Black+Decker BXAC40008GB 12,000 BTU

The Black+Decker BXAC40008GB is a 12,000 BTU single-hose portable air conditioner, and it is one of the most popular budget units in the UK for a simple reason: it cools a medium room quickly, carries a name people trust, and usually costs around £399 when plenty of rivals sit well above that. It is a proper 3-in-1, cooling, dehumidifying and running as a plain fan, on low-impact R290 refrigerant with a Class A efficiency rating. For a living room, kitchen or home office of up to around 24 m² that you want cool within minutes, it does the core job well and represents genuine value.

The trade-offs are the ones you would expect at this price. It is loud on full power, closer to a raised TV volume than a quiet fan, so only the low and sleep settings are restful. At around 26.7 kg it is a two-person lift up stairs despite the castors, and it is a basic unit by modern standards: single-hose, no Wi-Fi or app, and a bright display some owners find intrusive at night. It cools only, so it is a summer and shoulder-season appliance rather than a year-round one. None of that is a dealbreaker for a budget buyer who wants effective cooling without spending £500-plus, but it is why we rate it a solid buy rather than a class leader.

The BXAC40008GB is a single-hose portable air conditioner: a free-standing unit on castors that cools the room and vents the hot air out of a window through one flexible hose. There is nothing to install and nothing that needs an F-Gas engineer, so it is the sort of cooling you buy, wheel into place and switch on the same day. The 12,000 BTU (roughly 3.5 kW) output is sized for a medium room, comfortably a living room, kitchen or home office of up to around 24 m².

It suits a budget buyer who wants effective cooling from a name they know, without spending £500 or more on a premium portable. It cools fast, doubles as a dehumidifier that pulls up to around 40 litres a day, and runs on R290 refrigerant with a Class A efficiency rating. It is self-evaporating in cooling mode, so it recycles most of the moisture it removes out through the exhaust hose and only rarely needs manual draining. The controls are deliberately simple: three fan speeds, a 24-hour timer, a sleep mode and a remote, all easy to get to grips with. As with every single-hose unit, it works best with the doors shut, the curtains drawn against direct sun and the window kit sealed properly, or warm air leaks straight back in.

Who should think twice? Anyone who needs near-silent running to sleep beside it, or app control and scheduling from their phone. This is a basic, effective unit rather than a quiet or smart one: it has no Wi-Fi, it is heavy to move between floors at around 26.7 kg, and it is audible on full power. The honest use pattern in a bedroom is to pre-cool the room, then drop to the low or sleep setting, rather than run it flat out all night. If quiet overnight cooling or a phone app matters most, a MeacoCool Pro or a fixed split is the better answer, at a higher price.

Expect to pay around £399. Electricshop lists it at £399.00 in stock, and The Range and specialist sellers such as YPC sit at about the same, so £399 to £400 is the going rate for a new unit. It is also stocked on Amazon, where it has built up a large number of reviews and is one of the better-known budget portables, and it turns up higher, from roughly £549 up to £650, at some general retailers, so it pays to compare before buying. Like all portables it sells out in heatwaves, so check stock as well as price.

Running costs are typical for a 12,000 BTU portable. It draws up to about 1.35 kW on full cooling, so at the July 2026 Ofgem price cap of 26.11p per kWh that is roughly 35p an hour at full tilt, or about £2.80 for an eight-hour stretch. In practice it costs less, because the sleep mode and the timer cut the draw and the compressor cycles rather than running continuously once the room is at temperature. A typical UK summer of occasional evening and weekend use lands somewhere around £25 to £40. The Class A rating and R290 refrigerant keep it competitive, but a 12,000 BTU unit will always use more than a smaller one, so size it to the room rather than buying big for headroom. Prices and rates correct as of July 2026; the energy price cap changes quarterly, so check current rates before budgeting.