Quilt Heat Pump Review: Finally, an Attractive Mini-Split

Some people can tolerate a typical mini-split’s looks, but I haven’t met anyone who thinks the bulbous profile and glossy off-white finish actually elevate their home’s decor. I’ve even heard designers call them “wall warts.” And for Jason Marcus, co-owner of Hotel Lilien, the appearance was a problem for the otherwise carefully designed property.

“Regular mini-splits have always been an eyesore,” said Marcus. Many of the rooms at Hotel Lilien still contain one such homely unit (I spotted Mitsubishi and Fujitsu models), and he told me that they’ve been an occasional source of frustration. Sometimes, the least-ugly spot in a room for a mini-split ended up being suboptimal for comfort, efficiency, and ease of maintenance — a compromise that pays “negative dividends” over time, as Marcus described it.

With the Quilt system, Marcus’s team just put each unit (also referred to as a head) wherever it made practical sense in a given room and then painted or stained the front cover (available in either a matte white or oak veneer finish) to match the surrounding walls or wood trim.

The results look like they actually belong in a boutique hotel, more like a decorative lighting fixture, complete with a built-in LED strip, than utilitarian hardware. I can’t say that I didn’t notice the Quilt head in my room, but it accented the decor the same way that an ornate cast iron radiator or decorative vent cover can.

You can control the Quilt unit with a dial-style thermostat and a companion smartphone app, and I found both methods to be sleeker and more streamlined than the clunky infrared remotes, boxy thermostats, and glitchy apps that are the status quo for mini-splits. Most contractors I talked to agreed that Quilt’s controls are the best in the industry, especially in terms of smart features. “Everybody else’s [app] besides Quilt’s sucks,” said Brendan Ryan, a general manager at home-electrification firm Elephant Energy, which has no affiliation with Quilt.

Several Quilt employees previously worked on the Nest Thermostat, and that lineage is obvious here. If you’ve ever used a Nest thermostat, or really any gadget with a Wi-Fi connection and decent reviews, you get the idea. The Quilt heat pump’s controls were mostly intuitive, though occasionally glitchy or laggy on both the dial and the app — imperfect, but nothing out of the ordinary for smart-home gear.

One notable snag was the occupancy sensor, which didn’t work perfectly. I tried it out during both dinner and breakfast, when I left my room for close to an hour at a time. Both times, it correctly registered that I was gone and set itself to an energy-saving Auto-Away mode. But on one occasion, it must have seen a ghost, because it incorrectly sensed that someone had come back to the room, and it automatically returned to its normal setting.

As frigid as it was in the Catskills during my stay, I wasn’t worried that the Quilt unit would struggle to heat my room. There’s a lingering myth that heat pumps can’t work in cold weather, but the Quilt unit kept me cozy even as the outdoor temps dropped into the single digits.

But to put it through its paces, I ran a stress test, where I opened my windows and set the thermostat way back before heading downstairs for dinner. The room temperature dropped to 61 °F while I was out. Once I got back and turned the heat up, the unit cranked out enough warm air to raise the temperature by 10 degrees in less than 20 minutes. According to my thermal camera, it was cranking out heat at 120 °F, which is almost as hot as a gas-fired furnace.

Once the room warmed up, the Quilt unit ramped back to a slower fan speed with milder output (closer to 90 °F) and had no trouble holding the room at a consistent temperature over several hours, pausing only occasionally to defrost its outdoor coil.

Trickle heating isn’t unique to Quilt’s design, but it’s an important test to pass because it’s one of a modern heat pump’s best features — steady temperatures are almost always more comfortable and energy-efficient than the multi-degree swings you get from most traditional systems.

All the readings I got from my airflow monitor appeared to be normal, as well. And the Quilt unit was just as quiet as any of the best mini-splits. Even when it was at its highest fan speed, it barely cracked 50 decibels on my noise meter from a few feet away — hardly loud enough to register above typical background noise. Since the compressor in the outdoor unit was located about a dozen yards away, the indoor head produced none of the grinding, rattling noises you get from a window AC.

At the end of my stay, I walked away convinced that the Quilt can handle frigid winter temps with the best of them, and that the controls and especially the design are a big improvement from the norm.

I didn’t test the cooling performance, nor its purported ability to heat one room and cool another simultaneously, though the Quilt-affiliated contractors I spoke to all said that the system performs as expected in those respects, and unaffiliated contractors said they had no reason to doubt the claims.

I also didn’t have the means to verify certain advanced specs, such as the system’s efficiency and turndown ratio, which would be class-leading if true. But those numbers have been certified by AHRI, the HVAC industry’s governing body of sorts, and contractors and early customers haven’t raised any significant concerns that I’ve heard of.