What the EHS Quint actually is
For years the UK heat-pump argument has been a binary: air-to-water (the big white box that heats water for radiators and a cylinder) versus air-to-air (wall units that heat and cool the air, like posh air-con). Each had a fatal flaw the other solved — air-to-water can't cool and sits idle all summer; air-to-air can't easily do your hot water and doesn't get the big grant.
Samsung's EHS Quint, launched at InstallerSHOW 2026 (NEC Birmingham, Stand 5D40, 23 June), refuses to pick a side. It is the first residential Samsung outdoor unit that runs air-to-air and air-to-water at the same time, from one box — plus domestic hot water. One zone can be cooled through wall-mounted air-to-air heads while another is warmed by underfloor heating or radiators on the water circuit, and your tank gets charged, all from a single compact outdoor unit.
// The setup at a glance
Outdoor unit AE125HCTPESEU — 12.5kW (a 16.0kW version exists too), single- or three-phase. R32 refrigerant. Five operation modes spanning heating, cooling, hot water, simultaneous operation and heat recovery. Indoor side is modular: a pre-plumbed ClimateHub, a wall-mounted Hydro Unit (works with third-party DHW tanks), or a compact Control Kit — plus your choice of air-to-air heads.
The genuinely clever bit: heat recovery
This is the feature that made us sit up. In a normal cooling system, the heat pulled out of a room is dumped outside and wasted. The Quint instead captures the heat it extracts while cooling a room and diverts it into your hot-water tank rather than throwing it away.
Think about what that means on a warm day. You're cooling the bedroom — and the "waste" heat from doing so is heating your shower water for free. You'd have paid to make that hot water anyway; here it's a by-product of cooling you also wanted. In a building doing both at once — cooling one zone, heating another, charging the tank — the Quint is shuffling energy around the house instead of buying it three times over. That's the kind of efficiency you can't get from two separate single-purpose machines.
The numbers that matter
Samsung's published figures for the 12.5kW unit are strong, and unusually transparent for a launch:
| Spec | EHS Quint (12.5kW) |
|---|---|
| Heating / cooling capacity | 12.5 kW / 12.5 kW |
| COP (heating) | 4.66 W/W |
| EER (cooling) | 4.01 W/W |
| Energy label (35°C / 55°C flow) | A+++ / A+++ |
| Leaving water temperature | 15–65°C (heating) |
| 100% heating capacity down to | −15°C (16kW unit: −10°C) |
| Hot water in hot weather, up to | +43°C outdoor |
| Refrigerant | R32 (GWP 675), 2.70 kg charge |
| Compressor | BLDC Twin Rotary, 3.42 kW |
| Noise (Night Mode) | as low as 35 dB(A) |
| Size / weight | 1270 × 850 × 500 mm / 126.5 kg |
The standout is that A+++ rating at a 55°C flow temperature. Most heat pumps only hit their top efficiency band at low flow temps (35°C), which is exactly why air-to-water retrofits so often need bigger radiators. A unit that stays A+++ at 55°C — and reaches 65°C when needed — is far more forgiving of the radiators you already have. For renovation work, that's a meaningful claim. (As ever, treat manufacturer figures as best-case; real-world performance depends on the install.)
The grant angle nobody's flagging
Here's the bit with real money attached. Pure air-to-air heat pumps only qualify for the £2,500 slice of the Boiler Upgrade Scheme. Air-to-water and ground-source get the full £7,500. The Quint is fundamentally configured as an air-to-water heat pump — it drives a hydronic circuit and a hot-water cylinder through the Hydro Unit or ClimateHub.
On the face of it, that's the holy grail: a system that should qualify for the full £7,500 grant and gives you cooling and the air-to-air flexibility that pure air-to-water can't. You'd get the big subsidy and the summer comfort. We'd want to see this confirmed against MCS and BUS eligibility rules for this specific hybrid before banking on it — but if it lands the way the configuration suggests, it neatly sidesteps the £5,000 grant gap that has been propping up conventional air-to-water for years.
How it goes in
Samsung has clearly thought about the installer, not just the spec sheet. The outdoor unit pairs with three indoor approaches: ClimateHub for a fast, pre-assembled fit; a wall-mounted Hydro Unit that lets you keep a third-party DHW tank; or a slim Control Kit for tight spaces. Air-to-air heads run on direct-expansion refrigerant pipework, while water piping links the outdoor unit to the Hydro Unit or ClimateHub.
Because it uses R32 (an A2L refrigerant), it ships with built-in leak detection, shut-off valves and alarms to meet IEC 60335-2-40 and EN 378 — and, importantly, it needs an F-gas certified installer. On the management side, EHS Remote Care gives installers cloud monitoring and diagnostics on every connected unit (secured by Samsung Knox), and Cascade Control handles multi-unit setups. It's SmartThings-connected for the homeowner too.
The honest caveats
We don't do uncritical product hype, so here's the cold water:
- It's brand new — there is zero independent real-world data. Every figure here is from Samsung. The COP that matters is the one a metered home achieves over a full winter, and nobody has that yet. Treat it as promising, not proven.
- Price is unknown. Samsung is quoting through installers ("request a quote"), not publishing a number. A do-everything hybrid with this much kit is unlikely to be cheap, and the value case depends entirely on what it lands at.
- 12.5kW is a lot of heat pump. The smallest unit suits whole, reasonably-sized or larger homes — not a well-insulated flat. If your heat demand is modest, a simpler, smaller system may be the better (and cheaper) fit.
- R32 isn't the lowest-GWP option. At GWP 675 it meets upcoming F-gas rules, but rivals are already shipping R290 (propane, GWP ~3). It's fine, not class-leading, on refrigerant.
- Complexity cuts both ways. One box doing five things is elegant — but it's also more to specify, commission and (eventually) go wrong than a single-purpose unit. As always with heat pumps, the install will make or break it.
What it means for the bigger picture
Step back and the Quint matters less as a product and more as a signal. We've argued before that the heating-only, summer-idle outdoor unit is a dying design, and that air-to-air and air-to-water are converging on the same destination: one box, all year, heating and cooling and hot water. Daikin's prototype Altherma 4 X pointed that way. The EHS Quint is that convergence shipping as a real, orderable product — from a tier-one global brand, not a niche specialist.
Whether or not the Quint specifically is the right buy for your home, it's a clear marker of where mainstream heat pumps are heading. The interesting question is no longer "air-to-air or air-to-water?" It's "when does every heat pump just do both?"