Save your money when you see ads for cheap “personal air coolers” on TV

There are a handful of decent products to find in corny TV infomercials, but it’s no surprise to anyone that many of them are junk or outright worthless.

• I spent a good chunk of cash on a “cold heat” soldering iron that supposedly only worked when you touched it to metal or to the end of a long wire of lead solder.

Unfortunately, the tiny induction heater in the device wasn’t strong enough to melt solder, so it never actually worked no matter how many times I tried the wretched thing. I even looked at forum posts as recent as a few years ago and people are still complaining about these terrible things over 10 years after they were first released. But there are equally terrible products with the infamous “as seen on TV” label nowadays. For instance, my frustratingly naive brother was harping to me last week about this $20 “portable air conditioner” that he had ordered from a TV commercial. I looked it up and discovered that his $20 “portable air conditioner” is actually called a “personal air cooler,” and it’s nothing more than a micro-sized evaporative cooler. Evaporative coolers use a simple fan to push air through a wet medium, thus causing the moisture to evaporate into the air, thereby dropping the temperature in the process. But this natural cooling from moisture evaporation only works in dry climates. My brother was under the impression that he could take this tiny little evaporative cooler camping and get air conditioning inside the tent. Since our outdoor humidity here hovers above 80% in the summer, the little “personal air cooler” isn’t even going to work!
a/c serviceman