ArticPro Air Conditioners -- Not Free, and Not the Best Choice

It's been several months since I saw an ad in the local papers from the Universal Media Syndicate, but their newest product appears to follow the pattern of their many earlier offers.

Today's Star Tribune contained this full-page ad for an ArcticPro™ portable air conditioner:


The UMS designers have outdone themselves in making the ad appear to be a free giveaway. The use of a black reversed box at top left with MINNESOTA DISTRIBUTION NOTICE and the year just above it, I would say, is designed to mimic the look of government notices, such as IRS publications. There's the usual UMS limited availability offer (only 1,573 units!), now embellished with a county-by-county listing that makes the ad look even more official.

Nowhere in the top half of the ad is a price given or the fact that you have to buy the machines even mentioned -- for instance, there's no price called out in larger type with a dollar sign anywhere in the ad, including the call to action box at lower right.

The price is there, though -- written out as "three hundred ninety-eight dollars and shipping" in two spots.


This price-hiding is typical of many UMS ads. I wonder what percent of callers start out expecting a free product, and how many of them order anyway once they hear the price? How does hiding the price help UMS sell products, aside from the chance it gives them to pressure gullible people who call based on false assumptions?

The ad includes many of the usual UMS bits of puffery: "ice cold air," the product is developed at their "highly-secured testing laboratory" even though it is "being called a work of engineering genius from the China coast."

The ad's "expert," Ryan Berry, opines that central air conditioning wastes energy because you cool parts of your home you're not using, and that window units "are even worse because they weigh so much they're nearly impossible to move."

According to Consumer Reports, however, portable air conditioners like the ArcticPro should be a choice of last resort -- they work half as efficiently as window units and don't cool nearly as well (the room used in the CR test was not cooled by a 10,000 BTU portable unit).

Hey, speaking of BTUs, how many does the ArcticPro have? Surprise! That all-important detail is not given in the ad or on the website, as far as I could tell. Other technical details are given in the FAQ, but not the BTUs. However, since the number of watts drawn is listed (900w/7.8a), I used a handy calculator to figure out that ArcticPro is a 3,073 BTU unit -- less than a third the power of the units tested by Consumer Reports, which they found insufficient to cool their test room.

The ad makes the ArcticPro unit look very portable. While it does have wheels, it's not as obvious that it weighs 60 pounds, so if you wanted to take it up a set of stairs, it's not exactly light. And while the ad does mention something about having to vent the unit, I'd bet readers are unlikely to realize they have to run a wide rubber hose from its back to a window, which has to be fitted with a plastic slot thingy that's stuck to your window with "self-adhesive foam."


Hmm, no obvious rubber hoses are pictured in the ad -- it looks as though I could just roll it anywhere, anytime --why, even a child could do it! In two of the photos, there's not even a window anywhere nearby: It looks as though the people are sitting in the middle of the room.

The inefficiency of portable air conditioners, according to Consumer Reports, is all about that hose. Because there's only one, the unit has to draw air from the room around it, and that's more inefficient than drawing air from outside. Second, the longer the exhaust hose, the more inefficient it is -- using any hose at all is bad, it sounds like, compared to a window unit that doesn't need one. The ArcticPro instructions say that the hose should run a minimum of 1.5 and a maximum of 5 feet from the window. CR says that half the energy used by these types of units is wasted.

What about noise? Again according to Consumer Reports, these types of portable air conditioners tend to be loud, since all of the noisy bits are right there in the room with you -- not even part of it is hanging outside, as with a window unit.

The ad claims that the units require "about 10¢ an hour of electricity." If it ran 24 hours a day over a month, that would be about $70 a month. As far as I can tell from looking at my electric bills, my central air costs less to run. (I calculated that by comparing a May bill, when the air conditioning is not in use, with an August bill, and the August bill was around $50 more.) Now, neither I nor a person running an ArcticPro would run it 24 hours a day, but you get the idea. It doesn't exactly support the ad's claim that "With all the money you save over central air, these high performance portable air conditioners pay for themselves in just a matter of weeks. After that, they just keep on putting cash in your pocket month after month."

One thing I can say about ArcticPro product is that it doesn't appear to be overpriced the way many of the other products sold in Universal Media Syndicate ads are, in my opinion. At $398, compared to the $650 price mentioned by Consumer Reports for a 10,000 BTU unit, it's a bargain... except that it has a third of the BTUs of the $650 units, so that's about a third less money for two-thirds less cooling. Hmm. Maybe it's not such a deal after all.

The thing to remember is this, in the final words of the Consumer Reports article: "We suggest you consider a portable unit only if having a window unit is out of the question and a split ductless system is not viable because of cost or installation concerns. If you do decide to buy a portable unit, choose a model that has two hoses and evaporates the condensed water."