You may want to do some searches on the site, sear out Goodman - Carrier - Bosch

With out getting too deep, I will skim over it, but do search the site and you will find details not only from me, but others.


Top 10 best brands today - residental style units.
Trane (American Standard) - by far is the most dependable and longest life for this type od system.
Lennox (DuCane) - This is a close second to Trane, great life, good quality control and. parts are easy to find, even on Amazon
Rheem (Rudd) - Slightly distant 3rd in the kine up. Decent quality - unlike the older versions, much improved over the years

Several fall in the middle, but now the worst of 10 common brands
Carrier (Bryant) - Major quality control issues in theis product line - seen so many problems I will no longer sell one - at any price
Goodman (Daikin) - Over the years they have fallen in quality control - parts are easy to get, but over all, something I always sold, will never again. 4 year old units fail, costing $1500 for the customer to pay for repairs - Warrenty has limits on labor.
York - This one is interesting - JCI (Johnson Controls) bought them many years ago and made a mess of them, but now Bosch bought them and we can only hope they can revieve the brand.

Now lets talk about Bosch - personally I have mixed feelings. Have not seen one sold in my area, seems OK, but in our industry, they are the new comers.- yet to be proven. I do not care for the tech they offer - I believe that tech has its place, and if not needed, do not use it. They love inverter drives, something I fel is over kill and roblems waiting to happen. Seen very few complaints, just not proven to me yet,

It looks like you are calling residental companies out there. If this is a commercial company, call the big boys and stay away from these residental guys.

R32 vs R454b - Not a fan of R32 for many reasons - I belive R454b is a better solution, so I will not move into R32. R454b. These are commonly called A2L refrigerants.
A vs B is non corrosive vs corrosive. - - 1 is non flammable, 2 slightly flamable and 3 is very flammable - - L is a bit more than slightly
So these units require specail controls pending on your area and what you are installing. Still, I feel R454b is by far a better answer - also a tech can use the equipment they already own to service it vs R32 is all spoecial tools.

I assume Natural gas is not available to you, thus why you are looking at heat pumps. If Natural gas or LP is available, strongly suggest going that route first, you will be much happier.

Pricing - Since COVID, labor cost have gotton out of contol - I have now been retired for 2 years, and today, if I were to go back even part time, my offered wage would be much hgher than before. There is a bidding war out there with skilled labor. Contractors are trying to hire from a very small group of talent, too many of us retired and not enough yopung guys to take our place. To this day I still get calls from my past co-workers sking for tech support of a problem, and in most cases, a unit I have serviced in the past. Labor is crazy. Wat is worst is the talent in the residental market. These guys hardly have engouh education to even be out there, mostly parts changers. If they can not figure it out, replace the unit. A well maintaind quality unit will last 20-30 years. I have taught classes at a collage level, it is scary when we see. In some cases there is not way they could amount to anything other than a parts changer. So the big wuestion is - where is the talent?
Steamfitter / Pipe Fitters that are part of the UA (United Association) go through 5 years of schooling along with hands on with Journeyman in their education. Not all of them are perfect, but your odds of finding a talented tech sky rockets in the unions. Now do not get me wrong, unions are not all the same. We are a hiring hall, educating the people with in the union. The only thing keeping a tch employeed is their talent, nothing more. If a contractor say thanks, good bye - life moves on. The Union has nothing to do with it, zero protection. IF the person is making money and has that skill level, they stay employeed for years to come. hese people are also paid very well for that education. We get a nice retirment package, great health insurance and other training options. Your quotes are about average to on the high side

Nexxt up - you said in the Goodman AMST series a multi speed PSC drive - to be clear - this is an open motor, air cooled capacitor start/run motor. Back around 2019ish, the government banneed the use of that motor in all residental units. The AMST is a residental style unit. IT is an ECM motor - Do a seach on the site for ECM motors, I have a nce write up about them.

Now what is a modulationg condenser. It has a inverter in it to drive the compressor - pending on the brand, would depend on the exact details
Bosch has a lot of electronics in them, again, based on what I have seen on line and told. The motor is varible speed, so it ramps up and down based upon demand.
As I stated before - the more electrinics you stick in these the harder it is to repairor even find a tech that can repair it with out being on the phone with tech support for hours.
So I perfer an single speed or better yet, Lennox does have a 2 stage compressor, this is not done by changing the speed of the motor, it opens a port which reducs the capacity of the scroll compressor - Search scroll compressors - I also have a write up on them and this compressor. - If you size a system properly, thee is not need for a varible speeed or 2 stages of cooling.

Something to stay s\far away from are communication thermostats - there is not need for this expensive tech - if it fails, expect a $2,000 bill to follow, you can not just go pick up a $200 thermostat to replace it. Until these companies start making that tech universal, something to stay as far from as you can.

Just wanted to touch on SEER2 ratings - I a high demand factory I would say it is worth the extra cost, but in 99% of application the higher rating will never save you enough money to cover the extra cost of the system. DO NOT let rebated drive you - Think of it this way, the rebates are offered to you by who? Politicians - they want you to buy that product line nt because it is in your best interest, it is in their best interest. "Hey Joe, I'll give yo $500 if you buy this unit, " Thnk about that for a moment - I do not let government tell me what to buy. It necer pays in the end, someones pockets are being padded.

Start your searches here - I have 42 years in the trade, mostly commercial industrial work. All of which uses residental equipment as well - we have others helping on the site with their highly skilled talent levels also - Waldo and I monitor this site closely, making it a great source for help and keeping spam and un-related topics afar. TinkerMan is brilliant, between the two of us, not much we can not help solve here.

Good Luck in your search - I'm sure this was more than you expected already

Eggs

 

Full transparency, I am not an hvac tech.. just a homeowner that saw your post and wanted to chime in from my personal experience. About 7 or 8 years ago ( can't remember for sure ) I owned a home that had two units that had to be replaced. My contractor suggested Bosch. After he installed them I never had one issue. They worked great. We sold that home last year and moved a little further south to be near the grand kids.. House was 25 years old and the hvac equipment was original to the house. Since we had such good luck with the Bosch units at the previous house, I found another Bosch dealer here and had him install another Bosch here. Again, not a single issue so far. The one thing I would say is that there is apparently a very expensive electronic board in these units so for both installations, the contractors always installed an outdoor surge protector...Not saying the other brands are not as good, just saying I've had great luck with Bosch. Hope this helps.

 

Yes - the electrnics are expensive and even a surge protector is not perfect.
I have Tranes out there 20+ years old - zero issues, same with Lennox (DuCane)
The standard of those two brands are not loaded with electrinics, more basic, less to go wrong.

I am a firm believer that in most cases electrinics is over kill on the AC units. Size it all correctly, zero isses for years to come.

People call me old tech - In some cases I am, in others - not even close. I have designed a lot of control systems over the years, some with PLC logic modules, others with dependable JCI controllers - all depends. I try to use basic controllers so if it is not me returning, a normal guy can fix it.

Eggs