Four in one technology - Fan, Heater, Dehumidifier and A/C. No water tank to empty in humid environments. Manual drain may be needed every now and then. Smart chip technology, digital display and remote control. 24 hours programmable timer. Could be used with one or two hoses. When used with one hose, the opening at the back of the unit should be changed for a grill and the intake port should be sealed.
Features:
Our space-saving unit cools, heats, dehumidifies, and fans all in one appliance. Includes VFD display technology for enhanced graphics and readability. Evaporative technology means there's no water bucket to empty. The optional single or dual exhaust hose is designed to efficiently cool, heat, or dehumidify any space with no permanent installation. Moves easily on heavy-duty caster wheels.
Note: Exhaust hose installation required (all standard accessories included).
Customer Reviews:
One of the best in its class, does what it says within limitations I have owned an operated four different models of portable ac over the years, and thus far the Soleus LX-140 has surpassed them all. As the other reviews state, you will not get quite the cooling capacity or functionality of central air or a quality window unit, but that's not what portable ac units are for, is it? If you use it for what it's designed to do - that is, be a supplemental unit cooling one or two rooms, it works great.
Cooling capacity - This unit cools better than any of the other portable AC units I have used. Like all air conditioners, the cooling capacity depends on the room you are using it in. In my personal tests of the unit, I found the LX-140 capable of the following:
1. 250 sq ft room, 85-90 degrees outside, sunny day time, drapes closed, room reduced to 72 degrees within an hour.
2. 250 sq ft room, 80-90 degrees outside, night time, capable of reducing room to low 70's or upper 60's and maintaining all night.
3. 250 sq ft room, 95-105 outside, sunny day time, drapes closed, unit can reduce temp to low 80's and maintain.
4. 500 sq ft room, unit can get into the lower 70's at night, but during day will max out at reducing temp to 80 when it's 90 outside or 85 when it's 105 outside.
This is far superior to other portable ac units. Other benefits include that it's quieter than my other units have been, and it produces a heck of a lot more airflow.
On the downside, the internal tank for water collection is a little small and can fill rapidly on humid days. Unfortunately, there is no alarm for when the tank gets full, and it will just overflow all over the place if you don't empty it. During the most humid parts of summer, I empty daily to prevent overflow, although really you can run it three days straight without emptying. When it's not humid, I never need to empty it (the unit evaporates the water itself). Therefore, if you plan to operate in Florida or some like clime, you should use the included hose and drain the water out a window or into a bowl.
The other downside is the slightly useless remote. The unit control panel is on the top of the unit, so you can't see it from across the room, and the remote kind of tells it what to do and kind of doesn't (this is hard to explain, but it's a really weird remote). Therefore, if you get up in the middle of the night and decide you want to reduce the temp and try to use the remote, it may do what you're asking, or it may turn the unit off, or it may shift it into heater mode. Weird. So, you usually have to go to the unit to adjust anything other than turning the unit on and off. I shoudl mention that the "timer" feature is also completely within the remote - it has a clock and if you sit in someplace it can 'beam' the on command at a certain time of day, it will. This works so-so, with the remote sometimes turning it on and sometimes not.
These small downsides can be somewhat annoying, but fortunately they all have to do with ancillary features of the unit rather than functionality itself. As far as the ac performance, this is the most powerful and capable unit I have come across in this price class, and overall is a great value....more info
bad company I have not dealt with a more aggravating company in year. This unit may work for you but on auto mode it runs contentiously in dehumidify mode. Upon calling Soleus tech support I got A woman that did not know anything technical about this unit and refused to transfer me to someone who did. This unit is brand new and the only way I can use it is to run a separate humidifier. I will never buy another product from them again...more info
One of the best portable ACs, still not perfect The Soleus LX-140 is actually the third portable AC we had in the household. The fist, a discontinued Hampton Bay model worked well and is still operating in a second bedroom. The next, the Sunpentown WA-1010e, was terrible, could only cool the room by about 4 degrees, and broke after a year.
