Anyone have any recommendation for good/bad brands for air conditioners ? It’s all a bit of a minefield with all the specifications and different outputs. The room I want to cool is a about 6 ping, but is two floors in height, any help gratefully received.
I don’t know that much about brands, but I’d say go for a size smaller than whatever the salesperson suggests.
Unless you need a room to be kept at 22, you can do with a very small unit. 6 pings is very small. Smaller ACs are quieter, cost less, use less juice, and are easier to move. You can carry a small unit yourself.
So, think small.
Hitachis are the best - longest lasting with the longest guarantee. A window aircon will be cooler than a split aircon of the same BTU rating. Dunno why this is but it has been my experience.
I don’t think Hitachis are worth the money unless you’re going to be keeping it for years. I’ve got a White Westinghouse split 18k BTU one in my bedroom and it is fine. Possibly even a bit too big. But there’s no way it’s putting out 18k BTU, the 20k window one downstairs has twice the cooling power and it’s ancient. I’d take the salesman’s word with a pinch of salt.
I’ve had TECO and Panasonic ones before and they were fine.
Don’t worry too much. If you only use it for about 1 to 3 years, no worries. If you will live in Taiwan for a long time, or you care about resale value go for Hitachi. With that said, I still most likely wouldn’t pay the extra amount for the Hitachi. Run some brand names by us and we will let you know if they are alright or not.
Here’s my experience of Taiwanese brands of electrical appliances. Best to worst:
- Toshiba
- Hitachi
- Panasonic / National
- Sanyo
- Teco
- White Westinghouse
- Tatung
- Sampo
- Kolin
- LG
- Samsung
Lots of Taiwanese people (especially the salesmen at appliance shops) will tell you that Toshiba, Hitachi, and Panasonic are made in Japan and White Westinghouse is made in USA, but that’s bullshit. Actually, all of these brands are actually made in Taiwan except the last two, which are made in South Korea.
I don’t think Toshiba makes air conditioners in Taiwan, but they make wash machines, refrigerators, and TV’s. Anyway, this list is for all electrical appliances, not just air conditioners.
There’s also Frigidaire, which is also made in Taiwan (not USA), but I haven’t bought any Frigidaire products yet, so I’m not sure how the quality is, but I guess it’s probably mid-range (#4 to #8).
Kolin is definitely the worst Taiwanese brand. All of the Kolin air conditioners are very noisy.
Got a Kolin air-con and didn’t have any problems so far…I was told, that eventhough it’s a Taiwan brand, it’s a Taiwan-Jap. joint-venture or something, so quality should be Japanese like…
Actually, unlike hoedad, I would go with something rated higher than 6 pings - if you can afford it. If I had to do it over I would have bought something with twice the power I actually needed. 
Never skimp on A/C in Taiwan…that’s my advice.
Well, I don’t too much experiece with brands here in Taiwan except for Proton. I got a Proton 10K BTU air con last year and I can safely say that its the biggest piece of trash this side of Taipei. Sweet Jesus is this thing LOUD, whether you’re inside or outside it sounds like you’re running a friggin tank. Fortunatly I’ve relocated it to the living room and installed a Sampo in my bedroom, been working great with a lot more features than Proton.
So all in all I’d stay away from Proton or Kolin brands, as another member pointed out that Kolin doesn’t exactly have the best track record when it comes to home electronics.
My friend has a Proton 42" flat screen TV. Boy what a POS it is. Sales repair can’t fix it and they still charge you per visit!
Discard Hitachi from your calculations and then buy the biggest a/c (in terms of BTUs/hour) you can afford. I’ve got a Lung Bong (or some other no-name brand) Taiwanese one, a Panasonic, and a White Westinghouse and they’re very much of a muchness. Both pump out cold air. It’s the BTUs that count.
No, no, no. Buy the smallest, cheapest AC that will do the job. You just have to take the edge of the heat, right? Small room, right? Big ACs cost a lot, suck the juice, are a pain to move, and make a lot of noise.
I disagree, unless you’re satisfied with it being 30 degrees inside when it’s 35 degrees outside. But that’s still way too hot for me.
For me, I’m not comfortable if it’s any hotter than 26 degrees, and actually I’m even more comfortable when it’s 25 degrees. And I have found that in order to be able to cool a room down to 25 degrees if it’s 35 degrees outside, you need to have an air conditioner that’s at least 600 Kcal per ping, which is 2400 BTU per ping. (1 ping = 36 square feet = 3.345 square meters.)
