THE best air conditioners will lower the temperature of your entire room in a jiffy when a heatwave hits.
With one of these high-tech gadgets at your fingertips, keeping your home cool and comfortable is a breeze.
There are plenty of top models on the market, and we've rounded up a selection of the best, from smaller budget buys to bigger luxe designs.
It will come as no surprise that air conditioners tend to be larger and more expensive than fans, but that's because they are more effective at lowering room temperature, and some can also lower the humidity in the air.
As well as power, it is best to think about noise level when choosing a device and to check the size of the room you need it for compared to the model's coverage.
Abandon any notion of bulky air conditioners with complicated installation processes: these days, the most common air conditioners you'll find from leading brands like AEG and De'Longhi are both powerful and portable.
Air conditioners are costly: top-of-the-range models will typically set you back over £500. If you're looking for a cheaper option, check out portable evaporative air coolers, which use water and ice cubes to work as a humidifier and mini air con.
Best air conditioner for extra features: We tried – Evapolar evaLIGHT Plus Air Conditioner
- Evapolar evaLIGHT Plus Air Conditioner, £149 from Amazon- buy here
The evaLIGHTplus is Evapolar's best-selling evaporative air cooler and is jam-packed with nifty extras: we're talking a 1000ml removable water tank, sleep timer, touch screen, control wheel and a larger coverage area of up to 3m².
We were looking for something effective yet compact that would keep a home office cool on hot days without consuming crazy amounts of energy. The evaLIGHTplus has electricity consumption of 10W, which, considering your average fan uses anything from 30W, it's a cost-effective way of cooling down.
Our unit arrived securely packaged, and once we'd opened it up, filled the tank with water and plugged it in, we were impressed by how easy it was to get going.
A control wheel allows you to adjust the airflow, for which there are 10 settings. The highest one was a little too loud for our liking but definitely blasts out icy cool air that would be super-refreshing on a hot summer's day. We found we struck a happy medium with the fifth setting, which was quiet enough not to distract us while still being cool and refreshing.
Appearance-wise, the device is compact, measuring just 20 x 20 x 25cm and we love that the unit sat neatly on our desk without being too much of an eyesore, while the LED light is a lovely touch and there are a selection of colours to choose between.
If you're looking for a unit you can carry with you from room to room and feel instantly cooled down, we wouldn't hesitate in recommending this nifty little air cooler.
Weight: 1.27kg Power: 5W Noise level: 25dB Dimensions: 18 x 18cm
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