Panasonic ECONAVI Reverse Cycle Inverter CS/CU-E24DKR (7.4kW)

Bad – The indoor units look good and still work well after 5 years as long as the barrel fan and cooling fins on indoor unit don't get too clogged with dirt/dust/mould, however the noise from the fan motor is annoying, and since it happened on two different models CS-E24DKR and CS-E9CKP, we probably won't buy Panasonic again. Also, maintaining the indoor units is a difficult job and I don't like paying someone else to do it. I'd give 4 out of 5 for reliability and performance, if it wasn't for the noise problem. Our model is actually CS-E24DKR - I don't know what the difference is but it looks the same and specs are same as mentioned above (24000BTU inverter reverse cycle). When new this aircon was impressively quiet, cool and powerful fan with good features, we were very happy. After around 5 years of fairly heavy use, they still do the cooling job very well except for the noise problem. After 3 to 4 years the fan motor started making a high pitch whining, vibrating noise whose pitch varies up and down with the speed of the fan, started off only quiet, but has gradually gotten louder and louder. This same noise fault also happened on one of our bedroom aircons (2 x bedrooms Panasonic CS-E9CKP). Both the units it happened on are in use 24 hours a day for weeks/months at a time on some occasions, so we definitely abuse them. The bedroom unit started getting noisy after between 1 and 2 years use. Also, the bottom of the cooling fins on the indoor unit are quite close to the top of the drip tray leading to the drain, so a bit of fluff/dirt only a few mm in size can get caught in the small gap and ice builds up around it then blocks and fills up the drip tray, then water leaks onto your floor/bed/whatever. The water dripping problem has only happened a few times in 5 years, but it has happened with all three of our units. It's always when the unit hasn't been properly cleaned/serviced for a fair while like 6-12 months (hard to do yourself - I don't mean just the pull-out air filters).