On to the Soleus. The most important thing in a portable AC is obviously cooling ability, and the Soleus lives up to its claims of being one of the more powerful units available. At 14,000 BTU, it has proven capable of getting my 150 sq ft bedroom down to 70 degrees on hot nights, and on sweltering summer days when it's in the upper 90's, it can drop the temp around 15 - 20 degrees if we completely shut out any sunlight and leave the unit runnign on high. This may not seem like a huge drop, but it's about the best one can expect from a portable unit. It is also capable of cooling our larger 300 sq ft master suite, although it maxes out at about a 15 degree drop when it's hot and sunny. Unlike most of the other portable ACs we have looked at and used, this one does produce a steady stream of pretty cold air, and while it is massively huger and more expensive than window units, it rivals them in cooling capacity.
Features - The unit has three fan speeds on all the settings and includes a dehumidifier and heater mode in addition to AC and fan. There is temperature control on the main unit that allows you to select anywhere between 61 and 95 degrees, which is a nice feature since some portable ACs just run and run until you are freezing in the middle of the night. If you set the Soleus to 71 degrees, it will run in AC mode until the room cools down, then it will switch to fan mode until the room warms up again. This is a nice feature that not all portable ACs have. There is a timer setting that can be accessed from the main unit, and allows you to run the unit for a specified number of hours. See the remote control section below for info on the 'time of day' timer. It's not the quietest unit in the world, but most of the noise is a result of the air being pushed through the unit rather than the annoying refrigerator noise you get from some. Light sleepers might not like it, but it drowns out the noisy neighbors with its rather non-offensive white noise. It could also stand to have better circulation features. There is a 'swing' mode on the remote that makes the vent rotate in an up and down direction, but it does not move side to side and the up-down differential is not all that huge.
Exhaust and drainage - The unit comes with two 6 ft plastic hoses that need to be stuck out a window so that it can exhaust the hot air. The dual hose method is supposed to make the unit work a lot better, and between the dual hoses and the high power of the unit it seems to perform superior to any other unit we have looked at. The hoses are a bit wide and cumbersome and could stand to be insulated, but they do the job. While the manufacturer claims the unit does not usually need to be drained, I find their statistics a little optimistic. While I don't need to drain it when I am using it at night to drop the temp from 80 to 70, on really hot and humid days the water reservoir will fill up and need to be emptied every 2 days. Unfortunately, a big design flaw is that there is no automatic shut off on the unit. While the 'drain unit' light will come on in plenty of time, if you ignore it for more than a couple hours the water will start to seep out the bottom of the unit and it will just keep running. I did this once overnight and woke up to find about a gallon of watter puddling on the hard wood floor with all the electrical cords lying in it - not the safest of situations. A second design flaw is that the drain is on the very bottom rear of the unit. If you place it on the floor, only a very very shallow pan can catch the water. There is a rubber hose that comes with the unit that can be used to drain the water either out a window or into a bucket, although either option feels a little poor white trash to me.
Power - At 1500 watts, the unit is a bit of a power hog. All AC units are, and when it's 110 degrees outside the electricity expense is well worth it. However, it should be noted that many circuit breakers and fuse boxes can be overloaded when you throw this unit on with a bunch of other stuff. We had to find a plug on a breaker that was separate from our other main electronics, because running this unit, a tv, stereo and computer all on one breaker was not going to work.
Portability - The unit is moderately heavy, although it does have wheels to make portability a little easier. The photos in the ads hide that it is a little deeper than you might think, and it's foot print is a rather large 20 x 20 inches. There are two exhaust hoses that reach about 6 ft in length, so it needs to be right under or right next to a window. We purchased a small table at Ikea for it to sit on so that the hoses extend straight into the window, which helps cooling capacity greatly since the primary exhaust hose is where all the heat from the room goes, and it can get rather warm. Extanding it to its full 6 feet greatly reduces the colling capacity of the unit, since that's like having a long tubular heater in the room. Better insulated exhaust hoses should be at the top of every portable AC designers list, but none of them seem to have them.
