all portable air conditioners there never going to give you the chill like going into a high street shop in the middle of summer where you physically get goose bumps, there not supposed to work like that, but they will make the room very comfortable and cool compared to the heat outside.

You will find after being in a room for about 30 minutes you get used to how cool it is so therefore its just comfortable temperature, this is because you body has got used to the temperature of the room concerned, however once you go outside will you realise just how cool it is, as on a hot day the outside heat will hit you in the face, and once you have been out there for a few minutes and come back inside only then will you realise just what a great job the AMC 10,000 does to the climate of your house.

Well worth every penny!

I bought the Amcor AMC 10000 portable Air Conditioner from my local Comet. My flat has very large windows and consequently gets very hot during the summer, so I decided to buy an air conditioner.

The model I picked was mid priced when I bought it (£270) although now it is the entry level model in the Comet online store.

The unit vents externally so has a large plastic pipe that comes out the back similar to a tumble dryer. Luckily I have an existing vent in my wall for this purpose - although I had to buy an adapter as the hole is c.90mm and the pipe from the unit is 100mm.

I carried the unit home - something I won't do again. It weighs 36 Kilos and my arms nearly fell off after only a hundred yards or so. It has castors on the bottom so you can wheel it around once it's out of the box, but be wary of trying to carry it up any stairs.

My main problem with it is the noise it produces. The Comet website description of the item reads "Ultra quiet operation, offers little disturbance". This is blatantly untrue; the unit produces a lot of noise from the internal fan. The unit isn't faulty - the noise is not mechanical, it's simply the sound of the air rushing out of the unit. Imagine a very large fan running at a very high speed and you get the idea. When the system is running at high fan speed with the compressor on then you can forget about watching the television etc., unless you turn up the volume to full. I think the manufacturers/retailers should quote dB figures for the noise a unit produces to aid comparisons.

The amount of cooling the unit provides is also not great. The packaging states that the unit is suitable for a room up to 29 square metres - which is about the size of my front room. With all the windows closed and the unit externally vented it seemed incapable of getting the temperature below 25 degrees C. It wasn't a very hot day outside either. I think that manufacturers room size doesn't take into account the room height. I have 13 foot ceilings and if the manufacturers information had quoted the room volume I probably would have purchased a different unit.

The digital controls on the system are easy to use though. Simply set the temperature you desire and set the unit to automatic. It then cools and sets the fan speed as required, proportional to the ambient temperature of the room.

I wouldn't recommend buying this unit though. If I had the choice again I would buy a more powerful unit - this unit provides 10,000 btu's of cooling. I am assuming that a unit with more cooling power means that the fan etc. can be run at a lower and quieter speed. Although it seems that power can only go up a little without resorting to a unit that needs a box placed outside - which isn't an option for me in a 3rd floor flat.