The writeup for this product is disingenuous at best, and outright misleading at worst. This is an evaporative cooler, or ‘swamp cooler’, which isn’t remotely comparable to even a small actual air conditioner with a compressor and refrigeration cycle. An evaporative cooler simply uses a fan to blow air through cold water, usually suspended within a fabric mesh. The only places these units work well are very dry, arid places (think below 40% relative humidity), and for much of the southern/southeastern US, for example, they do absolutely nothing at all. They are never adequate replacements for actual air conditioning.
TL;DR this product is NOT an air conditioner and should not be used where air conditioning is desired.
@PooltoyWolf In places where they are efficient at all, they can be superior to expansion-cycle refrigeration. But you are 100% correct that they are only useful in areas with low humidity. Below 20%, they are very useful indeed. The unstated drawback is the need for considerably more maintenance to prevent mold growth.
@PooltoyWolf@werehatrack I live in Phoenix and use very similar small room evap coolers when it’s below 100F and I want fresh air. I use a slightly larger one to keep my garage under 100F during the summer (otherwise it will easily get over 115 with the door shut). Key things to remember, it must have fresh air so you have to have a window open, it doesn’t work well in conjunction with AC because of that, and it must be a low humidity outside. For mold and scale build up, a little vinegar and rinsing it out helps tons. See this website for more info - https://www.newair.com/blogs/learn/evaporative-cooler-humidity-chart
I would get this one from meh but I already have a few and one new in the box so… meh
@OnionSoup Southern Arizona native chiming in to say that most days this would be an amazing way to cool a room. However, we’re in monsoon season right now… when I left for work this morning the weather report showed 93% humidity. Today was a very sticky day!
@OnionSoup Several years ago, I stopped for the night at an older motel in Gallup, NM. The temps that night were very pleasant by my standards, so when the motel clerk said that the only room they had left was suffering from its swamp cooler being busted, I was undeterred - and she gave me a discount on the room. On the return trip, I ended up in Gallup again, and it was much warmer. I decided to hit the same motel again. The swamp coolers were maintaining 72F without even running continuously. One nice thing about them is that they typically push fresh air into the cooled space from outside, since that’s where the air is dryest. Fresh and cooled.
I don’t have a problem with this being a swap cooler. Perfectly valid in the right conditions.i don’t like mehs description even though they are just quoting “innovative waterfall cooling technology to propel air through an ice-cold honeycomb filter.” that write up is very… Questionable.
Not related to this product…
I do wish there was a way to link to all the YouTube scam adds that other people put out and that use the exact same images/voice/pattern. And I only bring this up because one is a swamp cooler. Everyone should know what that is. But they don’t/are scamming people. It would be funny to post all these fake ads back to back somewhere. Since YouTube doesn’t care about doing anything about scams
"Student invented X amazing invention that totally underminds the Y industry at Z cost. But when he presented it to his teacher and refused to sell to Y industry he was expelled from school to try and hide it. Instead he’s giving everything to sell it straight to you. "
Same stupid voice on the “military hardware flashlight that’s lightsaber” and “special military drone that’s cost $2500”
And the “free special boxes full of garbage you just pay shipping”
The random 30 minute adds. The crap YouTube allows is beyond insane.
The Medicare scams particularly offend me although everyone runs those.
And quiet frankly fuck cascade. Just because doing dishes every day by hand would be potentially less efficient than running your dishwasher in the study you are choosing to misinterpret . Or funded. Because instead of using a dishpan or plug you ran the water the whole time.
That’s not the scenario you present. You present the guy used to load his dishwasher until it was full, than run it. Once. For the week. But somehow running it twice a day. Using your detergent. Every time. When it has nothing in it. Will save water and money. You assholes.
But maybe it bothers me more than it should.
I don’t think so though. I think it’s the correct amount
@unksol That’s quite a tangent, but yes, that ad drives me up the wall. “Using a dishwasher uses less water than handwashing so you can do it more even though you don’t have to and still be better than you would have been if you handwashed but obviously worse than you could have been if you didn’t do what our ad says but we want you to use more of our product lol”.
