After a sweltering May and a scorching hot June, this summer has been absolutely unbearable. Filled with heatwaves, we’re all desperately searching for the best way to keep cool.
From electric fans and air coolers to portable air conditioners, there are now more options than ever to beat the heat. While fans are still the most popular cooling device, many are turning to evaporative air coolers and portable air conditioners as a more powerful alternative, but which is worth your money?
If you're trying to decide between the two, here's everything you need to know before you buy, from how each one works to running costs, portability and cooling performance.
Read more: Best air coolers, reviewed
Air coolers vs portable air conditioners: How do they work and which cools a room more effectively?
Although they look very similar, air coolers and portable air conditioners work very differently. A portable air conditioner will actually lower the temperature of your home. An air cooler will make the air feel cooler, instead of removing the heat from your room.
Air coolers work by sucking warm air through a damp cooling pad before blowing it back into the room. The cooling pad uses water from an internal tank to stay wet. The colder the water in the tank, the cooler the air passing through the pad. Most models come with reusable ice packs that you can freeze and add to the water to boost the cooling effect, but you can always add your own ice cubes as well. These help keep the water, and therefore the cooling pad, colder, producing a cooler airflow than a standard fan.
Because air coolers rely on the power of evaporation, they work better in hot, dry and arid climates where moisture can evaporate easily. Think desert-like climates, where humidity can get as low as 40 per cent. Because they cool by evaporating water, the drier the air, the more moisture it can absorb.
Unfortunately, we’re not blessed with low humidity in the UK. With our increasingly humid summers, they become less and less effective. It’s not as easy for water to evaporate when humidity goes up. An air cooler produces less cooling in humid environments, but also adds even more moisture to your room.
On the other hand, portable air conditioners use a refrigeration system to physically remove heat from a room. Like an air cooler, portable air conditioners suck in the warm air. They then pass that air over cold evaporator coils to lower the temperature, before blowing the cooled air back into the room. The hot air that’s sucked up is then vented outside through an exhaust hose that you thread out of a window. Unlike an air cooler, a portable air conditioner physically lowers the temperature of the room.
You should also pay attention to the British Thermal Unit (BTU) ratings on each portable AC. The higher the BTU, the more powerful the air conditioner. You’ll want a higher BTU unit if you have a large space to cool, whereas lower BTU units wil be fine for bedrooms.
With all that said, portable air conditioners are the clear winner when it comes to cooling performance. While an air cooler can feel nice and chill when you’re sitting close, particularly when the climate is dry, a portable air conditioner cools your entire room down, no matter if the humidity is high or low.
Blyss A018I-09C portable air conditioner
The most affordable unit in our round-up of the best portable air conditioners is the Blyss A018I-09C 9000BTU. “In use, it cools effectively and the auto-swing vent does a good job of distributing air evenly around the room,” appliance expert Joanne Lewsley said in her review. “I also liked the front-facing display, which shows temperature and timer settings clearly from across the room.”
Buy now £269.99, Screwfix.com
Read more: Best portable air conditioners, reviewed
Air coolers vs air conditioners: Which is cheaper to buy and run?
Because air coolers use the power of water evaporation, they’re much cheaper to run and cheaper to buy than portable air conditioners.
The cheapest air cooler in The Independent’s round-up of the best air coolers is the Sealey air cooler. It costs just £67. Most can be bought for less than £100, including the Symphony duet i-s air cooler.
Symphony duet i-s air cooler
If you’re looking for something powerful, look no further than this Symphony air cooler. “Performance is where it shines,” said Joanne in her round-up of the best air coolers. “Airflow is excellent, reaching up to 3.5m/s, making it one of the more powerful models in this guide. You feel the cooling breeze straight away, although it’s more about airflow than overall temperature reduction. In my testing, the room temperature dropped by around 1C after an hour.”
Buy now £99, Symphony-coolers.co.uk
A portable air conditioner is significantly more expensive. The average price for a portable AC, using all of the ones in The Independent’s round-up is £350. The cheapest portable air conditioner in our list is the Blyss A018I-09C, which costs £280. And that portable AC has 9,000BTU. You can get a portable AC with 14,000 BTUs, and those cost much more.
