Zero Breeze Mark 3 portable Aircon review: Properly portable

Have you ever been camping and just thought, “it is bloody hot out here”? Well there is a gadget for that. The Zero Breeze Mark 3 Portable Air Conditioner is a unique device. It is a portable air conditioner designed for outdoor use. While it can be plugged into a socket, a generator, the car, or solar panels, it can also hook up to hefty, and stackable battery packs. That is properly portable.

Extra camping comfort comes with an equally hefty price tag however. Retailing for $2,099 plus an extra $1,000 for one battery, the Mark 3 is the most expensive portable aircon we have tested but its specs don’t measure up to its price point. There is usually some kind of surcharge for novelty or specialty products, but the Zero Breeze Mark 3 could be asking too much.

The Zero Breeze works more like a high powered fan than your typical air conditioning unit. Not technically speaking, but practically. It has a compressor, and coolant, and it cycles and cools air - it just isn’t all that powerful. Its cooling power is best felt when directly next to the fan. On the LED display the readout indicates the temperature of the air blowing out of the aircon. This went as low as 10 degrees celsius in our review period, and as long as it was pointed at me it cooled me down.

Bringing down the ambient room temperature is another story. In our testing, the 500W cooling capacity was able to drop one degree per hour in a room size of about 20 square metres. Yes, this is far beyond the intended cooling coverage of a two person tent, but it is our standard testing parameters. Gotta keep consistent here.

Comparatively, the Kogan 2.6kW Portable Aircon we tested last year cooled down the same space by five degrees in about an hour. This entirely tracks when you look at the cooling capacity which is five times greater on the Kogan device.

Used for its intended purpose, the Zero Breeze should cool a small tent significantly faster, although there are other complications to take into account. Tents generally aren’t well insulated, and the fabric is likely to let the cool air leak out. While the Mark 3 will undeniably make the tent cooler, as soon as that device turns off you’ll be back to square one. This will be less of an issue in RVs and vans of course, but it is still a worthy consideration. To get consistent cooling, the Mark 3 needs to run constantly which is where the battery packs, and other power options come into play.

Powering options are aplenty. The Mark 3 can connect to a socket, the car’s cigarette lighter, a generator, and can even be fuelled by solar panels. All of these are, of course, sold separately, but for those already primed for the outdoors there are options for keeping the aircon pumping. For those less prepared for the wilderness, battery packs are available for purchase for an extra $1,000 - give or take a couple bucks. Our testing saw one of these packs last around 6 hours and 40 minutes on a full charge, with the aircon blasting at full power while brings the cost to around $2.50 per minute for the battery. Naturally the more you use it, the better value that becomes. Subsequent packs can be daisy chained together to erk a longer life too, and the way the snap together is quite clever. More on that in the design section.

To pick up where we left off, the Mark 3 has plenty of clever design features. Starting with the battery pack which slides on to the bottom of the device. Its charging cords are cleverly tucked into the sides, and can unclip to allow it to plug in and stack with other batteries. The battery packs are much heavier than the unit itself though, so be ready to heave it around if you decide to pile any extras up.

The actual aircon unit weighs just 9kg, and has a built-in handle for easy transportation. It is 56cm long, 26cm across, and 31cm tall without the battery making it relatively small, although not quite small enough to pop in a backpack. On top of this it has two ventilation ducts, which means you need two hoses to pump the warm air away, or the cool air in. It works both ways depending on how much space you have to play with.

Either way this double duct system is at odds with the premise of the device. While it is supposed to be (and in some senses is) a streamlined cooling system, the two hoses make it a bit of a nightmare to properly seal off a space. A single duct would leave less room for error. It can be run without the ducts at all, but this will lower the cooling efficiency.

The Zero Breeze Mark 3 Portable Air Conditioner retails for around $2,000, ranging from $1,999 to $2,099 from various retailers. Additional batteries cost around $1,000 and can either be purchased as a package deal, or separately. Currently Australian retailers are limited, but these are the best deals available at the time of writing.