@unksol I do think there should be PSAs for younger generations explaining the dishpan or plug method, especially with the popularity of bigass single-basin sinks. But I agree that Cascade’s version of that is… scummy.
@awk You’re interpreting for the metrically challenged?
“Strange units”? Shouldn’t be…
kW-h:
k is for kilo, or a thousand;
W is the same W you gave (watts), so you can’t dis it;
h is the usual “hour”, as found in mph in your car (or km/h if you drive in Canada).
And that “Energy Consumption: 0.0065 kW·h” is for one hour run time. Two hours would consume 2 times 0.0065 kW·h = 0.0130 kW·h, etc.
No banana, but for “scale”, a 60 W light bulb would consume 0.0600 kW·h. (Their given number seems kinda small, but I don’t know any different. I think there is a factor of 10 error somewhere there.)
@awk@phendrick Well, for one, 0.0065 kW is 6.5 W, not 65 W. And saying it runs at “0.0065 kw/h” is a bizarre unit, since kW is a continuous measure of power, so a “per hour” measure doesn’t make much sense (it could be saying something like the power increases by 0.0065 kW every hour). It’s like saying your car’s engine runs at 150 hp/hr. If they said “65 kWh/h”, it would technically be correct, and equivalent to what you’re suggesting, but also silly, since the hours just cancel. Energy consumption being measured in kWh is similarly silly, since to say that it consumes “0.0065 kWh in an hour” is just saying it consumes 0.0065 kW, since again the hours cancel.
@awk@Tamdrik That’s the “factor of 10 error somewhere there” I mentioned. One of those two stated numbers is wrong, but which? Anyone put a meter on one of these things? (Yet?)
@awk All of these specs ignore the power required to freeze the water, and they further ignore the heat transferred out of the water and into the space where the freezer is located, plus the heat generated by the compressor’s motor. Where it is reasonably functional (places with low humidity), the Meh gadget du jour is overall the better choice, with the caveat that its effectiveness will sag as it increases the humidity in the room. Give it a source of dry outside air to work with, and it’s more useful…
I am disappointed in Meh for selling a SWAMP COOLER scam product. I know Meh is being scammy is that they compare a twenty dollar value product to a thousands of dollars product that actually does work.
Yep, as others have posted, this will only work in DRY climates, humidity under 30%, desert SW, AZ, parts of NV and some interior parts of CA. If humidity goes up at night, which is common, it won’t work well at night. Expect a few degrees of cooling at best, and remember this ADDS humidity to the air. May work better in a room in conjunction with a DEhumidifier, if the dehumidifier can get humidity level under 30%. You really need a large or commercial unit to do much.
@danexton you definitely don’t want to run it with a dehumidifier. That literally just… Get a portable air conditioner at that point. As wasteful/pointless as those are. Slightly better.
@danexton Yeah, to finish what unksol didn’t say, dehumidifiers generate heat, so if you put a dehumidifier and a swamp cooler in a room you are basically just wasting power and generating slightly more heat than you would have if you did nothing, because the devices aren’t 100% efficient.
Portable air conditioners with window tubes are pretty good.
@danexton According to this site, see suggestion #4, and some other sites, running a swamp cooler with a dehumidifier can work if you place them as stated. However, I agree, why bother, UNLESS you already have a dehumidifier laying around, and you’re buying a swamp cooler anyway. Otherwise a portable A/C may be better, especially if you need to move it from room to room, which Meh doesn’t mention, only about window units that are hard to move room to room. I also read if you do get a portable AC that’s meant to be rolled room to room, make sure it has 2 vents/hoses, one to pull in air to be cooled, the other to exhaust hot humid air. The ones with only 1 vent/hose not as efficient as has to do both functions. The site below does mention a swamp cooler good to 70% humidity, but that’s with maybe 80 degrees air at best, and will cool only a few degrees. See the chart I posted below.
Unless your freezer is offsite, prepping the ice packs introduces more heat into the indoor environment than the cooler will absorb via the packs. The swamp cooler function is a different matter, where it works.
