The Best Portable Air Conditioner Wirecutter Reviews. Pull Quote. A dual hose portable AC usually cools a room faster, using less energy overall, than a single hose design, especially in very hot weather. Good news, Captain Planet The most energy efficient portable air conditioners are also the best portable air conditioners. Yes, they help keep your electric bill in check, but they also cool faster and keep you more comfortable. Thats always a good thing, but especially in brutally hot and humid weather, where an inefficient AC may not do much at all. We considered only models with a dual hose design and a high energy efficiency ratio EER. EHow Auto gets you on the fast track with repair, maintenance, and shopping advice. Whether youre jump starting a battery or insuring a new car, we can help. Those two specs have the biggest, broadest impact on efficiency and cooling ability. A dual hose portable AC usually cools a room faster, using less energy overall, than a single hose design, especially in very hot weather. In more moderate heat, the dual hose advantage shrinksbut theyre almost never less efficient. The DOE concluded that dual hose models use about 1. During our research, dismissing all the single hose models cut the field of candidates from 1. We then eliminated all models with an EER below 9, leaving us with 1. The EER spec is measured as the Btu rating divided by the maximum wattage. An EER around 1. 0 is pretty good, though weve seen it as high as 1. Picking an air conditioner portable or otherwise that needs less energy for the same cooling power is just a commonsense thing to do. But the stakes are a little higher for portable ACs because of all the other inefficiencies. A model that uses less energy also has less heat to radiate back into the room, doesnt need as much air to cool the condenser, and potentially draws less infiltration air. The advertised EER never holds up in the real world, but were confident enough that a higher EER is a decent baseline spec for better performance and lower energy use. We then homed in on models with the strongest owner ratings, because good ratings usually indicate good reliability. But in general, portable ACs have mediocre reviews, with even the best liked models barely earning an overall rating of four stars out of five, in the same sad company as inkjet printers. The best window units earn a solid 4. However, a few portable AC models are rated much worse than others, often because owners report that their plastic parts become brittle and crack after just one summer. So we cut the lowest rated models of the bunch. A fair price for a portable AC with these features is somewhere in the range of 4. Paying more doesnt get you any worthwhile advantages that we can find. Paying less usually means youre stuck with a single hose unitthey have their place, but theyre not the best choice for most people. Other specs and features did not factor much into our decisions. Cooling capacity, measured in Btu, seems important but had almost no impact on our choice. Efficient dual hose models with decent owner ratings all fall between 1. Btu. Even if you have a smaller room, we think this is the right range to look at. These models are better designed than the cheaper, lower Btu models, and they also tend to be the best selling sizes at most retailers anyhow. The DOE found PDF that because portable ACs are much less effective than advertised, weaker units may barely work at all in very hot weather. And Consumer Reports determined that portable ACs struggle to cool as much space as theyre advertised to cool. Just go big with a portable AC. Dehumidification capacity is irrelevant, because just about every portable AC is rated to remove more moisture than a dedicated whole house dehumidifier, and they all work equally well. Evaporation style doesnt matter, either Unless youre in a brutally muggy climate, the moisture will just self evaporate through the hoseand in case that doesnt work, every model uses a similar drain scheme. Modes and controls hardly vary from model to model, so that wasnt a major factor for us. Same with refrigerantevery current model uses the same R4. A refrigerant. We did want to have manageable portability weve found in tests that weight is much less important for portability than the design of the casters. We settled on three finalists that were priced fairly and widely available at the time of our research, purchased them, and brought them in for testing the Whynter Elite ARC 1. DS, the Whynter ARC 1. S, and the Avallon APAC1. S. We did not test the Elite ARC 1. DHP, because the air conditioning components are identical to the ARC 1. DS, according to Whynter. 3. Conventional AC Units Will Not Fit. If you have air conditioner window units, they will not fit in casement windows. Window units fit best in doublehung. Learn How to Install a Haier Portable Air Conditioner into a Sliding Window. This guide gives homeowners a better understanding of the most common costs associated with window and door professional services like replacement, repair and. With the launch of the Xbox One X only a few months away Microsoft needs an interim win to keep people interested in the console that is currently in a very distant. Portable air conditioners are fineif you have no other way to get comfortable. Compared with other types of room ACs such as window or inwall units, portable.
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