If you want a perfect AC this is the one to be bought. If the higher cost troubles you then it would recover for itself in a year and you start enjoying the bonus from next year.
I bought this AC in 2003 June, 1.5 Ton bought in a deal of Rs. 25000/- inclusive of the installation and the stabilizer. I was impressed with it’s simple looks with tonnes of feature. The noise level is simply lowest I have seen in the window AC, despite of the AC being fitted on the floor level the cooling is simply superb.
I mostly have good to tell about the AC but there is a small problem with the AC which I would tell in the end.
- Looks:
The looks are simple and elegant, everything well concealed, so no dust settles down at any are of the AC.
- Features:
a. REMOTE: The remote is small and power packed. Only the few buttons are exposed the advance buttons are hidden inside the flap. Also very interesting feature is that you do all the settings in the remote without pointing towards the AC and then just press any button on the remote pointing towards the AC all the settings would be offloaded in one go to the AC. The remote is bit direction oriented, so you got to point it a bit precisely towards the AC to make it work.
b. TIMER ON/OFF: The only AC I have seen to have clock in the AC and the best thing is that it maintains the clock in the remote and even during the power failure the AC also maintains the clock. So let’s say you set the AC to switch on at 7PM, the AC would switch on at 7pm even if there were power failure (say between 5pm – 6pm). The other ACs has relative time like four hours from now switch on or off, and if power fails the setting would go away. I use this feature when I go for shopping on the hot summer days. I usually use it in combination with the off timer, just in case I get late after shopping so I set OFF Timer after 20 min. So even I get late by 1 hour or so, when I am back home the room is pleasantly cool. I love this feature and use it extensively
c. MY MODE: This is another feature which I use daily when I go off to sleep. It stores the AC mode, KAIMIN setting, fan speed, off time, temperature. One has 3 memory for the my mode settings. So I have set it as per hot, hotter and hottest days. The time to switch off and the temperature and mode setting is as per individual choice. So if it’s very hot then I use the AC longer and colder during the night. In first my mode I set the switch OFF time at 4am. After which one hardly needs the AC if weather is pleasant. This further reduces the electricity bill. The best thing is that you just store the setting once (setting the my mode needs the manual to be used) but to use the my mode it’s just at the press of a button. So when you are feeling sleepy in the and are about to crash you won’t have patience to do the timer and the other settings. So just press my mode button and you are all set. After using this feature, I feel I would never buy an AC, which doesn’t have this feature. Since no other AC have it, I would never by any other AC other than Hitachi.
d. KAIMIN (sleep mode) : Similar feature is there in other ACs also, but somehow when set in the KAIMIN mode the compressor on/off is not heard at all. This feature basically increases the temp by 1 deg every hour to max to 4 hours, which is more than sufficient. Again a must feature if you want to sleep in AC.
e. PRESET MODES: The preset modes are there for different climate type. Which is very useful when you switch on the AC after you come from outside and want a quick chilling effect.
Efficient: The most efficient AC in it’s class, has highest EER (10.0). Quadricool from Hitachi supercedes it by .6 having EER of 10.6.
Low noise: The most silent window AC.
Swing : The swing can be adjusted to different range, refer to the manual to do the setting for the same. I don’t think other ACs have this. This is required if the position of the AC is in somewhat corner of the room, so swing coverage is blocked by the walls.
Overall, this AC has been designed with lots of homework and creative thinking, which no other AC even tries to match it, or rather understand the richness of the features offered in Hitachi. Probably that justifies the extra cost and the effort they would have used to put in those features.
Cons:
The only problem I faced was that the swing of the AC. The swing stopped working after 20 days of installation. The service engineer came from the dealer side and replaced some mechanical part and he charged me Rs. 40 for the spare part. I was bit surprised to know that they charge for the mechanical parts even under the warranty. It worked for an year and again in the next season it stopped. This is the only thing which gives a bit bitter taste but since the cooling is so fast that even without the swing it does pretty uniform cooling. May be its an manufacturing defect in my piece.
I have rated 4 just because of the swing malfunctioning, since I can’t rate it 4.5 and didn’t wanted it to rate 5 either.
I have put up a complaint at Hitachi directly (29th July) and let me see what they say, I would update the review once problem is fixed.
They finally came on 1 Aug, and just replaced the black round plastic as it was broken into 2 pieces. There is definitely design issue and the problem would re-occur again as told by their service engineer. So I requested him to bring 2-3 extra pieces so that I can just replace it and keep going. They charge Rs.200 per visit even for this small work.