I bought a similar product to this after doing much research. It’s very dry here in the Midwest, so I thought it might work for my needs. As expected, based on the reviews, it DOES work, but not nearly as well as a powerful whole-house swamp cooler. The reason swamp coolers work so well is because of their hurricane-force air speeds and huge evaporative pads on 4 sides. This little guy has one small pad on one side and the fans are meant to be quiet, thus slow.
I have the one I bought in my office to keep from having to use the whole-house Freon (or whatever it is now) AC from freezing the downstairs and basement while trying to stay cool upstairs in my office. A simple fan wasn’t cutting it, and it was drying out my eyes and sinuses even more as an added bonus.
The temperature is a few degrees cooler, allowing me to keep the AC at 79 for the rest of the house while I WFH. The ice packs are kinda silly and not needed. They just ensure you have to add water much more often.
@aciarlotta I was thinking that it could be useful for that one room that’s always hot in the summer, even with the AC running. I WFH too, but sit downstairs. I keep the AC at 75 and run a fan when it gets warm/stuffy. I figure it’s cheaper to run a fan in one room than to keep the AC at a lower temperature. I have the temperature go up at night and run a fan in my bedroom too.
@aciarlotta@lisagd This is exactly the situation in which I use my swamp cooler - an attic bedroom in the summer. Even if the RH outside is higher (and it rarely is around here), when the temperature goes up in the room the RH goes down. Meanwhile the AC is condensing humidity out of the air (and into a tub in the basement), so the bit of cool air that does make it upstairs is even dryer.
The main thing is to clean out the reservoir once in a while to prevent mold or algae growth, and rinse the mineral deposits out of the evaporative mesh or it stops being able to hold water.
@aciarlotta I’m jealous of where you are at in the Midwest that is “very dry”! Where we are in the Midwest, it is currently a dew point of 77° with a real feel of 106°! Earlier in the week we set a new record real feel of 122° and a record overnight “low” of 79°. More tropical than central plains; quite unusual for us this late in the summer, and the opposite of very dry. Relish your dryness!
Product: ProBreeze 3-in-1 Portable Evaporative 6QT Air Cooler
Model: PB-AC07-US
Condition: New
Innovative waterfall cooling technology propels air through an ice-cold honeycomb filter
On warmer days use it as an ice cooler air conditioner, on milder days use it in fan-only mode, and on dry days take advantage of the humidification mode
Arctic air cooler has a large 6 quart water tank and 2 ice packs
Effectively cool up 200 sq ft.
3 fan speeds, 70° oscillation, and 3 different operating modes
Includes Natural mode and Night Mode
Timer lets you set your room cooler air conditioner to operate for up to 7 hours
Runs at just 0.0065 kw/h, which is much more energy efficient than an air conditioner
Fitted with 4 durable caster wheels, and weighs a manageable 17 lbs
In for 1 for my son who lives in Corpus Christi. His window unit dries the air enough for this to work to get the temp cooler in his one room shack (like where Elvis was born, only smaller).
@unksol let me just say it’s not the most effective AC unit. It cools the shack but not to his satisfaction. This unit should nicely supplement the work the window unit already does.
The writeup for this product is disingenuous at best, and outright misleading at worst. This is an evaporative cooler, or ‘swamp cooler’, which isn’t remotely comparable to even a small actual air conditioner with a compressor and refrigeration cycle. An evaporative cooler simply uses a fan to blow air through cold water, usually suspended within a fabric mesh. The only places these units work well are very dry, arid places (think below 40% relative humidity), and for much of the southern/southeastern US, for example, they do absolutely nothing at all. They are never adequate replacements for actual air conditioning.
TL;DR this product is NOT an air conditioner and should not be used where air conditioning is desired.
@PooltoyWolf In places where they are efficient at all, they can be superior to expansion-cycle refrigeration. But you are 100% correct that they are only useful in areas with low humidity. Below 20%, they are very useful indeed. The unstated drawback is the need for considerably more maintenance to prevent mold growth.