For example, the size of my bedroom is 20.35 square meters, which is 6.1 ping, so the minimum size air conditioner that can cool down my room to a 10 degree difference between the inside temperature and the outside temperature is 6.1 x 2400 = 14,640 BTU. Well, they don’t make any air conditioner that’s exactly 14,640 BTU, but 14,200 BTU (3550 Kcal) is a standard size, so that’s the size of air conditioner that I bought for this room, and it works great. In fact, it can usually cool down the room to at least 11 or even 12 degrees coolor than the outside temperature.
If an air conditioner is too small, then if you set it to a temperature which it could never reach, then the compressor would be running continuously, and after about three or four hours, the evaporator coils would start to ice up. Then the ice would block the air intake, and the ice would spread to a larger and larger area until it completely covers all of the evaporator coils, which would cause the compressor to burn up.
Ask someone who’s been here a while to recommend a good a/c repair shop. They often have good used ones for sale and can tell you which size/brand is best. I got a good used unit from a shop on FuHsing south of Hoping, although that was about 5 or 6 years ago.
Mark Nagel = I thought LG and Samsung are among the best.Is it that the quality in the USA and Korea is not the same.I thought they all have regulations and spcifications on what a product must be made of,so I thought the quality would be the same.
OP-I posted the original question, read the advice and went for a hoitachi. Thanks for all the help guys. I’m pretty happy with it, very quiet, cools the place down to 24 pretty quickly despite the high ceiling and has a decent guarantee. I’ll let you know when I leave so you can fight over it.
That should be Hitachi…
[quote]For me, I’m not comfortable if it’s any hotter than 26 degrees, and actually I’m even more comfortable when it’s 25 degrees. And I have found that in order to be able to cool a room down to 25 degrees if it’s 35 degrees outside, you need to have an air conditioner that’s at least 600 Kcal per ping, which is 2400 BTU per ping. (1 ping = 36 square feet = 3.345 square meters.)
For example, the size of my bedroom is 20.35 square meters, which is 6.1 ping, so the minimum size air conditioner that can cool down my room to a 10 degree difference between the inside temperature and the outside temperature is 6.1 x 2400 = 14,640 BTU. Well, they don’t make any air conditioner that’s exactly 14,640 BTU, but 14,200 BTU (3550 Kcal) is a standard size, so that’s the size of air conditioner that I bought for this room, and it works great. In fact, it can usually cool down the room to at least 11 or even 12 degrees coolor than the outside temperature. [/quote]
The standard calculations, I’d make are slightly different. I’d say 2000BTU per ping, which makes a 10000BTU machine fine for a 5 ping room. They mihgt exaggerate the BTU though. Pull off the front thinbg and check. 100K/Cal is 400BTU. The also talk about ‘dun’. I think a ‘dun’ is basically a measure of cubic space, more or less equivalent to 1 ping in a normal height ceilinged room.
I’d also caution about getting an AC that is as small as possible. If it’s too small for the room, it will be working as hard as possible to try and get the temperature down to what you want. If a machine is powerful enough to reach the temp you want, then maintaining that temp uses less power. So a too-small unit will actually use more power than a larger one.
Hexuan said the split units seem to have less effective BTU. Ours is fine. Maybe the pipe is too long on his. I like the split units (where the machine is actually outside, connected by a pipe), because they are a lot quieter and don’t take up window space. However, there seems to be some truth to what people say that good well-made old brands (like the ones where you turn a dial rather than use a remote) are often awesome.
Brian
How about the American brand Carrier? I just bought one. Anybody have any experiences with this brand?
Chewy -
2 months ago I was looking to purchas an ac for the boys room. Its smallish, approx 8x10 or so, and saw a ‘Carrier’ brand ac that looks about right.
Now the last home I had in the USA I had a Carrier ac on a slab outside the house as a ‘whole-house’ ac, so I thought this might be a good deal.
The salesdude at the place told me that Carriers in Taiwan are locally manufacturered by a company that also makes a number of other ac’s under diff private brands.
I wound up buying another brand, from the same company supposedly.
Is there a problem with the ‘Carrier’ marque? I don’t know.
It came down to buying a model with the same BTU’s and a slightly better warranty for the same $NT’s.
Shit, this went no where. Lets compare notes next November when we shut 'em down.
The salesperson at BQ told me my Carrier was manufacturered in the US. I paid 21,000NT for it, as I needed a bigger one for a 6-7 Ping room with high ceilings. I was going to buy the Sanyo or LG, but they were both locally manufactured (not sure if that is good or bad for ACs). The Carrier was 5,000NT more. I hope it lasts