Honeywell 500 CFM Indoor or Outdoor Portable Evaporative Cooler, Fan, and Humidifier for Living Room, Patio, Garage, Deck, and Bedroom, 115V, Swamp Cooler for Rooms up to 300 Sq. Ft. with Remote, Gray

Attention!!! Needs to be cleaned at least once per month! I use this everyday for at least 5 hours. When you start to get a funny smell I drain, add distilled white vinegar and wash the media once per month. I do this in the bathtub and it is easy to clean. Just allow time for parts to fully dry. I put the media (filter) outside in the sun to "deodorize" to avoid odor. I use dish soap to clean filters. When you do this it avoids a "smell". This was waiting for me when I got home and I must say that this is one of the smartest purchases I've ever done! It works great and keeps my room cool! I followed the directions and added ice and this blows air (with ice) at 64 degrees! Without the ice it still blew around 70 degrees! My AC unit did not turn on the entire time I had this running. Definitely a money saver on my electric bill! I had the ceiling fans running and place this in my living room allowing the air to be evenly distributed throughout my home. Also, the fan is VERY strong! In other words, I run it only on low. The fan really puts out a TON of air! I tried medium and high for fun and it really moves the air. The sleep mode seems to run the fan on medium which is a little strong for me. It is not near as noisy as I anticipated and you get used to the sound very quickly. It isn't so much as a fan humming sound as it is hearing the airflow move. The pictures I included are the unit running solely on room temperature distilled water with no ice. I believe the pictures speak for themselves on how well this unit works. It is a little water "hungry" but I did buy the 53 pint unit. It takes almost 6 gallons of water to fill but the water doesn't need changing for at least a week depending on where you use it. It has a water level gauge on the front to let you see minimum and maximum levels. I only put in three gallons of water. I love how the level meter is "float" controlled by the water in the tank. This gives a more accurate reading since adding ice will add to the water level. I recommend no more than 5 gallons if using ice. It has water that runs over the ice to help melt it and it REALLY cools the air down very quickly. Again, buy this and you'll never regret it!!!! Very happy customer and I am buying 2 more!

This actually works very well. I've had it for maybe a couple weeks now and so far it seems to be doing a good job. However, you really need to understand how to operate it properly to get the best results. Here are some notes to take into consideration: 1. It works best in the low humidity, but it's going to gradually increase the humidity in the room as it runs. 2. It's not going to cool the room like an air conditioner would, but if you have ice around it will cool similar to an a/c while it's using the ice. It actually gets to the point where you need to shut it down from getting the room too cool, but not when it's running only on water. 3. The water basin holds a lot of water. I've been using a 6 gallon plastic water bottle and a battery operated water pump. It makes it super easy to fill. If not, you'll need to have maybe a 2 gallon container to fill it. 4. One of the things I don't like is that you can get a slight odor in the air. I don't believe this is from the actual unit, but from the water when it adds humidity to the air. I'm going to try one of those aromatherapy diffusers, but it doesn't arrive until today. Hopefully this will help keep the air smelling fresh. 5. The unit will work with or without the window open. I do both because you get the fresh air from outside circulating. However, it will add humidity to the air faster with the window closed, which can sometimes make the room more comfortable if it's typically dry. All-in-all, it works great. There's just a learning curve to understanding what it will and won't do, plus how to set it up. Would recommend for sure. :-)