@werehatrack Something else to consider, especially in drought areas: they use a lot of water if run continuously.
@PooltoyWolf @werehatrack I live in Phoenix and use very similar small room evap coolers when it’s below 100F and I want fresh air. I use a slightly larger one to keep my garage under 100F during the summer (otherwise it will easily get over 115 with the door shut). Key things to remember, it must have fresh air so you have to have a window open, it doesn’t work well in conjunction with AC because of that, and it must be a low humidity outside. For mold and scale build up, a little vinegar and rinsing it out helps tons. See this website for more info - https://www.newair.com/blogs/learn/evaporative-cooler-humidity-chart
I would get this one from meh but I already have a few and one new in the box so… meh
Not so great in the South East where more humidity is the last thing we need.
South West with your “dry heat”, fire away.
@OnionSoup Southern Arizona native chiming in to say that most days this would be an amazing way to cool a room. However, we’re in monsoon season right now… when I left for work this morning the weather report showed 93% humidity. Today was a very sticky day!
@OnionSoup Several years ago, I stopped for the night at an older motel in Gallup, NM. The temps that night were very pleasant by my standards, so when the motel clerk said that the only room they had left was suffering from its swamp cooler being busted, I was undeterred - and she gave me a discount on the room. On the return trip, I ended up in Gallup again, and it was much warmer. I decided to hit the same motel again. The swamp coolers were maintaining 72F without even running continuously. One nice thing about them is that they typically push fresh air into the cooled space from outside, since that’s where the air is dryest. Fresh and cooled.
I don’t have a problem with this being a swap cooler. Perfectly valid in the right conditions.i don’t like mehs description even though they are just quoting “innovative waterfall cooling technology to propel air through an ice-cold honeycomb filter.” that write up is very… Questionable.
Not related to this product…
I do wish there was a way to link to all the YouTube scam adds that other people put out and that use the exact same images/voice/pattern. And I only bring this up because one is a swamp cooler. Everyone should know what that is. But they don’t/are scamming people. It would be funny to post all these fake ads back to back somewhere. Since YouTube doesn’t care about doing anything about scams
"Student invented X amazing invention that totally underminds the Y industry at Z cost. But when he presented it to his teacher and refused to sell to Y industry he was expelled from school to try and hide it. Instead he’s giving everything to sell it straight to you. "
Same stupid voice on the “military hardware flashlight that’s lightsaber” and “special military drone that’s cost $2500”
And the “free special boxes full of garbage you just pay shipping”
The random 30 minute adds. The crap YouTube allows is beyond insane.
The Medicare scams particularly offend me although everyone runs those.
And quiet frankly fuck cascade. Just because doing dishes every day by hand would be potentially less efficient than running your dishwasher in the study you are choosing to misinterpret . Or funded. Because instead of using a dishpan or plug you ran the water the whole time.
That’s not the scenario you present. You present the guy used to load his dishwasher until it was full, than run it. Once. For the week. But somehow running it twice a day. Using your detergent. Every time. When it has nothing in it. Will save water and money. You assholes.
But maybe it bothers me more than it should.
I don’t think so though. I think it’s the correct amount
/youtube cascade savings commercial
@unksol Not only that, it doesn’t even come with the Wild Things kid’s book advertised in the home page write up.
@unksol C’mon…tell us how you really feel
@unksol That’s quite a tangent, but yes, that ad drives me up the wall. “Using a dishwasher uses less water than handwashing so you can do it more even though you don’t have to and still be better than you would have been if you handwashed but obviously worse than you could have been if you didn’t do what our ad says but we want you to use more of our product lol”.
@unksol I do think there should be PSAs for younger generations explaining the dishpan or plug method, especially with the popularity of bigass single-basin sinks. But I agree that Cascade’s version of that is… scummy.
@jwschultz I mean he wasn’t ever going to hand wash those dishes in the first place… So. Just do it when it’s full like a sane person.
According to the manual, it uses 65W, so just ignore these meaningless numbers with strange units.
