TCL - 250 Sq. Ft. 6,000 BTU Smart Portable Air Conditioner 3-in-1 with AC, Fan & Dehumidifier - White

This is my first portable air conditioner. I needed something to make the back room bearable again. For years, my elderly mother would suffer through uncomfortable temperatures and stuffy air, while the rest of the house was cooled by the main air conditioner. I’m not sure why I didn’t get a portable air conditioner before. Maybe I was hesitant about the setup, or maybe I knew that portable air conditioners had a reputation for not working as well as a standard window mounted air conditioner. Regardless, I decided to get this unit because I noticed other models from TCL were well rated. After installing and testing it, I can confirm this unit does a good job producing cold air and is effective at cooling down a hot and humid room. What makes this unit stand out from similar models is its smaller footprint and its integration into an app or smart home assistant. First, the unit is a compact 11 inches by 11.4 inches and just over 2 feet tall. Compared to other portable air conditioners with similar BTU and room coverage, this is one of the smaller designs. It allowed me more options on where I can place the unit in the bedroom. As with all portable air conditioners, you need to leave room around the unit to allow for proper air flow. TCL recommends 18 inches, but it seems to be working well with my current setup of about 10 inches in all directions. Given that spacing is always a consideration with these units, I liked the flexibility offered by this unit’s more compact size. As mentioned earlier, another feature that stands out is the ability to control the unit with an app on your phone. The smart integration is very convenient. And if you choose, you can instead connect the unit to your smart speaker or home display. I use Google Home for all my smart home integration, but this model also works with Amazon Alexa and Apple Home. By integrating with my smart home setup, I can control the unit from my phone, by voice, or from my Google Home display (see pictures). The good news is that even if you don’t have any of these smart home options, you can still control the unit on your phone with the TCL Home app. And if you are not interested in using any of these smart features whatsoever, a simple to use remote control is also included. It is the flexibility this model offers that makes it user friendly to operate, especially from a distance. In terms of how effective it is at cooling the room, I am very impressed. The unit blows very cold air when the condenser kicks on. To me, this is the most important feature and the main reason why I choose this air conditioner. I want to know if the unit I’m buying is going to be effective at properly cooling the room. This unit is strong enough to bring down the temperature in a hot room to a comfortable level. The master bedroom that it sits in is about 250 square feet, and it was able to bring a very warm 90-degree room down to 78 degrees. The unit was operating at max capacity, and it took over an hour to drop the temperature by 12 degrees, but it accomplished the job. Simply, it made an unbearable room comfortable again. That alone is the main reason for my 5-star rating. These next points are based on things I noticed while setting up the unit or are recommendations for other features. The most challenging part of the setup was connecting the exhaust hose to the hose outlet and inlet. The quality of these parts is very good, but it takes careful alignment and some muscle to screw on the outlet and inlet connections to both ends of the hose. Hopefully future models have an easier design method to attach these parts. Also, the reusable filters are a little hard to remove. They are designed to slide out, but it takes a good strong tug to get the first one out. It felt like I was going to break it, but once it came out, it was fine. This unit has really strong airflow; it is rated at 300 cubic feet per minute. There isn’t a way to direct the airflow with a vent. It would be nice if there were a deflector or movable vents. Instead, I just made sure to point the unit in the direction I wanted the air to flow. Another note when installing the unit, you are provided with insulation foam and a seal strip adhesive. The instructions tell you to use the foam and it even shows a little image of possible places to put it in a window, but that’s about it. I wish it provided more details or guidance on how to use the foam and strip. Alas, I made it work how I thought best. A note about setting up the unit to the TCL app. The instructions were clear and the process for turning on the Wi-Fi on the unit worked as described. However, when selecting the type of product within the app, I made the mistake of choosing the incorrect device. I accidently selected the icon that said Portable AC; it appears first in the list of products. After failing to get the unit connected to the app, I reread the instructions and noticed it said to select the icon labeled “Matter Portable AC.” Once I realized there was a difference, I located the proper device within the app and the rest of the configuration worked without any issues (see pictures). Regarding the name difference, Matter devices provide an additional option for connecting to your smart home system. It is a relatively new connectivity standard that provides additional options for controlling your devices within your home. One major benefit with Matter devices is they are specifically designed to work without an internet connection because it prioritizes local communication within your home network. If this is something you are interested in, it is best to learn how the Matter ecosystem works just in case you may benefit from this technology. On another note, regarding the connectivity options, it doesn’t appear you can connect the unit to both the TCL app and the Goggle Home ecosystem at the same time. You’ll need to choose which option is best for you. However, the included remote control works regardless of your setup. So, obviously this is the easiest option of them all. Again, it’s nice to have all these options built into this portable air conditioner. Overall, I am very happy with this unit, and I am very glad I chose this one.

