Best Portable Air Conditioners
This unit can cool up to a 500 square feet space (ambient temperature and humidity may influence optimum performance). Remote control, carbon air filter, washable pre-filter, and product manual packaged inside exhaust hose.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"I've had experience with two other (different brand) 'portable' units and the main complaint with those is they didn't cool the space and the water tray needed emptying all the time. I waited one full season before writing a review as I really wanted to see how well it works. The units I've had in the past came with a sticky on one side foam strip to bridge the inevitable gap which allows air through. What you need it a shallow rimmed dish (The Ikea KALAS plate is PERFECT) and a smoothie straw (Bed Bath & Beyond) which is just wider diameter straw cut to desired length. When emptying you will need the shallow dish, a straw and a container to toss the water into so you're not dashing to the kitchen 5-10 times. With shallow dish and straw in place the larger in front person tips the unit towards the rear. The rear person says when to stop and will empty the shallow dish into the other container with out having to get up then tell the 'tipper' when to resume. What I did was to saw off a portion of the PVC slider (it was just going in the bin) and attach it like a wing between both outside holes. The same (filter) sheet I initially bought is still providing the material needed. Don't overthink it; any filter you can cut to size that's recommended for air filtration can be used."
"The window mounts that these units come with have two major issues: (1) the intake and exhaust vents are too close together, meaning that the intake will tend to suck in some of the hot air that the exhaust is pushing out, making the AC's job that much more difficult. This is especially true if you opt not to use the intake hose, because you will be pulling a vacuum on your room (air being pushed out, but not replaced with external air, meaning your room has a low pressure zone) which in turn pulls hot air in from the outside and makes it quite difficult to cool a room. The exhaust hose on these units gets super warm when the AC unit is in operation. I purchased the Reflectix DW1202504 Spiral Duct Wrap ($21 on amazon) and it was enough to do two exhaust hoses (1 for each of my AC units)."
Powerful air flow and quiet operation - Cools rooms up to 450 sq.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"I bought the AC last week after being hit with 90F weather in Southern California and because my 2nd floor bedroom facing the sun during the day makes sleeping at night unbearable. If you've ever been to Vegas, or other hotel rooms in hot climates, you know what AC's are like and I find the noise level pretty comparable and tolerable. The only thing I've done is vacuum the filter foam at the back of the AC from accumulated dust and cat hair (this is normal). I threw out the old weather stripping foam and just bought a new package for the summer because it would adhere better to my window and setting it up again wasn't too much of a hassle. My routine is to turn on the AC about 30 min before I plan to sleep just because my window faces the hot sun most of the day and it takes a little while to cool the room down."
"We don't have a window in our living room so my husband came up with a genious solution: letting the hot air vent blows into the fireplace (see picture) & it works great!"
"I have not had it in operation more than a few days, but it's working just fine in that short period of time. I'm using a Dryer Vent with a galvanized 5 to 4 inch coupler I found on Amazon for 10 bucks."
"UPDATED VIDEO demonstrating unit off with ambient noise of room, then turned on."
"If you are wondering what this unit will be like: how it will sound, the level of cold it produces, etc."
"Replaced an LG unit which no longer cools."
"Then they asked for pictures of the product number, the air conditioner itself, and to provide pictures of the ventilation. They then asked me to resend the product number picture, they said it was to blurry and they could not make out the number. I resent the product number.They wanted details of where the air conditioner was located."
"Bought 2 last year, both broke down within the same year, very cheap components."