@awk You’re interpreting for the metrically challenged?
“Strange units”? Shouldn’t be…
kW-h:
k is for kilo, or a thousand;
W is the same W you gave (watts), so you can’t dis it;
h is the usual “hour”, as found in mph in your car (or km/h if you drive in Canada).
And that “Energy Consumption: 0.0065 kW·h” is for one hour run time. Two hours would consume 2 times 0.0065 kW·h = 0.0130 kW·h, etc.
No banana, but for “scale”, a 60 W light bulb would consume 0.0600 kW·h. (Their given number seems kinda small, but I don’t know any different. I think there is a factor of 10 error somewhere there.)
@awk @phendrick Well, for one, 0.0065 kW is 6.5 W, not 65 W. And saying it runs at “0.0065 kw/h” is a bizarre unit, since kW is a continuous measure of power, so a “per hour” measure doesn’t make much sense (it could be saying something like the power increases by 0.0065 kW every hour). It’s like saying your car’s engine runs at 150 hp/hr. If they said “65 kWh/h”, it would technically be correct, and equivalent to what you’re suggesting, but also silly, since the hours just cancel. Energy consumption being measured in kWh is similarly silly, since to say that it consumes “0.0065 kWh in an hour” is just saying it consumes 0.0065 kW, since again the hours cancel.
@awk @Tamdrik That’s the “factor of 10 error somewhere there” I mentioned. One of those two stated numbers is wrong, but which? Anyone put a meter on one of these things? (Yet?)
@awk All of these specs ignore the power required to freeze the water, and they further ignore the heat transferred out of the water and into the space where the freezer is located, plus the heat generated by the compressor’s motor. Where it is reasonably functional (places with low humidity), the Meh gadget du jour is overall the better choice, with the caveat that its effectiveness will sag as it increases the humidity in the room. Give it a source of dry outside air to work with, and it’s more useful…
https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/blog/do-swamp-coolers-work/
I am disappointed in Meh for selling a SWAMP COOLER scam product. I know Meh is being scammy is that they compare a twenty dollar value product to a thousands of dollars product that actually does work.
Shame on you, Meh!
Yep, as others have posted, this will only work in DRY climates, humidity under 30%, desert SW, AZ, parts of NV and some interior parts of CA. If humidity goes up at night, which is common, it won’t work well at night. Expect a few degrees of cooling at best, and remember this ADDS humidity to the air. May work better in a room in conjunction with a DEhumidifier, if the dehumidifier can get humidity level under 30%. You really need a large or commercial unit to do much.
@danexton you definitely don’t want to run it with a dehumidifier. That literally just… Get a portable air conditioner at that point. As wasteful/pointless as those are. Slightly better.
@danexton Yeah, to finish what unksol didn’t say, dehumidifiers generate heat, so if you put a dehumidifier and a swamp cooler in a room you are basically just wasting power and generating slightly more heat than you would have if you did nothing, because the devices aren’t 100% efficient.
Portable air conditioners with window tubes are pretty good.
@danexton They work well across much of Western and far Northern Texas, New Mexico, Utah, Idaho, Eastern Clorado, and Eastern Oregon.
@danexton According to this site, see suggestion #4, and some other sites, running a swamp cooler with a dehumidifier can work if you place them as stated. However, I agree, why bother, UNLESS you already have a dehumidifier laying around, and you’re buying a swamp cooler anyway. Otherwise a portable A/C may be better, especially if you need to move it from room to room, which Meh doesn’t mention, only about window units that are hard to move room to room. I also read if you do get a portable AC that’s meant to be rolled room to room, make sure it has 2 vents/hoses, one to pull in air to be cooled, the other to exhaust hot humid air. The ones with only 1 vent/hose not as efficient as has to do both functions. The site below does mention a swamp cooler good to 70% humidity, but that’s with maybe 80 degrees air at best, and will cool only a few degrees. See the chart I posted below.
https://www.newair.com/blogs/learn/how-to-make-swamp-cooler-colder
Will this work with MAC?
