Frigidaire FFRE0533Q1 5,000 Btu 115V Window-Mounted Mini-Compact Air Conditioner, White

More Powerful, Quieter than expected We recently moved from Miami to Philadelphia, which should have meant a 'cooler' place. Not so fast!! We went from a newer central A/C in Florida to a 100+ year old home with original windows and NO A/C... I purchased this window A/C unit as a 'test' of sorts to see if it would do an adequate job of cooling part of the first floor in our home in Philly. I would consider this a fairly tough test for an A/C of this size for a few reasons: 1) I am learning that in Philly the summers are hot and humid. 95+ and high humidity days are not uncommon. 2) Without A/C the room where the A/C is located can get over 90 degrees on a hot day 3) this room does not have any sealed doors (open hallway to the rest of the home and 1,000 more square feet on this level) 4) a wall of windows, did I mention original windows? With afternoon sun and no shades? So we installed the unit in the dining room and hoped for the best, after all even if it kept the room below 90 we'd be happier. Well much to our surprise, it does a fantastic job of cooling this room - It can keep at 82-83 degrees (A/C is set to 78) even on those hot 90+ days even on energy saver mode. Keeping in mind that this is far from an efficient installation and way over the recommended room size. It actually outperforms my portable 15,000 BTU unit, and is much quieter in comparison. I would say the noise generated is easily less than a 20" box fan on low. The only thing we find odd is from time to time it will turn on and run for less than 15 seconds. Not sure what the cause is, and I haven't done any investigation into the cause. It's so quiet we barely notice this happening. After a month it's been performing wonderfully. I am already planning to buy a second unit for the 3rd floor oven/office area... Finally, always double check your power company's website to see if you qualify for rebates. I was able to submit a rebate for $50 for this unit. All things considered - this unit cost me about the same as a 2-3 year old, non-energy star, used unit. You can't beat that!

It cools a room running a large computer with numerous hot graphics cards and has no problem keeping the 200 Sqft room nice and chilled. I was surprised at how small this unit actually is in size when it arrived. It's very basic - I'm not seeing anything here worth $200 really but it seems to do the job. NOTE on window size - if you attach both side " accordion" retractable/extendable pieces you must have at least a 23" wide window. If you only install one side as we did it's not the best look but works well and will then fit securely into narrower widths like our 22". Comes with insulating foam and a few stick on pieces of rubbery flat insulation to cover any air gaps. But not enough unfortunately so you'll want to pick some up. It's not real quiet and not too noisy - just exactly what you'd expect for it's size, maybe a tiny bit louder than we thought it would be. Almost exactly the noise of a Walmart type floor fan on 1or 2. So far have heard no water pinging against fan blades or any water sounds but have only run it about a day. Sitting only a few feet away with it cooling I have no trouble hearing on my mobile phone or sounds from the computers but we also have excellent amplified speakers. The remote is still the same old design - boxy, cheap and very dated but it works. You can set to auto temp and the AC will shut off when it reaches that temp. Small digital temp readout on AC unit panel, no readout or display on remote. I'd look for the same features or size at a price closer to $155 at most before buying this one but if you can't find it this should perform adequately. UPDATE July 1 2014 I raised this unit a star partly based on the enlightenment from a retired hvac who commented on my review that he runs this on solar and batteries in his RV with good results. Apparently the small size means it has a low-starting pull and that's also very good for running in my 200 sq ft computer room. After running this several weeks it still runs very well but struggles to keep ambient at 78ish on 98 degree days - it's just cool enough to keep a computer running dual Titan graphics cards from running too hot. Again it's not super quiet but it doesn't interfere with computer audio and we don't notice it at all. Zero problems with water pinging the fan even running full out. Still not sure it's worth $244! But many feel it is and being so easy to install, performing well every day - hard to argue with that.

Product excellent; a real thermostat on which you can set a temperature, and the remote, make it well worth the price of the manual version. HOWEVER: packaging is terribly weak and flimsy, as others have observed. Thin, brittle corrugated cardboard punctures -very- easily. My unit arrived with several non-obvious punctures, including damaged, bent sheet metal and light mashing of the radiator, not obvious until inboxed. Unit operates well, and application doesn't require perfect cosmetics, so I went ahead and installed it, and am quite pleased with its functionality. On a bet, the packaging is intended only to get a well-crated palette of these things to a retailer; the packaging of an individual unit is a really crappy shipping container. (Might as well have wrapper it in paper...) If cosmetics matter, inspect all six surfaces -carefully- in good light before accepting delivery.

