Benross 42240 Portable Air Cooler Fan/Portable 4 Wheel Mobile Unit/Includes Humidifier Function/Easy Operated Control Panel / 7 Litre Water Tank/Quiet Operation

The Benross Portable Water Air Cooler does well for the job it's supposed to do. The first question anyone is going to ask is, "how cold does this get?" Well, it's first necessary to note that this is not your typical air conditioner. It's not going to blow freezing temperatures at you nor is it going to decrease the temperature in a room drastically. It's only going to blow air as cold as the water you put into it. The way it works is quite simple. You put water into the tank at the bottom of the unit. A piece of cloth rotates itself through the water (thus absorbing the water) and up towards the top (similar to a vertical conveyor belt). At the top, there is a fan that takes in air from the back of the unit, through the cloth/water, and out the front. The purpose of the water is to help cool the air before getting blown out the front. The colder the water, the colder the air will be. Two small containers are provided to fill with water, freeze, and put into the water tank to help cool the water. It can be tough to remove the containers so it's highly recommended to attach a string and leave it hanging outside so that you can easily lift them out of the tank for reuse. There is also a small ice tray at the top to fill with ice, which also assists with cooling the air before hitting the fan. It is HIGHLY RECOMMENDED to not only fill the ice tray with ice but also to put lots of ice cubes into the water tank. Remember, the colder the water, the better this will work! This air cooler also has an on-off setting, optional one-hour timer, four fan settings (think null, low, medium, high), cooler control (haven't used this, but I assume it controls the rotation of the cloth that transports water from the tank to the top), and sweeper control (the fan can blow left to right or in one direction). There is a stopper/drain at the bottom that can drain all the water from the tank. I did have two very minor negatives when I first received this. The first is a very slight "new plastic" smell when you first turn it on. The second is that mine had an unfortunate rattle, which I quickly fixed by putting a small amount of pressure on the top. I later used duct tape to stop the rattle (as can be seen in the picture); straightforward fix, no big deal. Overall, the Benross portable air cooler does what it's supposed to do, and it does it well. It's only going to be as cold as the water you put into it; otherwise, it's just your average fan. In its low setting, it's pretty quiet, and the high setting, it's pretty loud. Nothing that much different to an average household fan regarding sound.

I didn't know quite what to expect from this cooler, I knew it wouldn't be as efficient as a Air conditioning unit but I did hope it could reduce my bedroom from nearly 30c down to around a more comfortable 22c, sadly it didn't even get close. Because of the way Evaporation coolers work they are great in hot DRY countries but here in the UK where our humidity levels are much higher they are next to useless at cooling a room. In an attempt to find out how efficient this cooler was I decided to do a few tests. I placed an accurate thermometer ( used for measuring Air con temperatures cars ) on the front grill of the cooler and another about three feet away. The inside temperature of the modest sized room was 28c with a Humidity level of about 55. As recommended I made sure the window was open and then I turned the fan of the machine onto its top speed with the cooler turned off and as expected the temp of both thermometers remained the same. I then added 3 litres of cold tap water and then, with the fan again on top speed I turned on the cooler I left the room and closed the door. After about 45 minutes I returned the temperature of the thermometer on the grill had dropped by 1 degree however the room thermometer was the same. finally I added ice and again left the room, I returned about 30 minutes later to find that although the thermometer on the grill had dropped almost 2 degrees the one three feet away remained the same in fact the only difference was the humidity which had risen from 55 to 67 which was starting to make the room feel muggy. In conclusion if you want to use this as a personal fan only cooler it works pretty well but if you want it to cool a room down forget it , although it looks attractive with a low price and power consumption it simply doesn't work as a room cooler I also found it quite noisy compared to a normal desk fan. I can't understand the 5 star reviews, either there outside humidity is a lot lower than mine (around the 40 to 50 mark) or they are right in front of it when its on. To be fair I don't think any Evaporative cooler would do much better our humidity levels in this country are generally too high to make it run efficiently . So in my opinion if you want to keep your bedroom cool this summer a proper AC might be your only answer.

I though that I would give this a go as I didn't want the expense or running costs of an AC unit. Having read up on these type of evaporative coolers I wasn't expecting it to be as powerful as an AC unit, however it fell way below even those modest expectations. I filled the machine with a combination of water and ice - and added cubes in the holder at the back of the machine. When I switched the machine on it provided a decent enough breeze, but I couldn't detect any cooling effect. I switched off the cooling function (which is actually a roll of material that dips into the water and then rolls upwards to allow the water to evaporate) and the air felt the same temperature. I then took a digital infra-red thermometer and measured the temperature of the air coming-out of the machine. It was the same as the ambient temperature. When I switched the cooling function back on I got the same reading. I even left the machine on for 15-20 minutes to see if it needed some time for the cooling function to take full effect. There was no change in the temperature of the air. When I emailed the suppliers to tell them this they responded with the following message: hi no this is correct , the principle is that the cool air created by the ice and water will blow through but in real hot heat it wont be the same as an air conditioning unit . I have returned the unit for a refund.

Très beau il fonctionne bien