12,000 BTU portable air conditioner with no-bucket design cools areas up to 450 sq.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"This is the story of our Honeywell MN12CES Portable Air Conditioner. We purchased this portable air conditioner on July 17, 2016 during a heat wave for our apartment bedroom. We live in an apartment with a wall air conditioner in the living room and the bedroom gets really hot in the summer time (89-91 degrees). We run our air conditioner year round and keep the apartment between 64-68 degrees whenever possible due to allergies. When you open the box, the following is inside: Honeywell MN12CES portable air conditioner unit; Remote control; 1 plastic window bracket panel adapter; 2 plastic pins; 1 plastic hose connector; and one plastic hose. I'm not huge on home improvement products, and I talked with a guy near the air conditioners who showed me a kit that would fit my window which was $200! Having just shelled out over $400 for an air conditioner, I wasn't about to spend $200 on a window kit. When the window bracket kit arrived, I paid close attention to the bracket included with the air conditioner and it has these tiny, thin, flimsy, lightweight plastic "pins" that hold the bracket together. You snap the hose on the back of the air conditioner, snap the window bracket panel adapter onto the other end of the hose, and then the adapter is what snaps into the window bracket. When you are figuring out where to position your air conditioner, keep in mind that the exhaust hose cannot be at a ninety degree or any type of steep angle, or the exhaust doesn't properly vent out and can break your air conditioner. You want it to kind of make a "ramp" from your window to the back of your air conditioner. With the air conditioner ready to go, we turned it on, set it to air conditioner mode, turned it down to 62 degrees, closed the bedroom door and left the room at a hot 89 degrees. Apparently bedroom circuit breakers in our apartment building are 15 amps, and this air conditioner was not happy with the 15 amp breaker at all. I had always heard/read that you SHOULD NOT use an extension cord with an air conditioner, apparently that's because people buy a low quality extension cord and plug in their air conditioner and it ruins the air conditioner. We turned the air conditioner back on and the bedroom temperature was now 93 degrees. 2 and a half hour later, the bedroom was a cozy 68 degrees with an outdoor temperature of 109 and a living room temperature of 78 with a wall air conditioner. This air conditioner actually cools better than our wall air conditioner in the living room. In temperatures up to 118 degrees outside, this air conditioner keeps the bedroom a cozy 68-72 degrees when it's set to 62 degrees. In the winter time, this air conditioner keeps our bedroom 51-56 degrees which is perfect comforter weather and we run the air conditioner instead of the heater in the winter months. We run our air conditioner 24/7/365 at 62 degrees. The awesome thing about this air conditioner is that there is NO water to drain out, and no condensation build up on the air conditioner cabinet. This unit will dehumidify up to 70 pints of water a day, so if the humidity in your room causes more water than that, you probably need a dehumidifier, or at the very least you'll have to drain the air conditioner. In the winter months, the air conditioner created a new problem because it adds a significant amount of cool moisture to our bedroom. The humidity in our bedroom jumped from 31% prior to owning this air conditioner to 86% after owning this air conditioner. In our last apartment we had a window air conditioner (which aren't allowed in our current complex) and it was much louder. If you don't like noise, you will notice this air conditioner while it's running. We cleaned the air conditioner regularly, kept it dusted, changed the filter often, and the air conditioner happily cooled our bedroom."
"Fast easy setup for IQ over 60; doesn't make too much noise, unless you're used to living in the forest atop a great mountain in eternal winter; blows cold air forcefully; keeps my 450 sq ft, 11 ft ceiling Brooklyn studio at 72-74 in 90 degree heat."
"This Honeywell Portable Air conditioner had exceeded my expectations. The other nice feature is that when the unit is not being used you can take the exhaust pipe out of the window for when its cold out, or for security so that you can lock your window."
"Best air conditioner I've ever had."
"I have a small Window A/C in my bedroom.The other window fans got too heavy to lift.We live up North and only use these part time.All and all I like it.Noise wise sometimes on high it can bother me when I first got it I moved it for TV viewing.Installing was easy.I think any A/C or fan is going to make noise."
"The unit is working well in the second floor of our split-level small 1500 sq. can make this unit work extra hard because we are cooling about 400 sq feet of the house by closing off the two bedrooms and the bathroom on this upper floor. This caused my window adapter pieces to crack when they hit the concrete floor in the garage."
Best Window Air Conditioners
Frigidaire's FFRA0511R1 5,000 BTU 115V Window-Mounted Mini-Compact Air Conditioner is perfect for cooling a room up to 150 square feet. 5,000 BTU mini-compact air conditioner for window-mounted installation uses standard 115V electrical outlet (Window mounting kit included).
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"I can not sleep through and entire night with the unit set to High Cool and maximum setting of 7."
"Took only about 20 minutes to install, does a GREAT job of cooling my small bedroom."
"We live in Maine and central air isn't really a common thing up here, but I wanted our guest to have the option for AC while they stayed with us as we can have hot and humid days on occasion. Anyways, with that said, I am defiantly no pro on AC's, but I can say it did the job it was supposed to do and has exceeded my expectations and it kept my guest happy."
"This is about as bare bones an air conditioner you will find."
