Frigidaire Cool Connect vs Kenmore Smart AC: Who Makes The Best Smart AC?

Smart air conditioners have really taken off! It’s no wonder due to their unreal energy savings. I’m looking forward to seeing what the best smart air conditioners will be in 2019. We’ve seen a few new ones show up in the market already!

Whether you are thinking about buying a smart air conditioner for your home or office it’s always a good idea to take a look at all of your options. Which may not mean that you have to totally replace the air conditioner. There are some other more affordable options as well beyond just using a smart thermostat.

That’s what this guide is best used for and a good way to get an understanding of which smart air conditioner is going to be best for your situation. I understand that not everyone is going to be able to make a decision easily and hopefully I can help you with that in this guide.

Why A Smart AC? : What You Need To Know

When evaluating why you need a smart air conditioner there are several things to take into consideration. There are many different types of air conditioning setups, from central AC for your entire home to window and wall mounted units which you can buy in any big box store.

Smart air conditioners will make your life easier and less expensive in general. Many people complain about their high electric bills due to running their air conditioners a lot, particularly during the summer.

Most of the time this happens because proper measurement of the space that you want to cool hasn’t been done. So make sure you take a good measure to keep track of is BTU’s that are being used. Typically you’ll want to be getting 20 BTU’s per square foot. In fact, Energy Star has put out a guide to help you understand exactly how many BTU’s you’ll need for your home.

If you are just hunky dory with the existing AC unit that you’ve purchased, but you just want to make it smart, then you may want to look into buying a smart air conditioner adapter to connect your old air conditioner through IR technology. But I’ll get more into that in a minute.

What’s my qualification to even discuss this topic?

(Don’t slap me) For several years I used to be a service advisor for a local HVAC company. So I know a thing or three about installing, cleaning and parts for air conditioning systems.

With that said, let’s dive right into all of your different options and how each one might be good for your particular situation.

Best Smart Air Conditioners

When it comes to smart air conditioners for your home there are usually two camps as I mentioned before. You are either looking for a wall or window unit or you have central AC, in which case you should be shopping for a smart smart thermostat, not a smart AC.

Whatever smart air conditioner you choose will greatly depend on your specific needs, so I would look at the individual specifications (BTU’s etc.) on whatever you intend to purchase. I’m going to give you my top picks for smart air conditioners as of the time I am writing this.

Frigidaire Cool Connect

I don’t know how many Frigidaire products we have in our house at this point. I’m pretty sure our entire kitchen is compromised of every cool Frigidaire product out there. The company has definitely changed their branding and the cool new look of Frigidaire tells me that they aptly named this smart air conditioner correctly.

The Frigidaire Cool Connect will give you 10,000 BTU’s of cooling power. More than ample for most any room in your house. In fact, we have one of these on the bottom floor of our house which is approximately 1000 square feet and it does the entire first floor without a hiccup.

You can turn it off remotely and know when to change the filters with ease because of the app that comes with it for your smartphone. When it comes to compatibility with your smart home the Frigidaire Cool Connect works with Google Assistant, Alexa and Samsung’s SmartThings.

Kenmore Smart Room AC

If you are looking for a slightly less expensive option, then the Kenmore Smart Room AC is what you are looking for. It runs at 8,000 BTU’s, is perfectly quiet and a great addition to any home whether you use it to cool the upstairs bedrooms or just want to cool your home or business office space.

It comes with a simple remote control to adjust settings from across the room. The AC can be set to a specific temperature to maintain the room’s feel or even just set to fan only when you want to circulate air.

One nice feature is that it has lots of settings to get the exact feel you’re looking for in any particular room, but also has the option to keep it simple and just run normally.

As far as smart functionality you can control and monitor on the go with Kenmore Smart AC App on your phone or tablet or just enable the Kenmore smart skill in the Alexa skill store and control it with your voice.

Smart Home Air Conditioner Controllers

Now that we’ve gone through the best options for smart air conditioners. I can delve into another topic which is something that people have asked me about frequently. In fact, they’ve asked me about it enough that I wrote another article called how to make your dumb air conditioner smart.

Most people don’t want to drop another $300 on a new air conditioning unit if they don’t have to. So what are the alternatives?

There are a few of them beyond just using a smart plug and I’ll give you the skinny on all of them.

Sensibo Sky

If you need an affordable smart AC converter, the Sensibo Sky is probably the least expensive option you will find. The neat thing is that it works with any remotely controlled air conditioner on the market and comes in multipacks if you have more than one AC that needs to be converted into a smart AC. Sensibo comes with built-in temperature and humidity sensors. This allows you to control each air conditioner individually.

The Sensibo’s best feature? Climate React Mode!

Because this controller has a thermostat and a humidistat built into it, you can program the climate react function to fully turn your unit off and then back on as needed by either temperature or humidity.

You can control the Sensibo from anywhere, or just set it up with Alexa, Google Assistant even use it with IFTTT applets. All in all, this is a personal favorite.

On a side note: Their technical support is impeccable. So much so that if you run into trouble installing these they can walk you through just about any situation that you run into.

The Tado

This is probably my second favorite, only due to the slightly higher variation in price from the Sensibo. It definitely has some really neat features and boasts incredible compatibility.

The Tado Smart AC Control works with all air conditioners with a remote control that displays the air conditioner’s current settings. For example target temperature and fan speed.

It has a “smart climate assistant” built in which will handle everything for you. It automatically sets the temperature based on the current weather in your location.

The insane part about this little gadget is that you can set it to know when you leave and when you return so that it can turn the system off when you leave the house and cool down a room before you get back home.

The Tado also provides you with monthly energy reports and has other reporting features as well, such as daily climate reports.

As far as smart home compatibility, it does work with Google Home and Amazon Alexa.

Ambi Climate

This is one of the newer companies in this arena and it appears that they are headed in the right direction.

Ambi Climate is A. I. powered. What does that mean? It means that you just let their artificial intelligence work its magic! It will auto-adjust your air conditioner based on your personal preferences and what you tell it within your profile on the app.

It has three modes.

Comfort Mode: This is where you give feedback to the Ambi Climate on your comfort level and from the 3rd feedback onward the AI engine will auto-learn what you are telling it.

Away Mode: Perfect for your vacation home! This will set the Ambi Climate to only be on when you are physically there.

Temperature Mode: This is where you set it and forget it. The Ambi Climate’s A.I. completely takes over and learns when you have it on and turn it off. Very similar to a lot of smart thermostats nowadays.

Manual Mode: When you are on the road and you want to be able to change the climate at will. This is the mode for you.

So it is a bit different just because of it’s learning capabilities. That really is what the difference is with Ambi Climate.

It is compatible with Alexa and IFTTT, but there really aren’t a whole lot of voice compatibility options for your smart home here otherwise. I actually did a full review of Ambi Climatefull review of Ambi Climate as well, because quite honestly it’s one of the most powerful smart air conditioner controllers on the market.

Conclusion

Well, that’s the full guide to the best smart air conditioners and smart air conditioner controllers. I will update this guide as newer and better products come along.

I hope you have enjoyed the article and if you are looking for other smart home projects take a look around my site. I’m sure you will find all kinds of other toys for your smart home.

While you are here also check out my article about making your ceiling fan smart as well. You just might like it!