10 Best Aircon Brands in the Philippines 2026 | Buying Guide Reviewed by Mechanical Engineer

Unfortunately, companies often don’t have the time to cater to everyone’s needs. Instead, they carve out a niche in the market and focus on that. That’s why you see brands that are associated with wealthy folks and ones that are more budget-friendly.

Economic status is not the only thing to consider, though! Sometimes, companies also take into account buying habits like customers who prefer after-sale service or a one-time purchase. Regardless of the factors they consider, it’s best to make sure you fit their target market.

A company’s key values are what they promise to deliver to customers. Ideally, you’d want a company that shares or upholds principles you’re looking for. For instance, an environmentally-conscious person is best matched to a brand with the same standard.

Unfortunately, it’s easy for companies to say that they uphold values without actually doing so. As such, you may want to verify their claims by also checking customer reviews. It involves more work, but it’s better than blindly following a brand.

An established brand will usually have features its known for, whether it’s part of the product itself or part of their after-sales support. A more detailed explanation of these two are as follows:

Getting an aircon starts with the type you want, and there are three primary types to choose from. Each of these are designed to meet a certain need, meaning that they’re not interchangeable. That said, read on below to see the pros and cons of each.

Cooling capacity is the main aspect you’d want in an air conditioner; this is how much heat it can remove per a specified time. Often, British Thermal Unit (BTU) is the used measurement, though you might also come across kilojoules per hour when shopping. For easier comparison, though, the products we have listed above have already been pre-converted.

You also want to scale your aircon’s cooling according to the size of your room . After all, it's inefficient to get a high-cooling machine when a moderate one will do. Unfortunately, there is no definite scale for this but a good estimate is to get a BTU that is 500 times larger than your room size. For example, a room of 100 square meters requires 5,000 BTUs to be fully cooled.

A common mistake among new aircon buyers is getting a unit that has the wrong horsepower for the room they want to be cooled. This results in inefficient use of energy that can bring your electricity bill up. In fact, according to Meralco, the wrong horsepower can cost you an extra 956 pesos per month.

While the best way to determine your optimal horsepower is to get a contractor, not everyone has that privilege. If you want to do it yourself, the next best estimate is to get a 0.5 horsepower for rooms less than 11 square meters. Then, for every five square meters, add 0.25 horsepower.

Simply put, an inverter controls how much power your air conditioner consumes according to the temperature of the room. For instance, once it detects that it reached the desired coolness, it maintains this temperature by switching to a lower speed and only ramps up once the room heats up again. If you’re worried about a high electricity bill, you can save up to 10,000 php per month with inverter models.

However, to properly use this feature, the air conditioner must be used continuously. For instance, using the unit for 8 hours straight rather than four 2-hour sessions. With the former, the room is cooled once and will operate in low-power for the remaining hours. Meanwhile, the latter will use high power to cool the room for every session the unit is turned on, thus consuming more electricity.