Best portable air conditioners
Why buy a portable air conditioner, and what to look for?
If you don't want the hassle of a window air conditioner, the best portable air conditioners can be a great alternative. But be aware that portable air conditioners are not rated by ENERGY STAR so you may wind up with a convenient but wasteful portable air conditioner.
Let's start with the basics of how portable air conditioners work.
Types of portable air conditioners
There are two types of portable air conditioners:
Condenser-based portable air conditioners operate like a window air conditioner, with a refrigeration cycle that cools indoor air and exhausts the heat to the outside, usually through a window vent that easily attaches to any window. Condenser-based portable air conditioners remove moisture from the air as well, as dry air feels cooler than moist air.
Evaporative portable air conditioners use evaporation to cool the air. They draw outside air over water, causing some of the water to evaporate. Since evaporation is a cooling process, the moist air coming out of the air conditioner is considerably cooler than the dry air coming in from outside, so your house will feel cool and a little humid.
Evaporative portable air conditioners are ideal for very dry hot weather such as in the US southwest, Australia, or the dry season in tropical countries. They are generally 2-3 times more efficient than condenser-based portable air conditioners, but only in dry weather. You really don't want to use one of these if you're trying to cool a room in very humid weather; it won't cool much, and it will make the humidity worse.
Evaporative air conditioners tend to me much cheaper than condenser-based portable air conditioners because there is no refrigerant or condenser pump. Most are available for under $200, just make sure an evaporative unit makes sense for your local humidity level. They are also much more energy efficient than condenser-based units, in areas where they are appropriate. There are no EER ratings for evaporative air conditioners.
I won't cover evaporative air conditioners below this section. Here are a few units you might want to look more closely at:
EdgeStar High Velocity Portable Air Cooler Fan with Humidifier (shown above)
- Surround
Evaporative Air Cooler by Symphony
- about $190
-
Unistar 4-in-1 Swamp Cooler with Ionic Air Purifier
- about $99
Convenience of portable air conditioners
In terms of convenience, the best portable air conditioners are ones that are easy to set up, easy to to move around, and give you the option of not having to empty the water container. Condenser-based air conditioners pull humidity out of the indoor air, which condenses on the cooler's condenser coils. Most units try to blow some or all of that condensed moisture out the window exhaust vent to the outside, but this evaporation takes additional energy so reduces the efficiency of the unit. Ideally you should look for a unit that has a tank to capture the water, and switches to exhaust mode when the tank is full. This way, when you remember to empty the tank yourself, you're saving more energy, and when you don't, you at least have the convenience of not worrying about it shutting off when the tank fills up.
You can definitely save with a portable air conditioner and have the convenience of cool air wherever you are. In just a few minutes you can move the window attachment section from a window in one room to that in another, so you can keep your bedroom cool at night, your home office cool during the day, your kitchen cool in the evening, all with a single unit. Most of them come with wheels to make them easy to move around.
Another convenient feature of the best portable air conditioners is the ability to heat as well as cool. Those with condenser-based refrigeration cycles can run the cycle backwards, and operate as a heat pump, drawing cool air from outside, extracting the heat from it, and pumping the colder exhaust air back out, while warming your rooms. Heat pump units work well as long as temperatures are above about 50F or 10C; below that temperature it is more efficient to use another form of heating.
Efficiency of portable air conditioners
The best portable air conditioners have an Energy Efficiency Ratio (EER) above 9.9. Although portable air conditioners do not seem to be covered by either US or Canadian energy efficiency standards, we can use regular room air conditioner ratings to guess at what a portable air conditioner should be able to achieve.
Unfortunately many portable air conditioners do not even have an EER rating (or none is easily found online). However I went through several dozen of the best portable air conditioners that can be purchased from Amazon.com and then looked up the EER on each, and came up with a short list of energy efficient portable air conditioners (those featured in this article).
ENERGY STAR rated room air conditioners have an EER of about 10.7 or higher below 20,000 BTU, and 9.4 or better above 20,000 BTU. So look for EER ratings in that range to get the best portable air conditioner in terms of efficiency.
Some units that fit the bill in the under-10,000 BTU range are the Amcor portable air conditioner and Haier portable air conditioners:
- Amcor
AF8000E (8000 BTU, EER 10.3)
- About $299
- Haier
HPAC9M (9000 BTU, EER 9.6)
- about $327
The best portable air conditioners in the 10,000-12,000 BTU range are:
- Whynter
SNO 12000 (12,000 BTU, EER 12.6)
with heat pump - $387
NewAir R-1000E (10,000 BTU, EER 13) - $309
- Amcor
ALTL 12000 E (12,000 BTU, EER 12.6)
- $599
All of the above five air conditioners get good customer reviews and combine high efficiency with great convenience. I especially recommend those that can heat as well as cool, as heat pump heating is usually more energy efficient than heating with gas, oil, or electricity when temperatures are cool but above freezing.
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