Meaco Cirro 12000

The Meaco Cirro 12000 is a 12,000 BTU (about 3.5 kW) single-hose portable air conditioner for rooms of roughly 20 to 30 m², and it is Meaco's answer to the biggest complaint about portables: noise. Its Super Quiet mode slows the fan and dims the display for night-time running, and it is a clear step down in noise from Meaco's previous portables, which puts it among the quieter portables you can buy in the UK. It cools a bedroom or home office quickly, runs on low-impact R290 refrigerant, carries an A energy rating and comes with both a sash and a flexible window kit, so it fits most homes without any fuss.

It is not silent, though. Meaco quotes 45 to 51 dB, but at full cooling it sounds closer to a fan on a high setting, so light sleepers should pre-cool the room and drop to Super Quiet at bedtime rather than expect silence. It is heavy at 28.45 kg with no carry handles, it has no inverter at this price, and at £519.99 cooling only or £539.99 with heat it costs well over £100 more than the MeacoCool Pro 9000. It only launched in June 2026 and has spent much of its life sold out, so the owner track record is still short and we have held the rating conservatively. If quiet running matters most and you can wait for stock, it is a strong choice; if the budget matters more, the cheaper Meaco does most of the same job a little more loudly.

The Cirro 12000 is a single-hose portable air conditioner: a free-standing unit on castors that cools the room and pushes the hot air out of a window through one 1.8 m hose. There is nothing to install and no F-Gas engineer involved, so you can unbox it, fit the window kit and have it running within the hour. At 12,000 BTU it is the smallest model in Meaco's Cirro range, which sits above the cheaper MeacoCool MC Series Pro and below the inverter-driven Cirro+ 14000 and 16000. If you are not sure your room needs that much cooling, our BTU calculator will tell you.

It suits people who want a portable they can live with at night. Super Quiet mode slows the fan and dims the front display, and it is the reason to choose this over a cheaper unit; it pulls a warm 20 m² bedroom down to a comfortable temperature quickly. It runs on R290, a low-impact refrigerant, has an A energy rating and works through the Meaco app with Alexa and Google Assistant, although the app is the least polished part and the remote and control panel cover everything you need. The cooling-and-heating version (CIRRO12000CHPRO) adds a 10,000 BTU heat mode for a spare room or office that is slow to warm in spring and autumn.

Who should think twice? It is still a portable, so the compressor sits in the room with you, and on a 35°C day a single-hose unit works hard, gets louder and struggles to hold the temperature once the rest of the house heats up. In a bedroom the best approach is to pre-cool before bed and then switch to Super Quiet. It is also a big, heavy unit at 28.45 kg, and unlike the Cirro+ models it has no inverter, so it holds temperature by switching the compressor on and off rather than easing its output down.

The Cirro 12000 costs £519.99 for the cooling-only model and £539.99 for the cooling-and-heating version, and Meaco and Air Con Centre both list it at those prices. The catch is stock: in mid-October 2026 both versions were sold out at every retailer we could check, with Meaco expecting the heating model back in October 2026 and the cooling-only model in March 2027. It has sold out within days of each restock since launch, so a stock alert is a better plan than waiting for a discount. Meaco's 2-year parts and labour warranty can be extended to 5 years.

It costs a little more to run than a smaller portable because it moves more heat and has no inverter. Running costs top out at about 36p an hour: it draws 1,350 W at full cooling, so at the October 2026 Ofgem price cap of 26.32p per kWh that is roughly 35.5p, and less once the room is cool and the compressor cycles off. A UK summer of evening and weekend use comes to roughly £25 to £40, more in a long heatwave when it runs most of the day. Prices correct as of October 2026; electricity rates updated for the October to December 2026 price cap. The energy price cap changes quarterly, so check current rates before budgeting.