Is buying a dumb AC in 2022 a good idea?

Air conditioner
(Image credit: Pixabay)

Having an air conditioner installed at home became common practice in India a while ago. The unit's cooling efficiency, energy savings, and to some extent, design, were on the forefront of any buying decision until a couple of years back.

However, once the pandemic hit, health and hygiene came to the front of that list, and rightfully so. While beating the heat is necessary, so is having a living space that has good circulation of virus-free, healthy air.

While heading to the marketplace to purchase an air conditioner, be it through the Internet, or physically, one is hit with a plethora of options. The cost-conscious buyer might choose an old school non-inverter AC due to it being more affordable than smart alternatives.

What old ACs lack

Old ACs, while proven to be durable, only come with remote controls. There's no way one can tie them in with the rest of the smart-home devices. Smart ACs, on the contrary, can do a lot more and the list of features are bound to extend with the arrival of each new generation in the years to come.

Today, with a smart AC, one can check the real-time AQI of a living space, issue voice commands with Alexa and Google voice assistants and what's more, smart ACs allow one to see everything there is about them through a mobile app. As a result, predictive maintenance is gaining popularity these days. 

Why smart ACs?

Among the things old ACs cannot do is provide the option to schedule the hourly temperatures, through a mobile application, before going to bed. This comes as an advantage to people who loathe waking up due to midnight chills.

On the point of robustness, modern ACs have a wide working range and can also adjust, in real time, power input and cooling requirements. But, chiefly, smart ACs these days come with virus filtration, which cannot be said about old ACs, which is a shame. Also, new age ACs hardly produce any sound and are more efficient too.

While some might overlook the disadvantages of buying a dumb AC in the smart AC era, chiefly due to their more affordable sticker price, others would be wise to invest in a smart AC with the new age features that take health and ease of use seriously.

Suresh Subramaniam

Although on the younger side, Suresh, an engineer-turned journalist, has been around the field since smartphones had buttons in them. He has tried his hand at a variety of stuff, including writing articles for a Chennai-based eveninger on technology, automobiles, business and cricket at the beginning of his career. A Chennaiite can hardly escape cinema and Suresh has absorbed his fill of movies.

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