Portable air conditioners are summer fever: why they sweep to fight the heat at home

Not everyone can afford to install an air conditioner at home. And if we want to effectively fight the heat, in many cases the fan is not enough. This is where portable air conditioning comes in, an option that is gaining more and more fans and becoming one of the best-selling products in the air conditioning category.

What are the benefits? In addition to more compact dimensions, the main advantage of a portable air conditioner is its easier installation. Portable air conditioners are a very practical alternative, either because we rent or because we can’t work in our apartment to fit a split unit.

They are less powerful than traditional ones, but they are also more concrete and lighter. Many models have wheels, are easy to move around and are generally designed to cool a specific room.

Although they have an integrated compression system and have at least one pipe to discharge the hot air to the outside, they do not require the visit of any technician and we can install it ourselves.

There are several types. Price is clearly another differentiating factor and this year we also have the fact that portable air conditioners have dropped a lot and lower priced models are appearing.

The average price of portable air conditioners is around 200 euros, with best-selling models such as Cecotec or Comfee available in Lidl and compatible with Google Assistant and Alexa.

Although they are not perfect either. Like everything, portable airguns have some drawbacks. In addition to its capabilities, understandable for the price, there are some points that make its use not as practical as we might wish.

The first is that we still need to place the tube outward. This can be annoying for people who have animals and don’t want them to come out of the window or if, for example, we don’t want light coming in.

Another complaint some users have is the noise they make, but that depends on each model and these devices have improved significantly in quietness.

What about consumption?. The power of portable air is clearly lower, but the energy efficiency is also slightly lower compared to traditional air. If we needed, for example, 2,000 frigories to cool a room, we would need about 3,000 with a portable air conditioner.

Calculation of consumption depends on several factors. Our colleagues at Xataka Home have made an approximation, taking into account an average value of about 0.4 EUR/kWh. This shows that an inverter-type portable air conditioner consumes about 0.8 EUR per day, using it for about three hours a day. A total of about 24 euros per month.

Exhausted when the heat wave hits. This year, summer seems to be behaving a bit better in Spain, but when the temperatures rise, sales of portable air conditioners multiply. If we look at the best-selling product categories in surface air conditioning such as Leroy Merlín or El Corte Inglés, we see that mobile air conditioners occupy the positions of the best-selling products.

As these are easy to install and relatively inexpensive products, their sales are very seasonal. When there’s a heat wave, everyone runs for one and that causes them to run out quickly. This has the disadvantage that at that time the most popular models of portable air conditioners are not in stock and only the most expensive or less interesting models remain.

In Xataka | Air conditioning or portable air conditioning: features, differences and when one is better than the other

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