I looked at past threads yet those machines had exhaust hoses to let the heat generated by an air compressor out of the room.
I’ve reinstalled a Windows 11 machine and of course the opening page for msn.com is full of useful news and information, including an ad for what essentially is a tower fan (no hoses visible) that blows cool air and I think it even operates from rechargeable batteries.
I can only think of two ways this can work: You occasionally connect a can of freon or pour ice cubes in. Neither are mentioned or visible in the ad.
This is impossible, correct? What kind of device would I get if I buy this?
I’ve seen similar ads. I haven’t investigated, but I think they work by a company taking your money and putting it in their pockets. Either that, or they found a way to violate the second law of thermodynamics. (Or, to be fair, it’s what you suggested: you put something cold in 'em and they run a fan past the cold stuff.)
Without seeing the device in question and assuming it isn’t just a fan marketed as a “cooler,” it’s likely a form of swamp cooler: a fan blows air across a membrane that sits in a puddle of water, using capillary action to keep the membrane wet. The user fills the little water reservoir periodically and tells themselves that they spent their money on something that actually works. In reality they don’t work very well if at all. Most of them really are just fans marketed as coolers.
Maybe a swamp cooler? You should really exhaust one, but if you’re in a low humidity environment and especially if you don’t mind the room muggy they work through evaporative cooling.
BTW, after waiting for the add to show in a carousel in MSN,con if seems name brand “Outfany” and it’s on my mini Aerfaro computer and I can’t find a link. I’m sure no one was expecting Kenmore or Carrier.
I have used the ice cube “trick” behind my little USB turbo fan. Not yet hooked up Freon.
I reckon WildaBeast’s video and the lurkinghorror’s Homer Simpson quote are the answer.
Cans of freon can still be purchased - maybe it was just my R-235 that was messing up the Ozone layer and taken off the market. Ice is generally available, imported with great cost and occasional loss of life from the arctic (Simpsons ref).
This, exactly. A swamp cooler can help if you live in a hot-and-dry environment, but if your heat is accompanied by humidity, one of those inexpensive, battery-operated “mini” air conditioners will just make things feel more uncomfortable, because they’ll be adding more humidity to the air in the room, without actually cooling it off.
I thought perhaps the OP missed the pipes leading to the outside compressor and assumed the inside components were the entirety of the mini-split system.
But yeah, “no installation/venting/outside access required” are almost always underpowered swamp coolers (sometimes with ice added), standing fans with woo, or out and out frauds.
Yes, I know the OP is referencing a tower, not the mini-mini variants, but same technology (or lack of) almost all the time. At least with a tower, you’ve got a bigger fan!
ETA - of course, if it’s the same/similar to this:
Then it’s calling itself a portable air conditioner when it’s described operation is ONLY of a fan. So, more scammy than usual.
Yes, same brand and look though while usually positioned horizontally to show (in the pics on the left) the wisps of coolness that it won’t be sending out it can stand as a tower. Twice at least in that ad they use the word “cooling” and while MSN.com perhaps has a lower standard for what they advertise this being on Amazon is wrong.
On the same Amazon page in the “Products related to this item” is another item that comes with ice packs. So your freezer (presumably in another room) has expended the heat and this thing will blow cool air. It’s the same idea as me putting a pint glass of ice cubes behind my small USB turbo fan or in front/behind my other little (rechargeable!) USB fan.
I found what in every way pictured was the same device on eBay for £2.49 compared to the Amazon one at £40 (which was the same one on msn.com for I don’t recall how much)
Right- traditional air conditioners actually move heat from inside to outside via the refrigeration cycle. It’s a cool property of the way refrigerants work that they can basically take heat from the inside of the building/refrigerator, move it, and discharge it to the outside air.
The most salient point is that you have to have an “inside” and an “outside” to make it work. If you ran a window unit in the middle of your living room, it would blow hot air in one direction, and hot air in the other, and the net gain will be zero, outside of whatever heat the compressor and fan motors create.
What they could be doing is using a Peltier cooler to generate cold air and blowing it at you, while letting the hot side discharge somewhere else. That would correspond to the size of the thing, and would seem to be cooling things, even though it doesn’t really do so on a larger scale. I’ve got a dehumidifier that works that way- it basically just uses the Peltier element to condense water, but a byproduct is that the vented air often feels a little cooler than the ambient air, probably due to a mix of not discharging the hot air through the same ducts and the dehumidification. But there’s not a net cooling effect going on.