"per hour unit works very well in cooling my sister in laws home office. No single circuit wall socket required. Keep direct sunlight through the windows to a minimum on days with an outside temperature of 90 F. or higher. This unit is not made to cool an entire floor of a home, but does a great job in one room of a house."
"The a/c comes with instructions, a top bar secured with screws that keeps the a/c from falling out of the window, foam strips, screws, and accordion side pieces to fill in the spaces. For extra security, my husband put a narrow piece of wood into the window above the a/c to ensure no one could open the window further from the outside."
"If I put in on Low Cool and number 4 to 5 it keeps the room at a steedy 71 degrees all night!!"
"Not sure if that's intentional or not, but it cools my little 7x11 room on hot New York days well enough (we don't have air conditioning, so I needed something). Bottom line: inexpensive but effective air conditioner, good for cooling a smaller room."
Best Split-System Air Conditioners
Pioneer newest ways series wall mount mini split ductless Inverter air conditioning and heat pump system. Smart buyers choose pioneer brand Inverter split systems for their top quality, reliability and performance, available at extremely affordable prices. Ultra high efficiency Inverter+ Ductless mini split heat pump system.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"I installed the main line, 12/2 UF cable, (14/2 would have worked too for those who will bring the wire size up), running it to a junction box just outside the house where I further branched to an A/C disconnect box and then on to the outside unit itself. Next came mounting the bracket to the wall for the inside unit and drilling the 2.5" hole through the wall for the line set to exit the house. Once the hole was drilled I then set out to connect the control cable to the inside unit so it could be ran outside the house with the refrigerant line set. First off, the color codes on the control wire and the diagrams on both the inside unit and outside unit were all completely different! For a few long minutes it was a head scratcher and then it dawned on me that the terminals on both the inside and outside unit had stickers on the wire terminal blocks, with the inside unit having the numbers 1-3 and the symbol for ground and the outside unit with numbers 1-3, L and N for Line and Neutral. The next problem I had was the control wire had pre-crimped connectors on both ends that would not fit the terminal block on the inside unit so I had to cut the connectors off in order to attach them to the terminal block on the inside unit. After that, most of the "grunt" work was done and I had a friend who is a recently retired HVAC guy help with the rest of the install which included leak checking and pulling a vacuum on the line set prior to release of the refrigerant. I purchased one of the line hide kits and it worked well just wish it came with a 90 degree adapter, due to the way I have the set up I was only able to use half of the hide (for the vertical run) and will probably do like many others and get a section of plastic gutter for the horizontal run of the line set."
"I researched every mini-split system on the market and based on reviews this Pioneer system seemed to be the clear winner. Also, buy a trim kit for the outside hoses and have it BEFORE you install it because if not you won't know where to hang the brackets between the trim pieces. I'm still figuring this issue out but I wish I would have ordered the trim kit at the same time as the system because the installer could have attached the hose trim pieces during installation."
"Sure I would have just hung the coils out of the wall and called it day but to make it nice you really need to do some bending and cutting, at least in my situation. What you will need is a pipe cutter, flaring tool, torque wrench (if you want to go by the book) and crows fittings for your lineset size, crescent wrenches, nylog (though it does come with lineset sealant I wanted the good stuff), some sort of mounting pad, cement blocks (to raise it off the mounting pad),pipe bender for sharp bends (we did ours slowly all by hand because I bought the wrong size), vacuum pump (go 5cfm or higher for longer length), manifold gauges, micrometer (for the sticklers I am told), nitrogen to pressure test and the regulator for it (I was going to skip this part but my brother-in-law brought it with him so we did it), all the electrical equipment like volt meter, conduit, breakers, wires, etc. Last thing, you need to raise it off the pad, as it comes its too low and the outside drain section hits the ground (used in heat mode), hence the cement bricks."
Best Through-the-Wall Air Conditioners
Place AC Unit on floor and secure Top Rail to top of unit Install Accordion Panels; gently pull back from center of each Panel to widen slightly Place AC Unit and Panels into window opening and use Level to straighten position; when straight, close window opening behind Top Rail, then extend Panels out against window frame Install Support Brackets to secure AC Unit into window, using Level again to straighten position. BEST PERSONAL OR RV AIR CONDITIONER - 5000 BTU window AC unit for 110V/120V electric outlets measures 16 inches long x 12 inches high x 15.4 inches deep - ideal for window length between 23” - 36” with minimum window height 13”.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"My central Air does not cool my bedroom and this is perfect for my 12X15 foot room."