Update Year 3. My girlfriend asked on a hot day, why aren't you using the swamp cooler. So I cleaned it off and filled it up. Oh yeah the pump doesn't work. It probably stopped working the first year which is why I didn't use it since then. At first I was pleased that it had stopped dumping water out of the back, but this was only because the pump was failing. So I ordered a replacement pump. No refunds on the pump. Honeywell must know what junk this thing is. I took off the back and thought well, I'll also fix the depth indicator (this had never been installed. Impossible to get to. I want to just throw the whole thing out (and never buy another Honeywell anything ever again). But I can't cancel the pump I ordered yesterday that won't arrive for for another 10 days. (They claim it was already shipped. I ordered it 6 pm Saturday, it's 3:30 pm Sunday) Update: 1 Year. It leaks out of the soaker frame in the back-all over the floor. Can only be used outside. No reason this suddenly started happening. It's not an easy fix. The low fill door and missing water level gauge has been a huge annoyance. It would have been so easy to put a large funnel on the top for filling. There are inexplicable button combinations that disable speed. Default On is fan, not cooling. Bottomline? This unit just seems badly designed in many wrong ways. Update: One month. Cleaning. There doesn't seem to be anyway, other than through the fill door to get my hand, and a sponge to the bottom of the tank. There seems to be no instructions for cleaning it out. TIP: before buying any evaporative cooler Google how to clean it first. Honeywell only seems to have marketing happy talk. General instructions for this type of cooler are not useful because there's no way to get inside this model. I've only run reverse osmosis water, and ran maybe 12 gallons through in the past month, last weekend after I filled it up I noticed gunk floating around in the water. So it needs cleaning out on a regular basis. Not a big deal-- if you can gain access. Old review: I just received this and got it working. What I immediately noticed: Instead of one useless user manual, there are two. There's also a Honeywell video, don't bother: You already know what a swamp cooler does. You can read the buttons on the top of the machine. That's all the video covers. A complete waste of time. What is the capacity of this? I think it's about 6 gallons, but I couldn't find anything in the manuals or the website that cover this. The water level window seems pretty useless (that's because the indicator needle is sitting loose on the bottom of the tank. ) I put in at least three gallons and it doesn't even register at the Minimum. It takes a lot of water, but the water intake door is just OK at best. They could've easily designed a huge funnel as the side panel to raise the point you add water, and so you could add water as fast as you can pour. ) It cools by adding water to the air, that water evaporates which requires heat, so the air cools. If you use this in a closed room, the humidity will rise to the saturation point and no more cooling will occur. I'm using this in Los Angeles where humidity levels are 45% to 60%, though the first day I used this the report was 84%. It's worked pretty good across this range. The output fan is strong, the output temperature is about 10 degrees F below the temperature of the intake air. It sits next to an open door, so it's not recirculating room air. This should give you an idea of how well this will work. It sits near where I work on my computer, at low the air flow is pretty high, so if you need a swamp cooler for just one person in one basic position, then this unit is probably too large 500 CFM, half would probably do it. I remain annoyed about the fill method and it arriving with a broken fill level indicator. (Using the levered needle is pretty stupid design. The fill level window is very low on the unit. There's a float right next to this stupid fill level window. So why even use a float and a lever if the level window is so low on the unit???? With a float or levered indicator needle it would be dead simple to show the level right at the top of the unit where it could be easily read. Also the ice compartment at the top. It would not be at all difficult to add a little flap and make this the fill point-it's huge compared to the stupid little flap on the side. Anyone at Honeywell paying attention????)

