We just moved into a house with a detached two car garage that I get to call home for my shop. It's easily double the space I used to have. I went ahead and had the place insulated (R-19) before I set everything up, I figured I'd never want to go back and take it all off the walls to insulate in the future. Now my question is about AC. It's definitely much cooler with the insulation, but we have hot humid summers here. It's still probably 80 degrees or more in there, and I sweat. A lot. All over everything. I'm drinking tons of fluids trying to keep up. I guess I was spoiled a bit with our cooled/heated basement before.

There is an upstairs 'attic' area with two windows. It's all insulated, with polyvents in the roofline. I can add a 14,000 BTU window unit (Wynter or Honeywell on Amazon) for around $500-600. A buddy of mine put a mini split in his garage but it cost him $2k. For half that I could go with two window units. I do see some mini splits on Amazon in the $700 range but I don't have any HVAC experience, vacuum pumps, etc so I would have to hire someone to install it for me. I'm going to get a quote, but wanted to see what you guys thought. One of the windows faces the back yard, and it's 20' off the ground (steep slope behind the garage) so I'm not terribly worried about the security of having a window open. We have a dog in the back yard, etc.

Is the mini split worth it? I imagine it's quieter.