Compare split system and air conditioning | Important differences

Many of us often think about improv­ing the cli­mat­ic con­di­tions at home, in the office, and this often leads to the pur­chase of an appro­pri­ate device. But some­times, among the vari­ety of air con­di­tion­ers, your eyes just run up and it can be oh so dif­fi­cult to make the best choice. Man­u­fac­tur­ers offer con­sumers stan­dard mod­els of air con­di­tion­ers and split sys­tems. Which one is bet­ter and is there any dif­fer­ence between them? Our experts have fig­ured it out.

Split system features

In fact, a split sys­tem is one of the vari­eties of air con­di­tion­ers, so it would be wrong to con­sid­er both devices sep­a­rate­ly from each oth­er. A stan­dard air con­di­tion­er, or as it is also called “mobile”, as well as monoblock struc­tures for cool­ing indoor air, are a sin­gle struc­ture, all the func­tion­al parts of which are in one place.

As a result, such prod­ucts are dis­tin­guished by con­sid­er­able noise, reach­ing up to 50 dB (in terms of noise, this is com­pa­ra­ble to a con­ver­sa­tion between two peo­ple). Sleep­ing under such con­di­tions would, of course, not be par­tic­u­lar­ly com­fort­able. It is because of this incon­ve­nient fea­ture that air con­di­tion­er man­u­fac­tur­ers have devel­oped a two-block split sys­tem, con­sist­ing of an exter­nal ele­ment, includ­ing a com­pres­sor, fan, con­denser and an inter­nal one. The first block is locat­ed on the out­side of the build­ing and serves to bring out the prod­ucts of the work of the ele­ments of the indoor unit.

The indoor unit of the split sys­tem was cre­at­ed direct­ly for heat­ing and cool­ing the air in the room. By the way, some mod­els of indoor units can change not only the air tem­per­a­ture, but also its “con­tent”, fil­ter­ing from unnec­es­sary ele­ments.

The blocks are inter­con­nect­ed by spe­cial tubes with ther­mal insu­la­tion, made in most cas­es from cop­per. Most often, when installing a split sys­tem, they hide behind a dec­o­ra­tive box, sus­pend­ed ceil­ing or direct­ly in the wall, so con­sumers do not even notice that they are present in the design.

Split sys­tems have gained incred­i­ble pop­u­lar­i­ty not only due to their almost silent oper­a­tion, but also because of the pres­ence of addi­tion­al options: purifi­ca­tion, humid­i­fi­ca­tion, air heat­ing, etc. This type of air con­di­tion­er is equal­ly effec­tive­ly used both in res­i­den­tial and office premis­es, ide­al­ly fit­ting into any inte­ri­or.

Difference from air conditioner

The split sys­tem has sev­er­al sig­nif­i­cant dif­fer­ences from the air con­di­tion­er, mak­ing it a con­stant favorite in the mar­ket for devices that cool the room. The main fea­ture of the device under con­sid­er­a­tion is its abil­i­ty not only to reduce, but also to increase the air tem­per­a­ture in the room (that is, to heat it). The stan­dard tem­per­a­ture range of a split sys­tem is from ‑15 ⁰From to +43 ⁰FROM.

ON A NOTE. Own­ers of mul­ti-room apart­ments or hous­es, if they wish to have air con­di­tion­ing in each of the premis­es, can choose an opti­mized option for them­selves — a mul­ti-sys­tem. It con­sists of sev­er­al remote blocks, the num­ber of which some­times reach­es 8.

The main advan­tages of split sys­tems:

1. Low noise;

2. High func­tion­al­i­ty;

3. Pos­si­bil­i­ty of place­ment in any point of the room;

4. Cli­mate con­trol;

5. Remote con­trol of the sys­tem;

6. High-qual­i­ty durable fil­ters;

7. WiFi, etc.

But the clas­sic monoblock air con­di­tion­ers can­not be called as mul­ti-option­al. Win­dow options, for exam­ple, installed in a win­dow open­ing, not only reduce the amount of nat­ur­al light in the room, but also cre­ate a lot of noise, they are dis­tin­guished by impres­sive dimen­sions. Such mod­els are no longer pop­u­lar: they are rep­re­sent­ed by a lim­it­ed num­ber of design vari­a­tions.

But mobile mod­els are still com­pet­ing with split sys­tems. They are con­ve­nient because they can be moved from one place to anoth­er. This option is per­fect for com­pact spaces. To improve the micro­cli­mate in the room, it is enough to bring the cor­ru­gat­ed hose out and con­nect the air con­di­tion­er to the net­work. But such prod­ucts, again, are very noisy, cov­er a small area of ​​the room, and do not always main­tain the tem­per­a­ture regime at the prop­er lev­el.

As for per­for­mance, it is not as high as that of split sys­tems, which is pri­mar­i­ly due to the design fea­tures of con­ven­tion­al air con­di­tion­ers. The prob­lem is that the noisy com­pres­sor is run­ning indoors, and the high noise lev­els make it impos­si­ble for design­ers to improve the per­for­mance of the ele­ment with­out hear­ing dam­age.

ON A NOTE. Sup­port­ers of split sys­tems often choose them instead of monoblock air con­di­tion­ers, not only because of the low­er noise lev­el and diverse func­tion­al­i­ty. The fact is that in a stan­dard air con­di­tion­er, con­den­sate is some­times drained only man­u­al­ly with a fre­quen­cy of 1 time in 3 hours. By the way, recent­ly man­u­fac­tur­ers began to please the mar­ket with improved mod­els of air con­di­tion­ers that can remove mois­ture on their own.

Comparative characteristics

As men­tioned ear­li­er, split sys­tems and air con­di­tion­ers are actu­al­ly the same thing, how­ev­er, there are sig­nif­i­cant dif­fer­ences between the two devices. We ana­lyzed them and put them in a gen­er­al com­par­i­son table.