I'm looking at getting either a 3,000-ton (36BTU) Bryant central air unit (compressor/heatpump/programmable thermostat - $3.8k) or just a (same size) American Standard compressor outside ($2k) that would replace a more-than-20-year-old American Standard unit of the same size. This is for a second-home in Florida, and I'd be using a very reputable and known A/C guy.

These prices would not be for extremely high-efficiency units, but basically what they recommend will do the job well economically.

Any thoughts on whether just going with the replacement compressor outside will probably be fine (given that it's the same make; the issue is that the old compressor finally gave out)? Any other recommendations?

I see that Bryant has the Evolution, Preferred and legacy line ... and for this purchase I'm primarily interested in how well it all works (the old one was fine for years) and say initial and first-year costs. It looks like there are a lot of Bryant programmable thermostat options also (though don't know if what they are hoping to put in will also have a wide choice ... not interested in lots of zone tweaking etc.).

Still waiting on model numbers from them, this is just what I know so far.