And in terms of running costs? Air coolers are much cheaper to run than portable air conditioners. That’s because they’re essentially using a fan, water tank and cooling pad, rather than a compressor and refrigerant system to actively remove heat from the room.
In our own testing, the air coolers we tested used between 27W and 84W on their highest settings. That costs less than 1p to just over 2p per hour to run.
Portable air conditioners use considerably more energy, with energy experts previously telling The Independent that a typical unit costs around 20p to 60p an hour to run, depending on the model, energy efficiency and how often it’s used.
Most portable air conditioners in our own testing cost around £6 a week to run continuously when there’s a heatwave, although real-world costs are often lower because units cycle down once they reach their target temperature.
One other thing to keep in mind is that you’ll need to keep topping up the water tank in an air cooler to keep the breeze going, so think about water costs and the price of ice.
Read more: Experts reveal the true cost of running a portable air conditioner
Air coolers vs air conditioners: Which is easier to use and more portable?
If you want sheer simplicity, air coolers are much easier to use and set up than a portable air conditioner.
Fill up the water tank, add some frozen ice packs for maximum cooling, then switch the air cooler on and choose a fan speed. Bob’s your uncle. Lots of the models we’ve reviewed also oscillate, boast timers and have a sleep mode. Some even connect to your phone for app controls.
Air coolers are also much more portable than portable air conditioners. Most of the models on our list weigh roughly 5kg, so they’re easy to carry around and move from room to room, similar to a regular pedestal or tower fan.
Portable air conditioners require a lot more set-up. Before you can use one, you need to attach an exhaust hose to the back (this can be fiddly). You then need to have it close enough to a plug point and a window, so that you can feed it through. You also need to seal the window so that no air comes through the sides, or it will be less efficient.
If you don’t use the exhaust hose, the hot air extracted from the room has nowhere to go – it’ll just end up heating your room even more.
And despite being called portable air conditioners, they’re not super portable. Most weigh around 15kg-20kg, so they’re difficult to lug around the house. While most are on casters, you’re still going to have a difficult time carting it from place to place. If you’re getting a portable air conditioner, you’re probably going to want to keep it in the same room.
If you want something you can easily move from your home office to the bedroom, an air cooler is much more portable. But if you're happy to spend a few minutes setting up a window kit for more powerful cooling, a bulkier portable AC might be the best choice for you.
Air coolers vs portable air conditioners: Which one needs more cleaning and maintenance?
Both air coolers and portable air conditioners need a little bit of handholding, though air coolers might need a little bit more.
With an air cooler, your main job is looking after the water tank and cooling pad. If you're using it regularly during a heatwave, you’ll want to empty any leftover water every few days and refill it with fresh water to help prevent bacteria, mould and unpleasant odours from developing. You'll also want to wipe down the water tank and clean the cooling pad according to the manufacturer's instructions, particularly before putting the unit away at the end of summer.
Portable air conditioners require some regular maintenance. though not quite as much as an air cooler. Most manufacturers recommend cleaning the filters every couple of weeks when you’re using it heavily. Dust build-up can restrict airflow and reduce cooling efficiency, so keeping the filters clean is important for maintaining performance. You’ll also need to give it a good clean after taking it back out following a long winter.
Should you buy an air cooler or a portable air conditioner?
It mainly comes down to your budget, whether you’ve got the right home set up and what you want from your cooling appliance.
Air coolers are much cheaper to buy and run than portable air conditioners, and they're lighter, easier to move around and require virtually no set-up beyond filling the water tank and adding the ice packs. That said, they’re definitely not as powerful as a portable air conditioner, essentially cooling the air it feeds out using water evaporation. It can also increase the moisture in your home.
Portable air conditioners, however, are in a whole different league when it comes to cooling performance. They actively remove heat from your room, meaning the temperature will actually be lowered, even during hot and humid weather. The trade-off is the price. They’re more expensive to buy and use much more electricity to run. They also require an exhaust hose to be vented through a window. But if you’re really struggling in the heat, a good portable AC could last a decade and still serve you well.
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