This is the second Honeywell Indoor/Outdoor Portable Evaporative Cooler I bought this summer, because I liked the first one I bought so much. I bought the first one at a big box hardware store, because the days were hot and the price was the same as on Amazon. I like this unit because it is portable and powerful. The unit sends a cooling breeze easily across my living room. Remember this is not an air conditioner, so you won't get super cold air from it. Also, you don't want to leave the windows shut when you operate it, otherwise you will just build up humidity. Anyone who has used an evaporative cooler before will understand this concept. I bought this unit to replace a large window evaporative swamp cooler. I didn't want the swamp cooler taking up my window anymore and it seemed to get very dirty over the summer. It also never seemed to fully suit my cooling needs throughout the house. I felt a portable unit would benefit me so that I could use it in different rooms. After using this a while, I did feel that I could benefit more from the portability if I got a second unit. It has worked out better that way.It has taken a while to get used to where to position the two units to get the best results and also how to optimally use the water cooling. After you fill the cooler up with water, be careful when moving it, because you can easily tip it over. For an elderly person, this may not be the best choice. Filling the unit up with water throughout the day and cleaning the unit periodically is probably too much maintenance for an elderly person also. The cooler has three speed settings and a variable speed setting (called Natural Breeze). I don't consider the variable changes in speed to be that good a feature. I find it more annoying and worrying that it would be hard on the operation of the unit. When you set the fan speed to high it is fairly noisy, so you just have to turn the TV up more. You can use the unit as a fan only or turn the water on for the cooling. A nice feature is the Swing, which oscillates the fan. I have not used the timer feature, but you can set a timer for the unit to shut off after a half hour, an hour, 2 hours, or 4 hours. I like the remote control that comes with the unit. With the remote you can turn the unit on, change the speed, turn the cool on/off, turn the Swing on/off, and set the timer. A couple of nice features for the cooling aspect is being able to put ice in the tray at the top where the water drains down over the cooling pad. This does help some when it is super hot outside. The ice does melt quickly. I have found that it also helps to keep a water jug in the refrigerator to use later to fill up the unit with cold water. The other cooling feature is the adjustment knob for the amount of water the pump dispenses over the cooling pad. This may help with too much humidity being built up or keep the ice from melting too fast. The cooling pad seems much more sturdy and dependable than cooling pads for regular swamp coolers. It seems like it could last for a couple seasons or more. There are couple of problems with it in that it does get dirty and is difficult to clean and that Amazon does not offer replacement pads. At this point I don't know where I would get a replacement pad other than directly from Honeywell. You do have to clean the unit fairly frequently and probably more if you have hard water, like I do. The unit does get dirty (although not as dirty as an outdoor swamp cooler) and there can start to form scale film on the blade. You should plan on a regular cleaning schedule of the unit throughout the season. There is little suggestion in the instructions on cleaning methods or how to keep hard water scale deposits from forming or how to clean them off. They suggest for these kind of deposits that you contact a service center. I would suggest this unit for someone who understands that this is not a set it and forget it type of unit. You must understand that you will need to find the right location, adjust the water for your rooms needs, leave windows open to some extent, fill the unit with water throughout the day, and clean it on a regular basis. It may seem like a lot to think about, but once you get it set up correctly for you situation it works well.

This unit works very well. I have a small (under 500 SF) 1 BR apartment in L A - the building was built in 1940, so the insulation isn't good and the kitchen and bedroom windows are single pane glass and they have a crank handle to open them - so there's no way to install a small window A C . Also, I'm on the 2nd floor with windows facing west so in summer I get the full afternoon sun from 2-7 pm- The air from my living room A C doesn't reach the BR or kitchen. I bought 1 unit for my BR - works great - really keeps the room cool when we have 80 plus days in the summer. It has a really good fan speed which circulates the air through the entire room ( even though it's designed for 300 SF I found through having other units it works well for 1 room) The trick is to keep the water cold - so during the day I replenish the tank with COLD water but don't fill it completely and at night make sure it's a little low, so that in the daytime I can add really cold water again- I saved several gallon plastic milk jugs, and keep them filled and refrigerated and put them in the freezer for a bit before filling the unit - you can also add ice cubes easily on the smaller side door. Being able to pour water into the top compartment is also a great design feature. I bought a 2nd unit for the kitchen as I had purchased the Honeywell CSO71AE 15 Pt. unit designed for 100 SF - It didn't work well at all - very weak fan speed and it didn't help cool a 42 SF Room. This unit really does the job.

Cooling power of this device is pretty low. With ice in the top compartment the supply air flow temperature is about 72F. So if like me, you have a sunny and hot room at 83-85 degrees that you need to cool down to 80 or so, Honeywell Indoor Portable Evaporative Cooler will do just that. It takes about an hour and a half to drop the temperature 3-4 degrees at highest speed. I purchased this cooler as a supplemental device to drop 3-5 degrees in one hot room in the house. It does that job OK. The biggest complaint about the unit is the noise level. At high and medium speed this thing is extremely loud and at low speed it is inefficient. I can't stay anywhere near the room where cooler is running, because it's so loud. I turn it on and go to an opposite side of the house or to the outside patio, while it cools down the room. One important note. This cooler has a "sleep" mode, which may mislead you. In my experience with other humidifiers and heaters, sleep mode usually means some extra low noise mode allowing you to run it in the bedroom. With this device it is totally different. When sleep mode is chosen, cooler runs one hour at high speed, then another hour at medium speed and then turns to low speed, which is not sleepy quiet by any means. So I don't know what Honeywell engineers thought about while programming this mode. Design is dated and won't compliment any room. Remote control is pretty useless, because you can't stay in the same room with the cooler. Overall this is OK device, which has limited use. But for some people it may be helpful. I happened to be one of those.

