Electronic Portable Air Conditioner

Are portable air conditioners as good as the one you put right into the window?

I want to be able to move it into different rooms such as bedroom or living room. Do you have a portable? What is your experience?

Public Comments

1. Depends on how you will use it. Remember that air conditioners expell hot air. Just stand next to an outside condenser and feel the hot air it has pulled from the house. Portables also remove humidity and usually have to be dumped when the accumulated water get too full in its bin. However, they do have their uses, as you want. They can be moved from room to room, but you better close off each room you are cooling or the air movement will simply overwhelm the unit's cooling ability. I prefer window to portable, but realize that in some cases window mounted AC is very difficult. In those cases, a portable might be the solution, but you do have to contain the room air movement. The minute you leave a door open, you are cooling more than just the room the AC is in, thus losing the cool air it has produced for the first room.
2. I'm not sure what type cooler you are talking about. The "portable ACs" still need to be vented outside. You can hang the tube out the window but then you have an open window letting in more heat. They don't cool much area.......read up before you plunge. The nonvented type are evaporative coolers where you add water and a blower blows through some pads. They don't work in humid climates because the key is evaporation which isn't possible if the air is already near saturation.
3. We have a portable. You have to make sure to empty the pan every couple of days but other than that, they work great. It kept an upstairs bedroom cool during the summer. We have central air but it doesn't get up to our bedroom as well as I wanted so we tried a portable last year. It works well.
4. Portable AC is not as good as a window AC. Here is why. The window AC uses humidity condensate which is removed from the room to cool the condensing coil which is outside. This "water" condensate is sprayed onto the condensing coil and the heat of evaporation on that coil improves the efficiency and increases the cooling capacity of that widow AC. This is probably a little known fact, but recall those old AC of years past and how they dripped water down the side of the buildings. Well, not now that condensate is used to improve the efficiency and cooling capacity of the newer units built since about 1995 or so. Portable AC's are for people without windows or with windows that will not suitably open such as a crank out window or a window that is f ixed postion. If you have a double hung window, its to your benifit and advantage to get a window AC.