@BedrQQmiii Only with Air models.
@BedrQQmiii @mcanavino well that’s a Plus
Unless your freezer is offsite, prepping the ice packs introduces more heat into the indoor environment than the cooler will absorb via the packs. The swamp cooler function is a different matter, where it works.
I gotta say, I too am rather disgusted with the writeup on this thing. It’s just a step below the scam ads on YouTube.
This deal is hot!
These only work in low humidity environment
I bought a similar product to this after doing much research. It’s very dry here in the Midwest, so I thought it might work for my needs. As expected, based on the reviews, it DOES work, but not nearly as well as a powerful whole-house swamp cooler. The reason swamp coolers work so well is because of their hurricane-force air speeds and huge evaporative pads on 4 sides. This little guy has one small pad on one side and the fans are meant to be quiet, thus slow.
I have the one I bought in my office to keep from having to use the whole-house Freon (or whatever it is now) AC from freezing the downstairs and basement while trying to stay cool upstairs in my office. A simple fan wasn’t cutting it, and it was drying out my eyes and sinuses even more as an added bonus.
The temperature is a few degrees cooler, allowing me to keep the AC at 79 for the rest of the house while I WFH. The ice packs are kinda silly and not needed. They just ensure you have to add water much more often.
@aciarlotta I was thinking that it could be useful for that one room that’s always hot in the summer, even with the AC running. I WFH too, but sit downstairs. I keep the AC at 75 and run a fan when it gets warm/stuffy. I figure it’s cheaper to run a fan in one room than to keep the AC at a lower temperature. I have the temperature go up at night and run a fan in my bedroom too.
@aciarlotta @lisagd This is exactly the situation in which I use my swamp cooler - an attic bedroom in the summer. Even if the RH outside is higher (and it rarely is around here), when the temperature goes up in the room the RH goes down. Meanwhile the AC is condensing humidity out of the air (and into a tub in the basement), so the bit of cool air that does make it upstairs is even dryer.
The main thing is to clean out the reservoir once in a while to prevent mold or algae growth, and rinse the mineral deposits out of the evaporative mesh or it stops being able to hold water.
@aciarlotta I’m jealous of where you are at in the Midwest that is “very dry”! Where we are in the Midwest, it is currently a dew point of 77° with a real feel of 106°! Earlier in the week we set a new record real feel of 122° and a record overnight “low” of 79°. More tropical than central plains; quite unusual for us this late in the summer, and the opposite of very dry. Relish your dryness!
Specs
Product: ProBreeze 3-in-1 Portable Evaporative 6QT Air Cooler
Model: PB-AC07-US
Condition: New
What’s Included?
Price Comparison
$159.99 at Amazon
$179.99 at ProBreeze
Warranty
90 days
Estimated Delivery
Tuesday, Sep 5 - Wednesday, Sep 6
Can it make a margarita colder?
@somf69 Well, you can take the ice pack out of the freezer and set the margarita on top of it, instead of putting it into the evaporative cooler.
Basically a humidifier with ice packs.
In for 1 for my son who lives in Corpus Christi. His window unit dries the air enough for this to work to get the temp cooler in his one room shack (like where Elvis was born, only smaller).
/giphy voidable-totally-basketball
@spavlis if he has a window unit in his “one room shack” you lost me … That unit does the job.
I mean until Texas loses power again
@unksol let me just say it’s not the most effective AC unit. It cools the shack but not to his satisfaction. This unit should nicely supplement the work the window unit already does.
Ohio
@Karinchen67 Rhode Island
@Karinchen67 @troy Virginia
@Karinchen67 @mcanavino @troy Liquid.
@Karinchen67 @mcanavino @troy @yakkoTDI
Plasma. (Consider the weather.)
This should answer a great many questions.
Reality check: If you’re in either of the blue zones, the swamp cooler function will be mostly useless.
@werehatrack not if you have a window unit too!
I have to wonder whether that 17 lb weight includes 11 lbs of water. (That’s the weight of the water for the unit’s reservoir capacity.)