Portable heat pump / air conditioner reviews.

We've had one of these for 5-6 years, I think. We got it from Home Depot online. We use it in the master bedroom, in our 1940s era Cape Cod house, where the master bedroom is half of the upstairs with sloping ceilings. The house has central heat/air, but because of the age, the original design didn't allow for good heating/cooling upstairs, so we've been using one of these. We're pretty happy with it, though with the air conditioning particularly, you do have to let it run a bit before you want things cooled off. And it is a bit noisy, but it is a sort of white noise and doesn't keep either of us awake. One really useful feature in ours is a timer, which lets us automatically set it to turn on X hours before bedtime, or X hours before we get up in the morning, so we can be comfortable. It heats/cools only that room, not the hallway or bathroom or other bedroom on that floor.

Ours is also a dehumidifier, but we don't use that function as we don't want to mess with draining water bins into the sink.

Portability is a relative factor here -- the thing is 3' tall and weighs 75+ pounds, so you're not going to be carrying it up and down the stairs a lot. Roll it from one room to another, sure. Take to a new house when you move, sure. Use in the cellar during the day and bedroom at night, not so much.

One downside we found was, due to the way our windows and walls are arranged, our heat/air machine is close to a wall. The temperature changes have resulted in some damage to the wall -- cracking paint, bubbles in the wall covering, etc. That may not be an issue for you, just something that was for us.

One other downside is that it is difficult to get the machine serviced. It is by a major manufacturer (Maytag, I think), but their repair call center doesn't deal with them, our regular heating/air mechanics won't touch it, and we had to call around to a bunch of local appliance repair guys to find someone that didn't say "Huh?!" when we asked about it. Our main service issue (twice) has been big balls of dust and cat fur building up inside the thing.

Feel free to PM me if you have specific questions I haven't addressed -- I know my husband has the manual stashed away and could provide technical details. All in all, we could not live comfortably without this machine, particularly in the summertime, when the upstairs is often 10-20 degrees warmer than the downstairs.