5 ways to stay cool in the heat

All night

Hot water bottles and electric blankets have a decent record of warming your bed on cold nights. But I always found the opposite issue even more troublesome. This means a way to cool the bed in a few summer months when the room thermostat tilts 25ºC. In these circumstances, the Eight Sleep pod system will appear on its own. Based on a mattress cover that contains a network of thin tubes, a nearby hub circulates cooled (or heated) water. The unique temperature preference combined with the Eight Sleep’s automatic tweak ensures almost nighttime comfort.

It featured version 3 of the pod in the winter of 2023, and proved its value on chilly nights. However, the ability to dial down the temperature of the bed (or actually the side of the bed) before going to bed is a glorious luxury in hot climates, and Version 5 has two iterations of performance improvements. The mattress cover is more comfortable. The hub (still looks like a gaming PC) works faster and quieter. And you can tap on the mattress area to cool or warm things up. Therefore, I don’t mess with the app early on.

There are also optional add-ons. A cool and cozy blanket in sync with the mattress base between the bed and the mattress for gentle slopes and reclining. These, alongside eight sleep apps and an “autopilot” subscription (from £17 to £33 a month), stop near-absurd levels of environmental management (hopefully possible), such as snoring detection and autohead elevation.

Humans are already equipped with a temperature control system – especially the sweat glands – which is good to help a little. Especially when we are unconscious.

I’m a fan

If you’re looking for a fan that blends in inconspicuously with your interior decoration, this is probably not the case. But what it does is to be more successful and push a lot of air. This is a blue-free device with adjustable arms that release cold air through embedded vents. The orientation and height of these arms can be varied to suit your space and blown forward, backward, or downward. During execution, the entire unit can be rotated up to 180º.

It was used overnight and had three decent decent airflow out of 10, quiet enough for sleep (also has a dedicated “sleep mode”). For those keen to rebuild the park’s environment in indoor spaces, the “natural breeze” setting changes airflow patterns to simulate winds, while the “breeze boost” takes up to 11, a cool blast with power like a hairdryer. It’s flexible, effective and easy to use. There are no shenanigans with apps. This is a remote control that can be magnetically stored on top of the fan.

Please cool me

This is the most unstable range of personal air conditioners covered in a 2025 upgraded torus neck. It has a sportier design than its siblings, and is less than 400g, not lightweight. There is no Bluetooth so you can’t control it with the app, but considering you’re wearing something, remote control is not necessary. Each (fan, cooling and heating function) has three levels of power each, and three levels of power that can be easily circulated to find the optimal setting.

In the rear, sitting behind the neck, there is a cooling (or heating) plate that operates in parallel with 36 vents located in nine rows, each arm, upper and lower. The cooling and fan runs at Max, but the 5000 mAh battery is tense, but that’s an extreme use case, and Level 1 is perfectly appropriate when sitting on a desk or train. Also, there is pass-through charging so if you need to maintain high power for a long time, you can run a USB cable to PowerBank while in use.

Scams for campers

This portable air conditioner is optimized for outdoor adventures. It measures approximately 50cm x 30cm x 30cm and has the power to cool (or heat) your RV or tent. However, in the test, the temperature of a small bedroom was reduced to about 5ºC (from uncomfortable to ideal) in 20 minutes, so its use is never limited to camping.

If you are under the canvas, you may need an external battery. The Ecoflow itself (1024WH, £599) sticks to the bottom and can offer up to 8 hours of off-grid use, depending on how difficult it is to function. You can sit inside or outside the tent, with different intakes and exhaust pipe arrangements for each setting, making it easy to expand, connect and protect in place.

If used indoors, the template will help you cut the correct size vent holes on the foam or board to fit neatly in the open window. As always with Ecoflow products, it is most intuitively controlled using apps (via WiFi or Bluetooth), but the unit itself also has a small button. It also shows displays (dehumidification, cooling, heating, fans) that show features that enable ambient temperature, humidity levels, batteries, etc. (dehumidification, cooling, heating, fans). Obviously, the cooling and dehumidification process accumulates water in the internal tank and is warned when it is necessary to empty it – I have unnecessarily driven the process (including a plastic tube and another container for collecting water).

It’s easy to lift, very high transport, the ducts collapse, stacked neatly on each other, and there is a winder for the power cable. Your summer home is habitable, and your tent is no longer a hole in miserable misery.

Cold and clinical

If your home’s air quality feels pretty good and allergies aren’t an issue, a standalone air purifier may feel like a somewhat luxurious purchase. But if the purifier has fans and heaters built into it – as comfort is – it presents a compelling case for becoming a domestic companion all year round. Let’s deal with the summer first. Its “cooling” feature has four fan speeds, two of which feel quiet enough for night use. The unit can also rotate from just 45º to 350º. The floor is placed on the floor and has high knees, but it improves the air towards people sitting nearby (or lying). The heater works the same way – four fan settings and controllable vibrations (angle, speed) – can also specify the target temperature for the room.

Recommended

Purification occurs whenever the unit is running, but if you don’t want to engage in either the fan or the heater, in “boost purification” mode, you push air out to the top rather than the sides. Meanwhile, the “eco” mode places everything in standby until a decline in temperament is detected. Indoor temperature or contamination levels (particularly PM 2.5) are displayed on the touch panel and along with color-coded light (medium via red, yellow due to poor air quality, blue is excellent). Integration with Alexa and Google Assistant allows you to operate it via panels, remote, apps, or voice commands. It is quiet, reserved, obedient and very convenient.