{"id":683606,"date":"2026-07-10T04:21:08","date_gmt":"2026-07-10T04:21:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/683606\/"},"modified":"2026-07-10T04:21:08","modified_gmt":"2026-07-10T04:21:08","slug":"cool-in-90-seconds-the-fake-portable-air-conditioners-sweeping-the-internet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/683606\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8216;Cool in 90 seconds&#8217; &#8211; the fake portable air conditioners sweeping the internet"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">As parts of the UK brace for another hot weekend, online adverts have been appearing for portable air conditioners claiming to be &#8220;designed by former Nasa engineers&#8221; and able to &#8220;cool a room in 90 seconds&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The adverts have emerged on platforms including Facebook and YouTube, but the Advertising Standards Agency (ASA) has now warned the products are often &#8220;too good to be true&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">YouTuber Stuart Matthews, who bought several devices to test on his Proper DIY channel, told the BBC that despite paying \u00a370 for one machine, it turned out to be &#8220;a small, simple fan worth only a few pounds&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The BBC has approached Meta and YouTube for comment.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The ASA told the BBC that some of the adverts it had seen online in recent weeks made exaggerated claims, including that a small device could cool an entire home within minutes or used very little electricity.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">It also said the adverts frequently featured fake customer reviews describing dramatic temperature drops or exceptional performance.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The adverts direct shoppers to websites selling the devices, typically for between \u00a370 and \u00a3120.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Many of the adverts also appeared to be AI-generated, using visuals such as copper coils and metallic boxes to make the products seem more sophisticated.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As parts of the UK brace for another hot weekend, online adverts have been appearing for portable air&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":683607,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[84,59,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-683606","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-gb","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/683606","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=683606"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/683606\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/683607"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=683606"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=683606"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=683606"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}