Is the Glacier Breeze AC worth buying? As a mom of three constantly battling the heat (and my kids fighting over the fan), I’m always on the lookout for anything that promises to make my life cooler.
So when I kept seeing those flashy Glacier Breeze AC ads popping up on Facebook and YouTube claiming to “instantly chill your room in seconds” with 60% off, I fell for it.
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About Glacier Breeze AC
The Glacier Breeze AC is advertised as a portable air conditioner that cools your space instantly, purifies your air, and runs whisper-quiet — all while being compact enough to fit on your nightstand.
I bought mine directly from their official website glacierbreezeac.com for $54 on a supposed 60% discount. Sounds like a steal, right?
Spoiler alert: It was a poor choice
My experience using Glacier Breeze
It took almost 2 weeks to arrive and to my surprise (and annoyance), the package came straight from China. Now, I don’t mind where a product ships from, but when a brand makes itself look like a premium U.S. or UK gadget only to send you a cheap knockoff, that’s a red flag.
When I unboxed it, my excitement turned to disappointment. It wasn’t an air conditioner. It’s just a mini evaporative cooler — basically a glorified misting fan you fill with water and ice cubes. The exact type you can find on Amazon for under $30 without all the exaggerated promises.
You fill up a tiny water tank, add ice cubes if you like, and turn it on. It blows misty air right in front of it. That’s it.
I expected that “instant room chill” they boldly advertised. Nope. It barely cooled the air around my face if I sat directly in front of it. The mist was fine, but in our hot summer in the US, this little thing was barely holding up.
It didn’t cool my bedroom. It didn’t cool the kids’ play area. All it did was make a small puddle on my side table from condensation.
Can this Mini Air Cooler actually cool a room?
Well, from my experience, it only cools a small area surrounding it not the entire room. I think you’d need up to four of it to cool a normal sized room. So if you just need an air cooler for your workstation, it could serve the purpose not for an entire room.
Is Glacier Breeze AC a Scam?
I won’t mince words — it’s a dropshipping gimmick, just like Briza AC.
The exact same product (same design, same build, sometimes under different random names) is available on AliExpress and Amazon for less than $30. They slap a fancy-sounding name, a fake discount, and viral ads on it to overcharge people like me.
While it technically works as a personal misting fan, it is not an air conditioner in any way, shape, or form. Calling it one is misleading and dishonest..
Pros
- Compact and lightweight
- Easy to set up
- Blows cool mist for a short while if you sit directly in front of it
Cons
- Ridiculously overpriced for what it is
- Room cooling promise is a complete lie
- You can find the exact same product for half the price on Amazon or AliExpress
Alternatives
After digging on Amazon.com, I found these portable air coolers that actually do impressive room cooling;
- 4-IN-1 Portable AC Unit with 3 Wind Speeds, 3 Spray Mode, 7 Night Light
- BLACK+DECKER Desktop Air Cooler
- Dual Motor Evaporative Air Cooler with 3 Speeds & 3 Mist, 7 Color Night Light Cooling Fan
Final Verdict
Would I recommend Glacier Breeze AC? Absolutely not. Save your money. It’s an overpriced dropshipped misting fan pretending to be something it’s not. If you’re like me and fell for the hype, don’t beat yourself up — those ads are convincing. But let’s not let them scam us twice.
As you stated, “I won’t mince words”, well frankly, let me make the same assertion before I even start.
The reason being, I must say your write up and review seems to start off with what I consider some deception. For you make numerous comments as to you and your kids “suffering the heat” and needing to find a solution, then only to be sucked into buying a Glacier Breeze unit, due to the companies “flashy and persistent ads”. But reading the “fine print” after the article, it’s disclosed that you’re an official “product reviewer”, or a person who buys many items for the sole purpose of testing them and writing a review on them. Why not be transparent and tell us that upfront? Instead of telling us you were basically tricked into buying it due to flashy advertising?
Another thing I quickly noticed, was you called the unit out for exactly what its technical name is. That being an “Evaporative Cooling Unit”. Now how on earth would a regular mom without any technical training in the field of HVAC engineering & design, know off the top of her head that she opened the box and discovered “it was just another evaporative cooling unit” and not a “true air-conditioner” as the ad made it appear to be???
The reason I ask this is because IF you were able to immediately identify as you claim, you would have also realized what it was before you even ordered it! Please understand, I have no use for the Glacier cooling unit nor their misleading ads. It’s just that I find YOUR article with misleading statements as well, in how you describe your needs and why you ordered it and what you expected to receive. None of it was a surprise to you as you stated it was.
For people who want to know, Evaporative cooling systems have been in use for over 100 years. Units made for cars were fairly popular in the 1940’s, and were a square box you hung on your window, cranked up the glass to hold in place and the airflow from driving created to cool air blowing in across the trickles of water inside the unit. They worked to cool diwn a car about 15 degrees, and people used them mainly when crossing the desert on the way to California. (Back when A/C was not yet an option in automobiles.
BUT, even today, wide spread Evaporative Cooling Units are the main “go to unit” all across the south western United States for single family homes! That’s right, they’re used to cool down entire houses, because in these areas very few people use Freon Air Conditioning units due to high energy cost. BUT these Evap coolers for houses are very large systems usually mounted on the rooftops.
In Closing, it’s quite obvious in the ads that this is NOT a freon A/C unit, with a compressor. To say you were tricked into believing that, a person who’s familiar with evaporative cooling units already, is just a pure fabrication. Second, you get what you pay for. These ads on Youtube & Facebook, are all 99% scams! People need to realize that, and most do except the most gullible.
Lastly: These little coolers will never cool any whole room. Even if you had 10. Because the principle of how they work, will never cool in that capacity or way. They’ll only cool what they’re directly aimed at, and only about 10 to 15 degrees cooler than the surrounding air. In other words, if you let it blow on your face, it will cool your face off. But it will never lower the temperature even 1 degree, in the smallest room of a house or even a closet for that matter!
And PS*** The Evaporative Cooling Units used to cool whole houses like used all over the south western US, arr about the size of your car! That’s how much evaporative cooling it requires to be functional. Now compare the size of a unit the same size as your car, to that little box and computer fan model cooler you received in the mail from Glacier.
Enough said… Now you know the test of the story…