TCL has a new 6K BTU Smart 3-in-1 AC unit out. It can cover 250 square feet of space and has 3 modes. The main mode is the AC mode and it also has a Fan mode and Dehumidifier mode. It’s convenient to have a dehumidifier mode as an option with it. It comes with an exhaust hose, a mount that fits in a window, and an adapter to connect the hose to the window mount. It also comes with a drain hose I can connect and run to where I want the drain water to go. It’s very straightforward.
 Regarding power consumption, it uses much more power than I expected when the AC compressor is running. It used up to 895 watts when cooling. I have a different portable AC unit that cools a little more square footage, but uses half the watts. It would be good for TCL to look into that and maybe change to a more power efficient compressor. When using dehumidifier mode, it only used up to 122 watts which I think is good. Fan mode used about 90 watts. The blower pushes air well. The design is such that the air moves mostly to the left coming out of the unit instead of straight forward and there isn’t a way for me to set the direction. It would have been nice to the ability to change the direction of the air flow, but it my room where I use the unit, the air just hits the left wall and ends up helping to circulate the air. If someone has a situation where that wouldn’t help them and they need to the airflow to be a different angle, then they would have to turn the unit to accommodate the air flow direction they need. Event with that said, the unit was able to cool the room it is in down to 72 degrees F without a problem and it did well at maintaining that temperature. When I setup the unit using the TCL app, I was presented with the option to use Google or Alexa to control the unit. I chose Alexa so I can use my Echo devices to control it. The only issue I had during the setup was that my mobile device I used with the app was on a different network SSID than what I wanted the unit to be on which caused the app to setup the unit on the SSID my mobile device was on. I went back through the setup after I set my mobile device to be on the network that I wanted the uint to be on and it connected to that SSID without a problem. It would help if TCL changed the app to let you select from available SSIDs from the start so people don’t have to go through that. Overall I like the AC and it has helped keep a room in my home, one that is furthest away from my home AC, cool when my main AC doesn’t keep the room as cool as I would like even though it does great for all the other rooms. If you need a small AC unit or a dehumidifier, then look into the TCL 6K BTU 3-in-1 Smart Portable air conditioner. I think people would be happy with it and it is easy to setup and use. Plus it supports Google and Alexa.

TCL has a new 3 in 1 Smart Portable 6,000 BTU Air Conditioner, Fan and Dehumidifier that works well in 250 sq. ft. spaces or under. It is super easy to set up and equally easy to download the app and control when away from your home. After complete setup, and with Wi-Fi assistance, it can be controlled through the TCL Home App, by voice command using either Alexa or Google Assistant, or by using the remote that is included. I set this unit up to work with Amazon’s Alexa, and the voice commands work great. It has three modes that make it very versatile and is designed with multiple fan speeds. Other useful additional features have been included like a sleep timer, a 24-hour timer, and an auto restart after a power outage. The design is simple and straight forward and the product is even set on casters and has side handles for easily moving it when needed. First and foremost, it is designed as a portable air conditioner, but it also doubles as a dehumidifier and as a fan. The air conditioner is extremely easy to install, and everything needed is included in the box. Installing the air conditioning requires the exhaust hose which has an outlet and inlet attachments, a window slider kit that functions in both double hung and sliding windows, foam installation to seal the slider kit, and a drain hose. The air outlet slides right into the back of the unit. Then the exhaust hose can be forcefully pushed and screwed into the outlet before extending it and connecting the inlet to the outer end of the hose. It is a little easier if you do not extend the hose before attaching both the hose’s outlet and the inlet attachments. Even then it requires a little pressure and at least three turns as the plastic to plastic has to be screwed in order to ensure a tight fit. It is equipped with a reusable and washable filter which is nice. The dehumidifier is a notable feature of this 3 in 1 product for me because there are a few months of the years that my geographical area has extremely high humidity. I can use the dehumidifier feature to extract water from the air before actually running the air conditioner. The kit comes with a drain hose for using the dehumidifier function. The fan is also a great stand-alone feature to have when the air conditioning is not needed. Both the dehumidifier and the fan use considerably less electricity than the air conditioning does. So having all three features in one unit and using them to maximize cooling and yet limit electrical use is a great concept. Both the remote and the control panel on the top of the unit allow for all of the controls to be operated. The controls are easy to see on the top of the panel. The basic choices are the power button, cool mode, dry mode, fan mode, and sleep mode. This TCL model (H6P44W/T06PC5S) is marketed as quiet, and it is for an air conditioner. It operates at around 54 decibels which is considered to be moderate to soft. Normal conversation is around 50 decibels. The TCL Portable Air Conditioner is also a small vertical unit of 26 ½” tall that only occupies a footprint of 11” x 11”. I really like this product. It is perfect for cooling my outside shed that I use as an office. The overall dimensions of the shed are 12’ x 20’ which puts the 240sq ft of the shed under the 250 sq. feet of the unit’s capacity. I would recommend this product for a workshop in a garage, a dorm, an apartment or anywhere in your home where you need additional cooling.