Negligible cooling nets Cool Surge portable air cooler a Consumer Reports Don't Buy judgment
You can buy a decent small window air conditioner for as little as $140, as we found in our July 2009 report on air conditioning (available to subscribers). Or you can spend more than twice that amount—$298—for the Cool Surge portable air cooler
(shown), which promises to cool an average-sized room "up to ten
degrees" using the same energy as a 60-watt lightbulb. (Watch our
exclusive video, below.)
The Cool Surge might sound appealing when you consider the roughly 500 watts needed to run even a small air conditioner. Ohio-based Fridge Electric LLC, which markets the Cool Surge, has even offered a two-for-one deal in full-page ads in The New York Times
and other newspapers. But our tests show that when it comes to cooling a
room, the Cool Surge is likely to disappoint you at any price.
The Cool Surge is essentially an evaporative cooler
(also known as a swamp cooler) that bases its cooling claims on a
concept thousands of years old. The unit's reservoir holds about a
gallon of water and two reusable ice packs like the kind that go into
lunch boxes and picnic baskets. The chilled water wets a curtain inside,
and a fan moves air through it much the way a breeze would blow air
through moistened fabric centuries ago. No compressor, no condenser, no
refrigerant gas.
Could that ancient principle cut it in today's "average" room? Consumer Reports
tested two samples of the Cool Surge in the same lab we use to test air
conditioners. At just over 200 square feet, our test room is actually a
tad smaller than the roughly 227-square-foot living room in a typical
new home, and, therefore, should be easier to cool. We controlled
conditions around the room to simulate an 85°F dry summer day with a
relative humidity of just 57 percent.
As we found, the phrase "up
to" in Cool Surge's cooling claims does some heavy lifting: Our string
of sensors showed the device failed to appreciably lower the room's
overall temperature during a four-hour test.
We also tested the
Cool Surge at an even drier, desertlike setting of 25 percent relative
humidity, again, at 85°F. Even in these conditions, which are suitable
for an evaporative cooler, we measured a mere 2 degrees of cooling
during the four-hour test.
Because of its negligible cooling in
our tests, we've given the Cool Surge portable air cooler our Don't Buy:
Performance Problem judgment. (The Cool Surge has a built-in heater
with a faux fireplace; we didn't test its heater nor did we test this
product for safety.)
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