13 Best Portable Air Conditioners (Ultimate Guide 2018)

Portable Air Conditioner Buying Guide & FAQ

What is a Portable Air Conditioner?

Rather than slipping a large and bulky air conditioner into your window (which looks horrible from the outside, by the way), you’re able to freely move your unit throughout the home. Yes, it still has to be plugged in, but you aren’t constricted to only a room with windows, or a room you don’t want to be in, solely for the need to beat the heat. Running vents to the window slat is easy, and generally takes no more than two or three minutes.

They operate quieter and throw less heat, on average, than your standard window units, and provide complete freedom from wall units. Installation, weatherproofing, and maintenance (both interior and exterior), are all issues that wall unit owners face. Portable ACs still need to be cleaned and have their filters scrubbed from time to time, but don’t require the same attention that alternate units need.

In short, they move around freely, provide rivalling or superior power to window units, and allow you to just pack them up and go.

Pros of Portable AC Units Over Wall and Window Air Conditioners

• No Weatherproofing: Wall unit owners may have their reasons, but there’s nothing better than not having to weatherproof the exterior of your AC unit, and the space between it and the wall of your home.
• Non-Invasive Means: Focusing on wall units again, there’s a lot to do. You have to cut a hole in the wall, make a mount, or adjust the preexisting one to your current AC. If you end up buying a newer wall unit, you’re constricted to the size that your old one was, otherwise you risk skipping on proper insulation, making the point of air conditioning a bit useless.
• No More Rain: Window unit kits (referring to the accordion doors, plastic slats and screws, etc.), are always a pain in the neck. They take time to properly mount, and always allow condensation to form around the edge of your AC, which can ruin your windows over time. If rain is getting into your home, that means you don’t have a tight enough seal, and you’re throwing your cooling money out the window.
• Less Power on the Same BTUs: We’ll get into BTUs in a moment. As an industry standard and threshold for quality, most portable air conditioners are running on less power, and come with higher Energy Star standards than window/wall units. Saving more money, on top of saving money for better insulation—there’s virtually no downside to going for a portable versus window or wall units.

Don’t portable units with window slats/vent pipes compromise insulation and allow weather to get in?

The window slats you receive with your portable unit come at a much higher thickness than the accordion doors that come with window units, and only allow rain/moisture to access the same sections of the window that they normally would, even with the window closed. The slats usually lean far outside of the window to allow for better insulation.

Portable ACs Are Foolproof

With no 220v outlets needed and a completely foolproof cooling method, you’re getting everything in one package. There’s no room to mess up insulation or placement; you roll it into the center of the room (or your corner of choice), run your hose, plug it in, and you’re good to go. All human error is taken out of the equation; you can’t waste money with your cooling costs unless you roll it outside or leave the window open. It’s the quickest setup, with the most reliable

How do Portable ACs Work?

Let’s dive into the anatomy of a portable air conditioning unit and talk about each part. As with any unit, you have the electric motor that generates heat (ironically). This plus your coolant act as the essential heart and blood of your machine. Depending on the BTUs that your machine can generate, your machine may require more dedicated power or throw off more heat. That leads you to your vent unit—running this to the window allows the generated heat to collect in a safe area, and funnel its way outside.

Those are your working parts. Then, you come to your electrical system that lights up your control panel, or at the very least, receives commands from the buttons. Cool air runs through a separate conduit to your vents, effectively cooling off the room while you mess with the controls. The thick ABS plastic shell found on most models properly houses everything without risk of damage, while providing enough insulation to keep temperatures in the room at bay, while keeping the cool air inside.

Do You Have To Drain A Portable Air Conditioner?

With some, yes. With others no. If you think this is going to be an issue for you make sure you find out whether the portable air conditioner you have your eyes on requires manual draining or has an auto-evaporation feature.

How Do You Set Up A Portable Air Conditioner?

Setup of a portable room air conditioner is typically very simple and painless. Anyone with the ability to follow directions should have no problem. The biggest thing to keep in mind is that the heat an air conditioner removes from the air needs to be vented somewhere. If it’s simply allowed to escape back into the room the room will never get cool. Because of this a AC usually comes with a venting kit that fits in the window and accommodates a flexible hose that runs from the unit. Hot air is vented through this hose to the outdoors. This will take a few minutes to set up but once it is your unit is ready to go.

Portable Or Fixed Air Conditioning System?

When it comes to such things as home air conditioning your primary concern should be cost. Installing a central air system may make your home a uniformly delightful place to live but it may also cost so much you can’t afford a night out. One of the great benefits of the portable air conditioner is its low acquisition cost, its free installation and the fact that you’re typically cooling only a single room for part of the day or night and as such your energy bills won’t go through the roof.

Things To Consider When Buying a Portable Air Conditioner

Keep in Mind – The portable ac will need to be set up near a window so that the heat it pulls from the air can be vented to the outdoors. If the room you intend to cool doesn’t have a window you’ll either have to improvise some sort of vent or simply forget about an air conditioner. You’ll also want to be sure there’s an outlet near the window. The power cord on most units is not that long so the outlet and window should be near each other lest you need to use an extension cord, which is not such a great idea. Lastly, make sure your new unit has both a washable pre-filter and an additional carbon filter. These filter dust, mold spores and pollen from the air and make the environment healthier.

