Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)The AF-330 NewAir Evaporative Swamp Cooler with Special HEPA Air Purifier is a pretty good swamp cooler with just a couple of flaws. As with all swamp coolers, it isn't going to make your room feel air conditioned, but in dry climates, it is good to sleep with it blowing over you, or it is good to get raise the humidity levels somewhat. Now for the good stuff first about this unit.
For starters, the 13-liter water tank means that you won't have to fill it as often. Most portable swamp coolers I've owned only had a 10-liter tank which means they don't last more than 8-hours on "cool." There's also an ice tray to add ice for additional cooling effect.
Next on the plus list are the air filter system. In addition to the standard foam filter, it comes with a HEPA filter and a carbon filter. Combined with the ION setting, this really seemed to make an improvement in air quallity. After a month of use, I haven't noticed the normal "swamp stench" that swamp coolers usually get. I don't know if those filters are the reason or not, but there you go.
The fan is much more powerful than any previous portable swamp cooler I've owned. Even at the low setting, the fan works pretty good when sleeping in front of it.
The controls are pretty standard. You get the 1-8 hour timer, oscillating louver control, 3 fan speeds, "cool" function (to activate the swamp cooler function), and ION control. The unit comes with a handy remote control which handles all features, which is great for controling the unit while in bed. ^_^
There were two negatives. The biggest is adding water to the tank. The portable swamp coolers I've owned before have had a convienent port on the side of the unit were one can add a gallon of water to the tank in a few seconds. This unit has no such port. Instead, water has to be added to the top of the unit where a small section is partitioned off from the ice tray to add water. As such, it only holds a small amount of water and the drain into the tank isn't very large. So it can take a couple of minutes to empty a gallon of water into the tank. That's pretty tedious, especially when you are tired and just want to go to sleep.
The other problem I had was with the documentation. As you note, the product description proudly mentions the carbon filter. The box the unit comes in proudly mentions this. And a carbon filter comes sealed with the unit. Initially, I thought that maybe this was some sort of water filter since I've used carbon filters for fish tanks and for water pitchers. However, there is NOTHING in the documentation that says anything about the carbon filter. The regular foam air filter and the HEPA filter are mentioned, but that's it. Since it didn't seem to obviously go into the water tank (that is a bit of a pain to get to) and it did fit the back panel where the air filters are, I put it back there. But does it go before or after the HEPA filter? Some documentation would have been nice.
The final negative about the unit is purchasing replacement filters. I found none on Amazon's site. Air & Water, the company from which the unit actually came, has a website, and while ordering the unit directly from them gives you the option to purchase additional filters, their website has no place to just purchase replacement filters. That's pretty stupid if you ask me.
Bottom line: There are many good things about this swamp cooler to include the HEPA filter, carbon filter, larger water tank, ION feature, and greater fan power. The lack of a good water input port, no information about the carbon filter, and a lack of ease to aquire replacement filters weren't enough to stop me from giving this an overall "buy" recommendation.
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