The AC buying guide

Buying an Air Conditioner for your house can be a real tedious task. It is especially tedious as it is YOU who has to decide what suits you the best. Compare this with buying a mobile phone. You first decide the price range, visit few websites of phone manufacturers (or the physical stores), read few reviews on the web, take suggestions from friends who already have that model (or at least a phone of the same brand) and come to a conclusion, it’s easy, isn’t it?

Selecting an Air Conditioner

Come the case of selecting an AC, you’ll first have to make up your mind on what type of AC you want whether Window AC, Split AC (again single or multi), cassette type (that sticks to the roof top), slim line type (that stands on the floor vertically) and whether the AC should act as a room heater in winter or not and of course, the selection must fall into your budget.

The most common choice for the households will be either window or a split AC.

Hence we’ll look into those two things in details.

How big an AC do you need?

Again, there are different sizes in AC’s that you can purchase depending on your needs like 0.75ton, 1ton, 1.5 ton, 2ton. A general rule while choosing an appropriate size is to check your room size in sft. For a room which is 12×12 sft in size (length x breadth), a 1 ton AC should do the job. If you have a bigger sized room, go for a bigger capacity AC. Again, it’s only you who knows how your room is like, whether the AC directly faces the room door, how far is it from the roof top or a near by window, does it directly receive sun light (in case of Window AC) etc. Most of the company websites help you in this regard to select the appropriate tonnage. If you still can’t decide, throw all your questions at the salesperson before deciding on the size of the AC as this is the most vital thing in selecting an AC.

Quality and power consumption

It’s almost always unlikely that you get a quality product for a cheap price. If you really want an AC that can perform its job for some years to come, you have to put in your money. As far as the power consumption goes, look for the EER (energy efficiency rating) given by BEE. An EER of 5/5 is the best which means that there cannot be any energy efficient (which almost implies less power consumption) AC than that (Beware, don’t believe the words of the sales persons’ regarding BEE rating but look for the sticker on actual product. Some products do no have that sticker on them and yet claim a BEE rating). Although finding a 5/5 AC is really difficult, you can be happy if you get hold of a 4 star or at least a 3 star AC (A 5/5 rating product can save up to 25% electricity. Lower the rating, lower the savings)

As a quick reference, the Vertis gold split AC from Voltas and quite a few 1 & 1.5 ton split AC’s of LG are rated 5/5 (but Voltas has got a bad reputation of not providing the after sales support, which is generally not what Tata products are known for)

Noise level is another important aspect in selecting an AC. Generally, Split AC’s produce less noise than Window AC’s.

Set Out to buy – The company lists’ in India

Once you made up your mind on what features you need in your AC, you can visit the respective companies’ websites (or stores) to narrow down to a product.

Here are the most preferred AC brands’ in India (not in any order):

Carrier

LG India

Samsung

Bluestar

Voltas
© Sriraj Digital Magazine

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