Noise Plays a Part in Your Selection  – We’re not crazy about putting everything into a crazy scientific light—if you know a thing or two about decibels, then we applaud you. Decibels or DB, as you may see them referred to on sales pages, are measurements of sound. How loud a sound is depends on the decibel quantity. For instance, a human being breathing on their own registers as about 10DB. That’s not that bad. Then, a standard air conditioner unit is roughly 50-75DB. So that’s like having all your friends sitting next to you breathing. You’re pretty familiar with how your old A/C sounded, but with a portable, you can position the hose and vents to mess with the sound just a little bit. When you’re looking at your next potential air conditioner, pay attention to the decibel rating so you know what you’re getting yourself into.

Single vs. Dual Hose - This is usually something that we, as a society of consumers, just pass right on by. This matters way more than you think in terms of personal safety and efficiency: single hose or dual hose, what’s the better option?

Single hose units are alright for small spaces, but they mess with the air pressure in your space. If you’re in a bedroom, and your door is closed, you’ll be able to feel a vacuum-like effect—however minor it may be—when you open up the door. That’s because you have all that air being sucked in through the façade of the machine, and the hot air being pushed out. Between temperature and suction, you have an odd effect. If you’re using the single hose unit in a room with other electronics, and those are on and drawing heat, you’re better off going with a dual hose unit.

Dual hose units are unique—the other hose is sucking air from outside, running it through the machine (usually there are also suction points on the bulky body of the machine as well), and this makes for a far more efficient process. However, the term portable becomes relative here. These units are sometimes a bit bigger, but they do a better job for larger spaces. You won’t feel that vacuum-like effect, but they feel more permanent than single hose units do.

BTU (British Thermal Units) and What They Mean – You found the right portable air conditioner for your needs. Budget-friendly, ergonomic design, long hose, and you like how it looks—but hold the phone, that’s not really the point. The point is that it does the job that you need it to do, and does it without interruption. That’s when you look at the BTUs on a unit, which are measured like so:

We use BTUs in the United States more than they do in the UK—go figure—but what do they represent? It’s the amount of thermal energy that needs to be properly generated. That thermal energy is used to raise the temperature of pure liquid to the prime point for water density—39F. For every BTU in a unit, you’re used just over 1K watts of energy per second. That’s why you freak out when the electric bill comes in every month.

However, BTUs are also how we decide how cold it’s going to make our room. You may notice guides that tell you how many BTUs a unit should have depending on what size room you’re going to throw it into. When you’re dealing in portables, the more BTUs there are, the higher the price tends to go. There are such things as window-mount units that exceed 20,000 BTUs. You’re going industrial there, but the point is it’s rare to find anything like that in a portable.

However, how many BTUs do you really need? Here’s a quick little chart to tell you what you should be looking out for.

• 200sq foot area – 4,000 BTUs
• 500sq foot area – 10,000 BTUs
• 1,000sq foot area – 20,000 BTUs

Basically, you’re looking at about 2K BTUs for every single 100sq feet of space. Now’s the time to us all that math you learned. Grab a tape measurer and figure out your room. Don’t get caught up in, “I want it to be freezing in there.” If you’re using an overkill portable air conditioner in a small space, it’s still outputting the same temperature. The only difference is, it may get there a little bit faster, but it’s going to spike up your electricity bill.

Are PAC Energy Efficient? 

If you pin a 10,000 BTU portable unit against a 10,000 BTU wall unit, the portable is going to win for energy efficiency. You never have to use above a 110/120 with a portable unit, as opposed to wall ACs. When it comes to window units, it solely depends on the Energy Star rating of each unit, as they tend to use the same power supply.

In general, however, PAC units are energy efficient (especially when you compare them to central air). You will spend less on average monthly/yearly cooling costs with a PAC as opposed to other models. The right brand and model completely matter in accordance with the longevity of the unit, which is why we’ve singled-out the top ten on the list above.

Do Multiple People Require a Higher BTU Output?

For every person in the room (above two), you’ll have to add a rough 750 BTUs of power for each individual. If you’re getting a joint unit for a common area in an apartment or dorm of four total inhabitants for, let’s say, a 500 square foot space, you would need 10,000 base BTUs, plus 750 per person after the second, so you would need 11,500 BTUs for that space.

We throw off our body temperature like crazy, especially after coming in from a hot day. We sweat as a way to radiate heat instead of internalizing it, and damaging our organs or brain. As a result, you’re actually throwing off more than your internal body temperature for about four hours after an exercise, or thirty minutes to one hour after entering your room from merely being exposed to high temperatures outside.

Conclusion

Like all the best air conditioners (and wall AC's) it can change your relationship to your home. Where before it may have been the place you wanted to get away from on hot days it can become the place the family seeks out when the mercury rises. It will also allow you to sleep better and to entertain guests in comfort. If you’d like to buy a portable ac for your home any of the above models will serve you well today and for the foreseeable future.