"Great smaller air conditioner for a wonderful price."
"This little cooler unit is the perfect size for our bedroom!"
"If you live in a really hot area, then run it all through the night and it will cool off a pretty big room into the next day."
"I purchased this hOme air conditioner unit right after lighting took out my central air at home."
"We have a three story home and the top level gets unbearably hot in the summer even though we have central air conditioning."
"The only thing I wish is that it had vertical up and down wind control in addition to the horizontal (left and right) wind control which the unit has."
"During the cold months I simply remove and place it back in its box for storage until it gets warm again."
Best Evaporative Coolers
An evaporative air cooler offers an energy efficient cooling option when the air is hot with low humidity, such as desert areas like the southwestern United States (recommended humidity level is 60% or less for maximum efficiency). Not just a Fan – Air Cooler reduces temperature through water evaporation.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"It works best in the low humidity, but it's going to gradually increase the humidity in the room as it runs. It actually gets to the point where you need to shut it down from getting the room too cool, but not when it's running only on water. I've been using a 6 gallon plastic water bottle and a battery operated water pump. I don't believe this is from the actual unit, but from the water when it adds humidity to the air. However, it will add humidity to the air faster with the window closed, which can sometimes make the room more comfortable if it's typically dry."
"When you start to get a funny smell I drain, add distilled white vinegar and wash the media once per month. I put the media (filter) outside in the sun to "deodorize" to avoid odor. I had the ceiling fans running and place this in my living room allowing the air to be evenly distributed throughout my home. The pictures I included are the unit running solely on room temperature distilled water with no ice. I love how the level meter is "float" controlled by the water in the tank. This gives a more accurate reading since adding ice will add to the water level. It has water that runs over the ice to help melt it and it REALLY cools the air down very quickly."
"First off, I will point out that this unit is a Swamp Cooler (also known as an Evaporative Air Cooler), ** NOT ** an Air Conditioner. I couldn't help but notice after reading through many Swamp Cooler reviews written by other customers that many people (1) simply don't know the difference between the two, and (2) don't know that Swamp Coolers will work well ONLY in DRY climates (where the relative humidity is 40% or less a good part of the day). Therefore, before I jump into the review on this product, I feel it's necessary to address: (1) the difference between a Swamp Cooler and an AC and (2) whether a Swamp Cooler will work in the climate in your area. If you're well-acquainted with Swamp Coolers, you may wish to skip the following sections titled "The Difference Between A Swamp Cooler and an AC" and "Will A Swamp Cooler Work For You?" Indoor Portable Evaporative Air Cooler." -----------------------------------------------. The Difference Between A Swamp Cooler and an AC. -----------------------------------------------. (i) AC: An AC cools air by using a refrigerant (older ACs/refrigerators use a CFC-based refrigerant called r-12, AKA "freon" while modern day counterparts use an HFC-based refrigerant called R-134A). (ii) Swamp Cooler: In a swamp cooler, outside air (dry air) is passed through a pad soaked in water. As opposed to an AC system, which can be a closed system (i.e. the expelled cooled air can be channeled back into the AC to be cooled again), an evaporative cooler needs to take in air from the OUTSIDE and the indoor air needs to be expelled outside (the expelled air, which has been humidified through the evaporative process, has to be directed away from the Swamp Cooler air intake to prevent it from being reintroduced into the swamp cooler). Let's get concrete: To show you EXACTLY how much cooling you expect a swamp cooler to deliver when it's used in your area, I have uploaded an Evaporative Cooler Chart from an almanac to the Customer Image section on the Product Page. For example, let's say the air temperature is 102 F. Using the chart, we can see that for a dry area where the relative humidity is 25%, a swamp cooler can bring the air temperature down to 77 F. If, however, the swamp cooler is used in an area with a relatively high humidity of 75%, a swamp cooler would only bring the air temperature down to 95 F! Indoor Portable Evaporative Air Cooler. Indoor Portable Evaporative Air Cooler. -----------------------------------------------------------------------------. The Honeywell is my second evaporative cooler. I've had another swamp cooler before -- one made by NewAir -- NewAir AF-330 Evaporative HEPA Swamp Cooler. You cannot expect this unit to work indoors in a closed environment because as the humidity builds up (the evaporative process needed for cooling introduces humidity into the air), the swamp cooler becomes less and less efficient."