I trust that you mean it doesn’t have the same effectiveness as other AC units you’ve used.

From a pedantic point of view, it is quite literally the exact same as an AC. Air conditioners are literally heat pumps.

Air conditioners are heat pumps. Not all heat pumps are air conditioners.

Common installations reuse the wet systems we have and are air to water, which was until recently the only thing the grants covered (and now it’s still lower for a2a).

And AFAIK the grants still don't cover something that can also be used as an AC, though maybe that's changed.

I have one and it is? We keep our house very cool in the summer using it and it works just as well as an in window AC that we use in the bedroom. Maybe what you have is different somehow.

An AC is literally a heat pump

So is a refrigerator; all the other considerations make saying "I have a heat pump therefore I have AC" in this context a bit like a Mexican saying "I am American".

Like, sure, but the word has a specific and a general meaning, conventional use is only the specific meaning.

How is it not the same?

Look, I know that actuuuualy and technically it's the same type of technology working on the same principle. The thing I have ( Daalderop 5G WPU) mainly works as floor heating (and great at that), but it's the size of a fridge and has it's own utility closet and a pipe underground for whatever thermal medium it uses and it's own separate meter (for reasons of regulatory kind). And it's a district wide deployment where I don't even own the thing.

Most importantly it's not the same in the way of me not feeling the chill. It's stupid, as I know the house is cooler than the outsides, but the actual split system delivers the cold air right to where I feel it and this thing just makes the ambient temperature down to 25c without me even noticing.

I don't want to know what it costs to install (I got it with the house), but split system costed lol nothing in eastern european dollars and took some guys less than half a day and zero permits to install too. For better or worse the heat pump doesn't live in the same locale I had that.

A water/water heat pump is absolutely not the same thing the other commenters are talking about. They're mostly talking about an air/air heat pump, where it's literally all the same parts but has a reversing valve so it can either be hot/cold or cold/hot among the coils with fans blowing through them.

This is more like what they're talking about, but they do come in a lot of shapes and sizes and can be more or less integrated into central systems.

https://senville.com/mini-split-heat-pumps/

It's almost like there is more than one thing called heatpump

UK typically uses air-to-water heat pumps with convection radiators. The passive radiators are useless for cooling, and condensation on pipes in walls can be a problem.