InstaChill

InstaChill is a portable personal air cooler that is designed to make your home, office, or even outdoor areas more comfortable, while also humidifying and purifying your environment.

In this analysis, we’ll help you understand InstaChill’s functionality so you can decide if it is the right option for you.

How Does InstaChill Work?

You’ll start the process by popping off InstaChill’s back panel and adding 10 quarts of cold water—the colder the water, the cooler air generated by the device. Then, turn it on.

The fan draws in warm air from your surrounding room and passes it over washable, reusable, water-infused cooling pads, which is claimed to reduce the temperature of up to 160 square feet of air by about 27 degrees Fahrenheit.

The now-cooler air is sent back into your room, whether in one direction or multiple directions by pressing the oscillation button that allows it to pivot from side-to-side.

InstaChill also features three variable speed settings and an easy-view water level checking system, easily rolls from room to room, and can be used as a fan or a humidifier.

Overall, the manufacturer says this process and feature set can reduce the air temperature in any room between 5 percent and 15 percent, and only uses the same amount of energy as a 100-watt lightbulb.

The manufacturer claims it would only cost $7.90 to operate 24 hours a day for an entire month.

How Effective Is InstaChill’s Evaporative Cooling?

Before becoming vapor, water must first heat up—which means evaporation fundamentally involves transferring heat from a surface into the air. Hence, this process is known as “evaporative cooling,” or more technically, “endothermic reaction,” as stated in the InstaChill commercial.

This is precisely how sweating cools you off on a hot summer day. It’s also how InstaChill works, which forces air over water, cools it down, and then sends the air back into your room to make you more comfortable.

Because adding water vapor to the air increases humidity, though, evaporative cooling works best in arid environments where it can decrease indoor temperatures by up to 20 degrees.

However, this type of cooler becomes increasingly less effective as the air humidifies, so they're rarely found in regions like the Southeast and Gulf Coast.

So, while the manufacturer repeatedly emphasizes that InstaChill only costs $7.90 per month to operate, compared to more than $200 for a traditional wall-mounted air conditioning unit, it’s essential to keep in mind that these technologies will provide very different levels of cooling depending on where you live.

Pricing

If purchased from BuyInstaChill.com, each unit is available for a single payment of $219.95, plus $19.99 shipping, or four interest-free monthly payments of $49.99.

During checkout, you can upgrade to the XL model, which is claimed to deliver bigger, more robust operation and to cool rooms up to 270 square feet. This increases your cost to five payments of $59.99 each, or a single payment of $319.94.

We also found a “medium” (no capacity listed) version sold on Amazon for $199.99, plus $19.99 shipping, which advertised all of the same features.

InstaChill comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee, less original and return shipping charges. It also features a one-year warranty.

There aren’t any details regarding replacement filters on the InstaChill website.

Alternatives to InstaChill

The Bottom Line

From an effectiveness standpoint, the manufacturer’s 20-degree cooling claims for InstaChill seem to be mostly inline with evaporative cooling capabilities.

However, if you don’t live in an arid climate, you can almost certainly expect much less of a temperature drop than this.

If you're in the market for a portable evaporative cooler, InstaChill's combination of high price, lack of details, and limited support options mean that we'd recommend exploring other devices that seem to deliver more value for your money.