The Honeywell MM14CCSBB is a 3-in-1 portable AC, dehumidifier, and fan unit that promises to keep your energy and cooling costs down while keeping you and your family comfortable during hot summer days.
First off, a little backstory. Like most of the planet, Seattle is undergoing weird weather, and this summer, like the past few, keeps reaching record highs. Because summers have historically been fairly mild, most homes in the Pacific Northwest do not have air conditioning, but now we have multiple days where temperatures get to the 90s and AC is a must. Last summer, after finally caving in about AC and in an effort to save money, I got a second hand AC unit from a local group, but quickly learned that free doesn’t necessarily mean cheap. The unit was terribly inefficient, loud, and, while it blew out cold air most of the time when I told it to, it also put out enough heat to practically counteract itself.
When the opportunity came around to review the Honeywell MM14CCSBB, I jumped on it to be as prepared as possible for the inevitable heat wave coming this year. Unfortunately, the weather proved as fickle as ever and through most of June, we had rain storms mixed in with warm days, so it wasn’t until this month that I finally got to the point where I could justify hooking up and using the Honeywell AC Unit.
Right off the bat, I was a lot happier with this AC Unit just because it looks very sleek and modern compared to the old clunker I had—a smooth, glossy face and blue lights make it look like something from the future versus the big clunky off white thing I had before.
And then came the assembly, which literally took less than five minutes. The exhaust hose snaps easily onto the unit and the window vent. Depending on your window size, there are two adjustable panels to lengthen and shorten the window vent to fit your window and it works both vertically and horizontally (though all the windows in my house have vertical openings so I didn’t actually test it the other way). Plug the unit in, pop the batteries (included) into the remote, and with a click of the power button, the AC Unit was off and running and immediately cooling us off. One cool feature about the window panel is that it comes with a hole plug so you could leave the panel in the window and detach the hose without leaving a big hole open to bugs and critters and the elements.
Not only was the living room almost instantly cooler (I put it on full blast and stood right in front of it), but even going full bore, it was silent compared to our old unit. Running the AC a few feet from our TV didn’t require more than a couple clicks up of the volume so we could continue watching our movie (it was Captain Marvel, in case you were wondering).
On that first day, it wasn’t quite hot enough to actually need full-in AC, though, so I switched over to fan mode and even just the fan circulating the cold air it had already put into the room helped immensely and kept us cool the rest of the afternoon. Since that first day a couple of weeks ago, we’ve used it several times in a few different spots in both fan and cool mode and its worked beautifully every time. We have not yet had the opportunity to try out the dehumidifier mode yet, but this is Seattle, so I’m sure we will soon enough.
One other really nice feature about this unit that probably doesn’t get enough credit is the washable filter. As a family with a variety of allergies, we have our fair share of air purifiers, humidifiers, etc. And ALL of them have filters that need to be replaced more than I’d like, and those all go into the garbage. We have been making an effort to reduce our waste, so having an easily washable filter that doesn’t need to be replaced is a BIG deal for us.
And now for the one small con I’ve experienced. As I mentioned, this is a portable unit as it has wheels, and we’ve rolled it around quite a bit. However, we have a two-story home. While this unit is super easy to move around on the ground floor, it’s pretty dang heavy, so moving it between the first and second floor is no easy feat. I did it once because one of the bedrooms upstairs gets the brunt of the sun and it was an oven in there, but I decided it wasn’t worth the effort and will be figuring out a different solution for that room (for now its just a fan and avoiding the room when its that hot). If you have multiple floors you want to cool with a unit like this, I’d recommend getting another unit for the other floor versus trying to constantly lug it up and down stairs.
