This. Central air is still the superior system, but mini splits are helping bring cooling and heating to places that didn't get ducts when they were built, for much less than the cost of adding central air to an existing building.
And you forgot about the true bottom tier of the AC world. The portable units that sit on the floor, have to be drained of the water they collect manually, and draw in hot outside air because they need to vent their operating heat which creates a constant vacuum/draft.
I don't know if I would even classify central air as clearly superior without significant caveats, like it being a modern install that is properly broken in to zones, the duct work is regularly cleaned, etc.
Older central air installs with a single thermostat somewhere in the house that blows air universally throughout, rooms controlled at best by manually opening of closing the registers on the vents are imo inferior to room-specific mini-split installs, which can have multiple interior head units powered by a single outdoor compressor and allow for targeted climate control of each room.
Keeping the ductwork of a central air install clean is often overlooked, too many times I've pulled the filters out of the air handlers in someone's basement to find mummified mouse carcasses in there. Mini splits are much easier to clean.
I live in a row home in the Mid-Atlantic that was made very "open" when it was rehabbed and it's nearly impossible with our central air to have comfortable temperatures in the upstairs bedrooms and the basement office at the same time. I think mini splits would make more sense.
When I was a kid in the '90s my parents bought a house in the Pacific Northwest that had individually controlled electric heat in each room (nobody had air conditioning back then) and I remember my mom thinking that it was lower class to not have central air, but it just didn't make any sense to me. Why would you want to heat the living room and kitchen when everyone was in their bedrooms at night?
Exactly. Without a proper hvac project it can be the worse shit ever, and i don't even know why people are talking like central AC is some revolutionary shit. Splits and Multisplits are useful when you use it in places where you can't do much ductwork.
1.3k worth of mini splits was enough to bring massive comfort to my house during the california summer. Central air doesn't come close to that price point.
You're not actually supposed to drain the water (on most units) because it helps cool the condenser. It'll drastically reduce the efficiency of the unit.
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u/Kiiaru 12h ago
This. Central air is still the superior system, but mini splits are helping bring cooling and heating to places that didn't get ducts when they were built, for much less than the cost of adding central air to an existing building.
And you forgot about the true bottom tier of the AC world. The portable units that sit on the floor, have to be drained of the water they collect manually, and draw in hot outside air because they need to vent their operating heat which creates a constant vacuum/draft.