Pinguino PAC EX100 Silent

The De'Longhi Pinguino PAC EX100 Silent is a 10,000 BTU portable air conditioner that has been a UK favourite for years, and the reason is efficiency. It carries an A++ energy rating with an EER of 3.6, which is rare for a portable and means it costs noticeably less to run than the cheaper units it sits above. It cools quickly, holds a room steady, runs on low-impact R290 refrigerant and is very well made, with the sort of solid build and simple controls you expect from De'Longhi. For a medium living room, home office or main bedroom where you want low running costs and reliable cooling, it is one of the better portables you can buy.

Two things temper the praise. The first is the name: it is quieter than most portables in silent mode, but it is not silent, settling into the low-to-mid 50s dB(A) and rising with fan speed, and the display cannot be switched off at night. The second is the price. At roughly £740 to £950 it costs around double a good A-rated rival, and it is a single-hose unit rather than a dual-hose design, so you are paying for efficiency and build rather than a cleverer cooling layout. It also does not heat and has no Wi-Fi or app, unlike some of its newer Pinguino siblings. Worth it if you value efficiency and quality and will use it a lot; overkill if you just need a few weeks of occasional cooling.

The PAC EX100 Silent 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, clip the window kit on and switch on the same day. The 10,000 BTU (roughly 2.4 kW) output is sized for a medium space, comfortably a main bedroom, home office or average living room; De'Longhi rates it for rooms up to about 110 m³, though as with any single-hose portable, a smaller, well-shaded room is where it feels most effective.

What sets it apart from cheaper portables is efficiency. It holds an A++ energy rating with an EER of 3.6, which very few portables manage, and it pairs that with low-impact R290 refrigerant. In practice that means it cools hard when you need it and then settles down, so it costs less per hour than most units in its class. The Real Feel auto mode adjusts to temperature and humidity for you, the controls are refreshingly simple, and in cooling mode it recycles most of the moisture it removes, so you rarely need to empty a tank.

Who should think twice? Anyone chasing near-silence to sleep beside it, or anyone who wants a quick, cheap fix for a few hot weeks. The compressor and fan sit in the room with you, and while it is quieter than most portables on its lowest setting, it is not silent, and the display stays lit. It also does not heat and has no app. At its price, buyers who only need occasional cooling will get most of the way there with a cheaper A-rated unit; the EX100 earns its keep for people who value efficiency, build quality and a lot of use over a summer.

Expect to pay somewhere between about £740 and £950. Currys lists it at the £949 RRP, specialist retailers such as Air Con Centre sit a little under that, and the keenest street prices from electrical retailers dip to around £740, so it is worth comparing before you buy. That is a clear premium: a well-reviewed A-rated single-hose rival can cost roughly half as much, and the EX100 does not undercut them on features, so you are paying for its efficiency, its dehumidifying strength and De'Longhi's build quality.

Running costs are where it pays some of that back. It draws up to around 1.05 kW at full cooling, so at the July 2026 Ofgem price cap unit rate of 26.11p per kWh that is roughly 27p an hour flat out. In practice the A++ efficiency and Real Feel mode pull the average well below that, closer to 15p to 20p an hour once the room is at temperature and the compressor is cycling rather than running hard. A typical UK summer of evening and weekend use lands somewhere around £20 to £35. Prices and rates correct as of July 2026; the energy price cap changes quarterly, so check current rates before budgeting.