Buying guides

Buying an air conditioner comes down to a few honest questions, and the right answer is different for a rented flat than for a family house you own. This is the place to work through them before you spend anything.

The first decision is how much of your home you need to cool. For one hot bedroom or home office, a single fitted split or a good portable is enough. To keep several rooms comfortable through a heatwave you are into multi-split or ducted territory, and a larger budget. Our guide to choosing an air conditioning system works through that room by room, and what size you need shows how to match the cooling to the space.

The next question is portable or fitted. A portable is cheaper, needs no installation and moves between rooms, but it is noisier and weaker and vents through a window. A fitted split is quieter, cheaper to run and far more effective, though it needs an F-Gas engineer and a bigger outlay. If a portable suits you, our best portable air conditioners round-up and the quietest models guide narrow it down. If you are fitting a unit properly, start with the best air conditioning units for a UK home.

Two questions settle the rest: what it costs, and whether it is worth it at all. Air conditioning is a real expense to buy and run, and for some homes a fan and good habits do the job. Our honest take on whether air conditioning is worth it and the air conditioning versus fans comparison are here to talk you out of it if that is the right answer. Everything below is written to help you buy well, not to sell you the most expensive option.

Once you have chosen a unit, our cost guides cover what it takes to buy and run, installation explains getting it fitted, and types and how it works explains the technology in plain English. You can also browse every guide in one place.