The 6 best quiet window air conditioners, according to Consumer Reports |
The 6 best quiet window air conditioners, according to Consumer Reports
An air conditioner can cool a room perfectly and still keep you awake. Consumer Reports rated 31 models on noise to find the six quietest
Jose Antonio Gallego Vázquez / Unsplash
A window air conditioner that cools a room well but runs loud at night may cost more in sleep quality than it saves on the electric bill. Noise levels at low settings matter especially at night, when the gap between a quiet inverter model and a cycling compressor is most noticeable. Two design innovations — the U-shaped frame, which positions a pane of glass between the sleeper and the compressor, and the inverter compressor, which modulates speed continuously instead of switching fully on and off — now account for most of the top scorers.
Consumer Reports used a sound meter to measure noise at both high and low settings across every model it tested, alongside cooling performance and member reliability........