Top Air Conditioner Picks
View all
Portable air conditioners fill a much-needed role within the mobile A/C market since not everyone has the space for a window-mounted model, which takes more effort to set up and take down at the end of every warm season. The best portable air conditioners feature design aspects like separate intake and exhaust hoses to more effectively isolate cooled indoor air from warm outdoor air and inverter compressors that consume less energy (and make less noise) than non-inverter units.
Then again, as anyone who's ever had to wrangle a set of hoses and dealt with ceiling fan-level cooling performance would know, many portable air conditioners are far from perfect. They have some inherent disadvantages versus a window unit: even the best models operate less efficiently than a window unit with comparable capacity and features. As it turns out, placing a heat-generating component like a compressor outside of the room you're trying to cool is a pretty major boon regarding efficiency. If you're interested, you can also see our recommendations for the best window A/Cs.
Of course, as with any product we test, there's never going to be a single one-size-fits-all solution. We've tested 20 air conditioners to date, and below are our recommendations for what we think are the best portable units on the market within their distinct price brackets.