We have this model, purchased from Amazon, as well as two other frigidaires in other rooms. Energy Saver setting (note, this is the default setting when turning the AC on), cycles on and off far too frequently. This is the biggest drawback, I don't keep it on Energy Saver when I am in the room because of how annoying that is to have it turn on for a few seconds and off again. Who wants that going on? It's not soft enough sound to not notice the constant on/off. Minus one big star for that. Sleep setting -- I like this setting, it is ingenious. It slowly brings up the temp (not sure how much, maybe 5 degrees, it would be great to control that) at night, so you don't notice much and it saves cycling the coolant on so much. We go to sleep to about 68 and it crawls up to about 72 or 73, and we don't notice when we're sleeping. Ability to direct air in different directions is nice. Removable/easy clean plastic filter is nice. The remote is a very nice feature, I didn't realize how often I would use it, I use it daily. Three issues with the remote make it less than ideal though: (1) There is no temperature displayed on the remote, so if you are not in a position to see the AC, you don't know what temperature it is on and have to go look at the AC anyway. This is most problematic at night, if it gets too hot, I can't tell how far to decrease the temp. (2) there is no backlighting on the remote, cannot see buttons to press. By now, I have somewhat memorized where the buttons are, but again, at night this is the most problematic, having to turn on a light or a cell phone light to see what I need to press. (3) the beeping with each choice. It has a light that flashes when you press a button, but it also beeps. Not being able to turn off that beep is annoying. If I try to change the temperature while on a phone call, meeting it can be heard, and at night it has sometimes disturbed my husbands sleep (and he uses earplugs too) -- it is a loud beep and if you have to change several settings (like lower the temperature several degrees, each degree is a beep), and then put it on sleep setting again etc. It would be nice to turn off the beep, have a silent mode. So minus one big star for minimal remote swag/features. The price on amazon was good, better than Lowes. We also had a $50 rebate through Peco, our energy company, because it was energy star approved. So especially for around $120 which is around what we paid with Amazon and then the rebate, this is a nice AC. Missing two stars will remain because the energy saver feature was so prominently advertised but functions so poorly, and the remote having a list of missing features -- for the list price of >$200 it should have a better remote.

I love this unit. It replaced a dying LG noise maker. It was several inches narrower, but does the trick. I wall-mounted it, not window mounted it. I live in Texas so there's a ton of humidity and heat. It keeps my office VERY cool, and is super quiet in so doing. I can't even tell when the compressor comes on. That was my great fear. The LG rattled the entire wall. This unit is a peace maker. Except for the soothing fan, its hard to tell it is working at all. Energy saver is great. Have to set it a few degrees lower than normal, but if I don't, it doesn't take long for it to cool the room back down the next day. I use energy saver at night when I'm not in the office. Have to keep the room dry. Buy it. It's an awesome unit!

I've run it for three summers. It has worked reasonably well, though it's always been loud (a product of design) and prone to annoying rattling noises (a product of shoddy manufacture). When I fired it up this year, it produced (for a solid hour, until I gave up on it) a horrendous screeching sound that made it basically impossible to tolerate. It's even louder from the outside, so if you think you can deal with it, don't assume your neighbors can! I have another, similar Frigidaire 5,000 BTU model (without the remote) that is now on its third year. So far, it is working adequately, though it also rattles. The bottom line is that I will never buy another Frigidaire product. I'm shopping for a replacement now, and am going to do some serious product research (customer reviews are good, but they usually come in within weeks of purchase, and don't typically reflect long term performance). If I have to pay more to get more than three years out of an air conditioner, it will be worth it.

Very pleased with this small energy efficient air conditioner, I bought three and installed them in an old apartment with low electrical and spaced them out and they cool and clean the air for a large 3rd floor two bedroom apartment really well. They were simple to install and work great. I like the remote and energy saving features too. So glad I got these! The Frigidaire quality really shows and the price is very good. Comes with a Frigidaire 10 year warranty too.

We got this to replace a 5,000 BTU unit that has lasted for twenty years. That air conditioner is still going strong, but some foam from the inside is coming out the vent and the cowling around the fan blade has rusted quite a bit. The good: The manufacturer says that this air conditioner will cool a 150 sq. ft. room quickly. It is cooling a 350 sq. ft. bedroom pretty rapidly. It is compact. The bad: There is no way to bring in outside air when just the fan is going. What could be better: It's noisier than our old air conditioner. That is, the fan is noisier. But that may be typical of today's units. I don't find it objectionably noisy. Installation in a window is perhaps easier, but possibly more dangerous than was the case for our old unit. By this I mean that there is no separate outer case. I'm used to air conditioners which have separate outer metal cases. These are mounted securely in the window. After the case is in place, the air conditioner guts slide into the case. This has the advantage that all the fussing around with the window is done while a lightweight case is installed. With this new air conditioner, the window adjustments are attempted while the installer is keeping the heavy air conditioner from falling out the window. That makes what used to be a one-person job more of a two-person job (even though I installed this air conditioner by myself).