Edit after 2nd purchase: Easy to clean out. After having it stored over winter it got a little funky. I bought this last year when I was pregnant and we did not use the a/c due to costs. This was AMAZING to have during those hot flashes during summer. It takes the edge off of the heat, and makes a room comfortable. We have also used it since it started getting hot here a couple months ago. It gave out and started making a horrible LOUD whistle/squeek. My husband couldn't find any repair manuals online or replacement parts (not sure how hard he looked) we went without it for 2 weeks and it was noticeably hotter and very dry in our house. We have allergies and this helps. It's easy to fill with water and ice. The settings are appropriate. It is loud but not uncomfortably loud. It becomes a white noise in the background. We decided to buy the same unit because we really like it! 1st review: Works very well. Cools down the room. We live in CA in the dry heat. Packaging was done well and arrived , product arrived with no damage.

I liked it just fine last year when I first got it. However, this summer when I got it out to cool my old mobile home rental it's water pump quit working properly in the 95+ heat we were having. It had begun to be over 100 a bit over 2 weeks ago where I live. The heat began to overcome me. A forest fire was causing our neighborhood to be evacuated so a neighbor had come by to check how I was getting along with my evacuations and found me on my bedroom floor overcome by the heat. I was taken to a hospital in Fresno, Ca for the rest of that weekend and then transferred to a Care home on the 5th of August in Oakhurst, CA in order to get myself stabilized. I won't be able to leave here until tomorrow, August 22nd. It has been two weeks out of my life trying to get better. Luckily I have had someone there to take care of my 5 furry kids. However, I missed a visit from my daughter and grand -daughter. They had to go home 4 hours from me while I have been here. The price of that unit is a bit above what a poor single woman like myself can really afford. I would have it sent back, but I could' afford or manage it easily.

Positives - 22.0L is the actual usable capacity - water pump rate control ( control humidity/cooling level ) - removable and washable prefilter and pad - works as an air filter as well (can trap viruses) - 1.26L per hour on low/min fan speed and max water flow rate - pad wicking humidification ( no hard water white dust ) - fan and motor noise is 43dB on low fan speed ( 49dB max) one meter away - separate ice loading compartment on top of the unit - infrared controllable ( therefore, wifi controllable/programmable with a separate 3rd party infrared/wifi unit ) - infrared sensor is sensitive (good angle, distance ranges & may not need to be direct) - casters/wheels can be replaced by 3" after market standard office chair casters (no brakes) Negatives - no factory warranty in Canada unless bought from Canadian Tire - power on to standby only not to the last setting ( won't resume to last setting after power outage ) - low fan speed is too powerful ( consuming 140 watts and generating 43 dB of motor/fan noise one meter away ) - may be too noise for small bedrooms - depth and width of the unit made it bulky ( more height instead would be better ) - no humidity/temp sensor (no auto mode based on conditions) - "sleep mode" means the fan set to high for 1h then med for another 1h then continue on low - water holding compartment is not sealed ( water will spill when moving the unit full of water )

I bought this for the daycare centre as the weather was super hot in Vancouver at the time. It is super easy to use and works great and is quiet when in use. We love it and highly recommend this Honeywell Evaporated Air Cooler!! Janis

Terrible product!! Design is flawed as water filling door is located lower than max fill line. This makes it so that the product can not be filled according to directions. The cooler also leaked water through the seams creating a huge mess. Overall cheaply made with flawed design. Do not buy this product.

I have only been operating this unit for about two weeks so I can't speak for its performance over the long term but so far I am impressed. It seems well designed and solidly constructed. I am impressed with the fit and finish and it operates well. This was well worth the purchase price.

Even if you add cold water and ice, an evaporative air conditioner will not cool you off in a semi-arid climate because it's still too humid of a place. On super hot days (anything above 29 degrees) it will make your room even hotter due to the added humidity the cooler produces. I exchanged it for a 14,000 BTU portable air conditioner.