The remote that comes with the unit is so-so. It allows you to access most of the functions, although you need to point it straight at the unit or it will not pick up the signal. Even when the unit does communicate with the remote, it doesn't function 100% properly. For example, if I press 'mode' to switch from AC to fan, the unit will beep to tell me it received the signal. However, it may switch from AC to fan like I asked, or it may stay on AC, or it may switch to heater. Unfortunately you can't tell without looking at the top of the unit. There is also a timer setting on the remote that supposedly lets you program what time of day you want the unit to switch on, probably so you can come home to a cool room after work. This does not work all that well, since you have to remember to point the remote at the unit before leaving and hope it actually turns the unit on when it's supposed to. There is no clock or time of day setting on the main unit at all, so for this feature you have to depend on the remote 100%. The remote is not backlit, so it is hard to see at night.
Overall, the unit gets an A for cooling, a B+ for features, and a C- for remote control. Since my primary objective was to cool a room and getting around the difficulties with the remote is relatively simple, I would indeed recommend this to anyone looking to cool a 200 - 400 sq ft room.
Absolute Garbage. This product is a total waste of money. The only reason I got it is because my HOA doesnt allow window units.
It claims 14000 BTU but can barely cool at 120 sq ft room. On hot days it can only get my room down to 78 degrees. It's pitiful. Since that room never gets down to the thermostat temp, the compressor stays on constantly.
In addition to not working as an Air Conditioner, it also needs to be drained constantly. It's supposed to exhaust the condensation, but it does an extremely poor job at that. It will shut off after running for 6 hours or so.
Portable Air Conditioners just don't work well I have tried 5 different units over 8 yeasrs (two being this one). Only one worked 1/2 way decent, and it still has problems.
This one is the most powerful 110volt portable unit there is.
In general, they all end up leaking water all over the place. None of them seem to be able to evaporate the water as fast they are supposed to. By winter, I can expect the units to leak water everywhere, and the water light never comes on.
All 5 brands are cheaply made and by the same factory even though they are from different manufacturers.
If you are looking for portable AC. Better to skip it as you'll be lucky if you find a unit that satifies your needs. IF you are insistant, go with a better built unit. Google around for a unit built in the US, most likely it will be designed for server room cooling. Most likely that will run $1000-$3000.
I am on my 5th unit and wish we had just spent the money up front instead of having to replace the unit every year as we are doing now.
These units are generally cheap and you get what you pay for. I would rate this higher if not for the water issue (I just cleared an 1/8 inch of standing water out of a 12 x 12 room)....more info
OK ONLY if you live in a low humidity zone-AVOID What a huge disappointment. We live on the east coast where the humidity can get ugly and these units simply cannot handle it. Once the internal drip pan is full the compressor shuts off and it goes into "self-evaporative" mode which the manufacturer says should take only 15 minutes but it takes much, much longer than that in high humidity. This continues so often in high humidity that the subsequent cooling is hardly effective. There is no tank to empty (like in a dehumidifier) and the drain port is flush with the bottom of the unit so the only thing onto which you can manually drain it is a cookie sheet. It took MUCH complaining to both the Manufacturer (Soleus) and SELLER (COMPACT APPLIANCE - an online outfit in TEXAS--AVOID LIKE THE PLAGUE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) to get any help. The manufacturer finally sent us a condensation pump (to be applied externally) as part of the warranty. Nice of them but they didn't tell us (refused to acknowledge is more like it) that because the drain is flush with the floor and is a gravity flow system, you need to then ELEVATE the unit to higher than the external pump to get the water to drain into it. I now have the units up on 2 huge pieces of styrofoam. It is very attractive as you can easily imagine....NOT. Anyway...I cannot figure out what the advantage is in having these units. This all because I wanted to avoid a window unit. I am planning to sell these for cheap to someone who wants to use them in a garage or somewhere else that has a drain in the floor. What a waste....more info
ice box..with lots of extras This thing works EXCELLENT....not very noisy..quiter than most portable a/cs and way way quieter than window models...of course.Dehumid. works Great. this thing has a heater too.it blows hard (lol) and is ice cold. has cool oscilating flap things.Keeps room chilly. digital readout in color on the unit and has a nifty remote..could have used some backlighting on the remote but its all good. i bought this to keep my home recoding studio nice and cold. the room is about the size of a 2 1/2 car garage... my stuff used to overheat now all is chill. worth every damn penny, although i bought it from ebay brand new in box for $599.00 exactly with no tax (except Texas) and free shipping....more info
