I put all manner of products through their paces to find the top recommendations for our readers, whether that's finding the best mattress for a better sleep, or the best fans for staying cool. Just to repeat the point, these are not air conditioners, and they don’t have the cooling welly to turn a hot room into a cool one. After being massively impressed by the brand's virtually silent Duux Whisper Flex Ultimate Fan, we had high hopes this unit was going to be just as whisper-quiet, but sadly that also wasn't to be, with the North Smart proving just as loud as your average portable air con. The inner vertical louvres oscillate left and right to give you a wider spread, and you can use the horizontal louvres to angle the airflow up or down.

This cheap cube desktop cooler doesn’t have a lot of bells and whistles, but it’s a good way to chill your fevered brow while you’re plugging away at your desk. As well as the usual three fan speeds, it has the same Natural and Sleep modes as the brand’s tower fan, the former varying the fan speed for an outdoor breeze effect, the latter slowly ramping down the speed as you doze off. Both work in roughly the same way, with a fan blowing air through an absorbent pad or membrane structure.R-410A is a cooling agent that is used in appliances that cool up to 0°C, like refrigerators and air conditioners. The three-speed fan gives you options from subtle breeze to full-on gusting, and on the lowest setting it’s quiet enough that it won’t disturb you while you work. If you're spending this much on an appliance – and one that's going to take up a good deal of storage space in the home – then you might want it to do more than just cool.

tank won’t last much more than a day, but for sweet relief from overheating it’s as good as coolers get. What’s more, they’re a whole lot cheaper and more convenient than any air conditioner, using much less energy and with no need to expel air from a tube sticking out of a window. We haven't tested it thoroughly yet, but third party reviews mention it being basic – and noisy – but still doing the job of lowering the temperature when you're looking to beat the heat.Unlike one of the best fans, which work by circulating the air to create a breeze and cool a person, a portable air conditioner is a far more powerful affair that uses refrigerant and a compressor to actively lower the temperature in a room or even a whole living space.