Top 5 Best Air Conditioner Brands in India
Best AC Brands in India
If you are reading this article, then you must be considering purchasing an air conditioner or simply doing research about the best AC brands in India. In any case, this post will help you find the information that you are looking for.
Why is the brand so important?
Brands are not built overnight, companies put in a lot of time, effort, and money in building a brand. When you purchase a good brand appliance, it comes with a promise. Promise for its quality, and promise for its after sales service. Purchasing a branded appliance gives you peace of mind as you can trust it.
Types of Brands
Broadly, they can be divided into three categories:
Janta Brands: These cater to customers who are looking for a good value on a tight budget. Examples of such brands would be Amazon Solimo, Flipkart’s MarQ, R k Aquafresh, and few others. This category of brands usually don’t provide good after sales service.
Value Brands: These are usually very popular as they offer a wide range of choice at the middle price range. Also, their after sales service is better than the janta brands. Examples of value brands include LG, Whirlpool, Bluestar, Voltas, Godrej, IFB, Panasonic, Daikin, etc.
Premium Brands: These are costly brands that don’t compromise on quality of appliance. In the case of air conditioners, such premium brands usually don’t make under powered machines. If they label an AC as 2 ton AC, it will have a cooling capacity of at least 7034 Watts. Other brands may sell even a 6200 Watt AC as a 2 ton AC. Examples of premium AC brands include O-General, Hitachi, Toshiba, Mitsubishi Electric, etc.
Generally, you should avoid Janta Brands. If you are on a tight budget, go for sub brands of reputed companies like, Sanyo AC, Nokia AC, both of which are manufactured by Panasonic in India and service support is also given by Panasonic.
If you can afford a quality machine, then choose between premium brands and value brands based on specifications of AC. More on this below:
Best AC Brands in India – Our Picks
1. Daikin Inverter AC
Daikin is our favourite brand of air conditioners in India. Most of its models are powerful, durable, and come with an anti rust blue coating on indoor unit and outdoor unit. Most of the Daikin air conditioners have an actual voltage stabilizer inside them, so it is able to regulate the voltage and does not need an external stabilizer. This is unlike other brands that are able to operate on wide range of input voltage but do not regulate the output voltage.
Daikin offers best warranty on its air conditioners that includes 5 years warranty on PCB and 10 years on compressor. Also it has one of the best ISEER or power saving ratings in India.
Further, Daikin has a wide network of service centers in India. It is therefore able to provide better and reliable services to its customers.
Daikin has AC model for every customer. They sell powerful models that have cooling capacity of full 1.5 ton (5274 W) or 2 ton (7024 W) as per the labelled tonnage of that AC. But now they have also started selling 1.5 ton AC that come with cooling capacity of just 5000 W or 5100 W, etc. This is to compete with brands like LG, Panasonic, etc, that manufacture little less powered AC and then sell them at a less price.
So, when you compare price, keep the actual cooling capacity of AC in mind.
Here are some Daikin ACs available currently:
2. Panasonic Inverter Smart AC
Panasonic is a value brand and it offers feature rich smart air conditioners at amazing price. If we talk about actual cooling capacity in watts, their ACs are not very underpowered; especially in 1 ton and 1.5 ton category.
Panasonic offers inverter compressor, anti rust coating on indoor and outdoor unit, auto clean feature, sleep timer, self diagnosis, wide input voltage range, long warranty similar to Daikin, and much more.
Their WiFi ACs are compatible with Google Home and Amazon Alexa (Echo) devices. You can also control them via Panasonic’s mobile app.
Here are some Panasonic ACs you can check:
3. LG Dual Inverter AC
LG is also a value brand and its ACs are little more underpowered than Panasonic’s models. However, they have best quality anti rust coating on them that makes them more durable for high humidity areas like houses near drains, Nallah, sea, and coastal areas.
Some LG AC models are WiFi enabled and can be controlled by a mobile app. However they are not compatible with Alexa or Google Assistant.
As far as warranty is concerned, it offer similar warranty as Daikin and Panasonic.
The energy saving rating is equivalent to Panasonic but inferior to Daikin.
LG air conditioners come with superior air purification technology. Some of its models make use of UV bulb to kill micro organisms just like water purifiers. They also use HD filters coated with silver ions that kill virus and bacteria when it comes in contact with ions.
Here are some LG ACs you can consider:
4. O-General Inverter AC
O-General is a premium AC brand. They import air conditioners to India and therefore they sell at a premium. Quality wise, they are the best. They are most powerful, come with anti rust epoxy coating, have best ISEER rating, lowest noise levels, and best in class warranty. The only drawback is its poor service quality and un-availability of service centers in small cities and towns. Some people also struggle to get spare parts on time.
If you ignore these drawbacks, then this is the best AC one can get.
Here are some O-General ACs you can consider:
5. Hitachi Inverter AC
Hitachi is another Japanese brand in our list. Hitachi manufactures powerful ACs and they have local manufacturing factories in India. However, We don’t like the fact that they use ordinary hydrophillic coating and not high quality blue, gold, or ocean black epoxy coating on out door unit and indoor unit. This compromises with the durability of AC, especially in coastal and high humidity areas.
Here are some Hitachi ACs you can consider:
Last update on 2022-05-18 / Images from Amazon
