Just what is a smart portable air conditioner and if it lives up to its name, what makes it so clever and in what way better than a regular portable cooler?
To answer those opening questions, I will take a look at what puts the "smart" in the air conditioner and what makes a smart one a better choice of cooling solution where others may be more economical.
Let's look at what one of these seemingly magical techno devices actually is.
To understand what one of these cooling devices is, let's first take a look at what a conventional portable AC unit is.
We have a (possibly ergonomically shaped) rectangular box made of plastic with a finned grille in front, a control panel on top and an exhaust hose hanging out the back with a power cord to plug into a wall socket.
This not-so-little box is capable of blowing out some seriously cold air while making a constant humming noise that gets louder as the compressor kicks in and quieter when it takes a rest.
This box can be controlled via a remote that handles the on and off, fan speed and temperature functions with a timer if the model has one. Keeping you cool is it's main function in life and it can do that pretty well in most circumstances as long as it is used in a room that's not too big for its rated power output.
A "smart" AC is pretty much the same kind of cooling unit with one additional feature: it can be controlled and programmed via an app on your phone and is WiFi connectible to your home's WiFi network.
The attractiveness of a technologically advanced appliance that you can control on your phone is fairly well obvious, especially for anyone who loves using their phones for doing all kinds of things that they could do without them except phone apps are "cool" and here and now!
That they cost more than a conventional alternative doesn't seem to deter those that desire the "gadget factor" in their cooling machine. So what do you get that makes the additional purchase price tag worth the extra dollars?
The answer is all in the ability to control and program the device remotely by phone app.
Imagine you spend a good number of hours away from home while at work each day. You certainly wouldn't want to be wasting money to keep an empty house cold in the summer.
If you worked the same hours each day and arrived home at the same time, it would be easy enough to simply program the timer to turn the AC on say a half hour before you were due to arrive, creating a welcomingly cool home to walk into.
However, if your working day had a habit of ending at all different times, you could be wasting money by having the timer turn on the air conditioning and it be running for a few hours before you got home on any given day. But if you were able to grab your phone and turn the AC on as you were on your way home, that would save a lot of wastage, would it not?
So the phone app allows you to perform that cost-saving operation, but what about another?
Say you left home for work in the morning with the portable air conditioner on, because you forgot to turn it off!
No problem. Grab the phone as soon as you realized your oversight and turn the AC off from wherever you happen to be. Great!
So that's the attraction and desirability factor of smart portable air conditioners summed up pretty well. If you're interested in this kind of clever appliance, I'll put a link to where you can find out more below!