Frigidaire 8,000 BTU Portable Room AC

If you're in a 3rd floor dorm room with terrible AC and a window you can't put a window AC in, this is the unit for you. It is very quiet for an air conditioner, it's quieter than the whole-house air conditioner at my parent's house (though, that unit is right outside a single-pane window and 10 years old). At it's highest fan setting, it's about as loud as a desk fan. You can hardly notice when the compressor kicks on, it isn't much louder than the fan, just a lower tone. Very comfortable to sleep next to, very unintrusive in my daily life. It cools the air, it blasts the air, it won't fall out of your window and kill someone. I got mine for $179 on sale, and at that price, it was a fantastic deal. I am very impressed by the quality and performance of this unit. For $50 more, I may be a bit more hesitant recommending it if a window air conditioner would work in your room. Since this is a portable air conditioner, it is substantially less power efficient than a window air conditioner. It uses the same amount of electricity as an 8000 BTU window unit, with an effective cooling power of only 5500 BTUs. I'm perfectly happy with that since I pay flat rate rent which includes utilities, but you may not be so lucky. Installing the exhaust panel into my window was a bit of a challenge at first since I thought I would need a hacksaw to cut the sliding plastic panel to the right size, but I was able to make it work by scoring it in the right place repeatedly (and firmly) with a utility knife and snapping it over my leg. If you have the grip strength to force a utility knife into some industrial plastic, installation will require no special tools. Just a utility knife and a #2 Phillips head screwdriver. If you'd like to be a bit more careful and less brutish with it, a $5 hacksaw from Walmart will do the job as intended. Keep in mind, this unit is HEAVY! Felt like 50lbs at least, and I had to carry it up 3 flights of stairs. If you're on the weaker or smaller side of the human size distribution, get a friend to help you. It comes in a large box and it is very heavy on the bottom side. Also, I didn't know this when I bought it, but it comes with a super nifty little remote that has an LCD display on it telling you all the current settings, and the unit beeps when you press a button on the remote to let you know it received the command. Absolutely happy with this machine, highly recommend it. And there's NO DRAINAGE OR WATER HOSE REQUIRED unless you turn it to the dehumidifier mode! Simply fantastic, my parents had an older portable AC that required you to dump a bucket of water from it every three hours. Couldn't be more satisfied with my purchase. Hats off to you, Frigidaire engineers.