How can we say that? Well, the truth is that portable air conditioners are inherently inefficient. They don't cool nearly as well as that number that we just gave you would seem to indicate. There are two major inefficiencies. The first involves the unit taking air from the room that it is actively working to cool, to cool its own internal components.
There are both hot and cold components to every a/c system, and portable air conditioners are no different. The cold component is critical to cooling, the air so on this particular frigid air unit. The evaporator is on the back here. The evaporator is a prominent cold component and it is actually the component that is working to actively cool the air. So air is pulled in through this grille on the back of the unit, it's pulled over the evaporator and then up and out through the top of the unit here, and that is the component that cools the air.
So that's a good thing. It's it's actively working to cool the air on the negative side of things. The condenser is the component that actually gets hot, so the condenser sits inside here and the condenser has to be cooled. The same way that the portable air conditioner is working to cool air. It needs to use that same air to cool its condenser on the inside here, so it is constantly pulling air from the room to cool that condenser.
So it pulls the air over its condenser in here, and then the air travels through a duct on the back of the unit here out through a window bracket and out to the outdoors. So what ends up happening there is that the unit is actively taking air from inside of the room. That is working the condition, and it's moving that air to the outdoors without actively working to replace that air. So what ends up happening is that an area of low pressure is created inside of the room that the portable air conditioner is actively working to condition, and this generates a pressure gradient between the outdoor air and the indoor air.
So the outdoor air is at a much higher pressure. It wants to get pulled into the room to get things to equilibrium and that hot outdoor air is contributing heat to the room as it is getting pulled into the room. So that is a major inefficiency there. Another major inefficiency involves the duct that is attached to the unit on this unit. The duct is attached here and ducked is made of a thin plastic.
It's also a large diameter hose, so there's a lot of surface area there and that surface area radiates heat back into the room that the unit is actively working to cool. So you have another heat source right there, so between the heat that is added by outdoor air and the heat that is added by the ducting, you have two major inefficiencies there that the duct from that eight thousand BTUs of cooling capacity, that the unit is claimed To have so, how do we get the real number here? If it's not eight thousand BTUs? What is it really well recently, we have a new metric that has become prominent, that is called seasonally, adjusted cooling capacity and that new metric fully takes into account these inefficiencies.
It takes the cooling capacity unit, just the general cooling capacity and then subtracts out that heat, that is added by the duct and the heat that is added by outdoor air. It subtracts out those inefficiencies to give a new BTU number, and that is the number that gives a much more accurate representation of the actual cooling capacity of the portable air conditioner. So with that in mind, let's take a look at the current 8,000 BTU models on the market and keep in mind here we're talking about eight thousand BTUs by the old standard for measuring, in which we don't take into account the inefficiencies.
So, looking at the list of models here, you can immediately see that the SAC BTUs are quite a bit less than the traditional BTUs. The difference here is about 2500 BTUs, even for the most efficient 8,000 BTU units on the market for the least efficient units, the values drop down to four thousand BTUs here. So there is an even more significant drop here now when we are comparing different 8,000 BTU models on the market.
We look at a lot of things, but the one thing that we keep coming back to is seasonally adjusted, cooling capacity. Why? Because it is the one thing that really separates one model from another, this Frigidaire model we have on the table here today. This unit comes with a window kit. It has certain drainage options. It makes a certain level of noise, it's a certain size, a different weight. All these different attributes can be ascribed to this particular unit, and the truth is that those attributes are much the same on other models.
If you were to compare this Frigidaire with an LG or with a black and decker or a honey, yes, their window kits might differ slightly. Maybe their drainage options differ slightly, but they are much the same. They are mostly the same. So, there's not really that much of a difference there, where the difference lies, is with seasonally adjusted, cooling capacity. This is also the most important factor to look at also because, yes, maybe one unit is slightly less noisy than the other.
Maybe this other unit hat does have a few more drainage options than the other, but at the end of the day, you're buying a portable air conditioner. You want as much cooling capacity as possible, because that is going to allow you to cool the room. You need a cool as quickly as possible and to as low of a temperature as possible, so cooling capacity above and beyond it being the one distinguishing factor between these units.
It's also the most important factor that you're going to want to be looking at so again. Looking at the models in the list here making our recommendation based on seasonally adjusted cooling capacity, it's actually quite easy to make our recommendations. We would not recommend any units that are at the lower end of the range here on the suit seasonally adjusted cooling capacity scale. While we would recommend units that are at the upper end of the range.
So if you are set on buying an 8000 BTU unit - and you don't want to buy outside of the size class, we recommend both LG units. You see here as the best options solely because they have the highest seasonally, adjusted cooling capacity. The Black & Decker is also an option here. It doesn't have terrible performance, however, the allergies are simply a cut, above that's evident by their higher seasonally adjusted cooling capacity.
We generally do not recommend units that have a low seasonally, adjusted cooling capacity for their traditional BTU size class, and so we would not recommend the Honeywell here. We would not recommend the midea and we would also not recommend the frigidaire. So those are our recommendations in the 8,000 BTU size class, again, seasonally, adjusted cooling capacity is that one differentiating factor that you want to look at here.
The LG's do much better than other brands in this aspect, and that is why they are recommended in the category
