Water heaters
A. O. Smith ProLine XE Voltex AL (HPTS-80) Heat Pump Water Heater, 80 gal
Prices are the equipment only — the appliance, before install labour. Every product in this catalogue currently has at least one real, seller-observed equipment price (see the SKU verification and price observation notes on each product). Get contractor quotes for the install itself, especially for anything needing new electrical circuits or condensate drainage.
80-gallon version of the same ProLine XE Voltex AL 'Smart Hybrid' platform as the HPTS-66 — same compressor and control architecture, larger tank.
Our take
If the 66-gallon HPTS is close but not quite enough tank for your household, this is the same platform sized up rather than a different product. That cuts both ways: the same published efficiency numbers, and the same owner-reported ECC compressor-fault pattern on this platform found in the field-reliability reports.
Best for
Larger households on the same wholesale-channel platform as the HPTS-66, where the extra 14 gallons of first-hour capacity matters.
Watch out for
Tall — measure ceiling height before ordering. Same wholesale-only distribution and pricing opacity as the HPTS-66.
Data notes
Our validation checks flagged the following. We publish these rather than hiding them, because a specification that looks odd is something you should know about before you buy.
uef: UEF above 1.0 means this is a heat pump water heater, but no minimum ambient temperature is recorded. That field determines whether it works in an unconditioned space and must be present before this product can be recommended.
What sellers are actually charging
Real listings, read on the date shown. Prices change — click through to check before you act on any of them.
| Seller | What you get | Price | Seen |
|---|---|---|---|
| SupplyHouse.com
online retailer |
A.O. Smith ProLine XE Voltex AL, 80gal
HPTS-80 |
$3,415 | 2026-08-16 |
Equipment price is not installed price. The listings above are what the hardware costs. Installation — labour, electrical, refrigerant lines, permits, removing the old system — is typically a similar amount again, and varies more between contractors than between brands. Where we have an installed figure it is labelled as such and comes from someone who actually installs.
What owners and installers report
Collected from trade forums, owner communities and video reviews. Every report links to the original. We synthesise and quote briefly — we don't republish other people's writing.
Every report below traces back to a single source. The sections are broken out by topic because that's how they read, but treat this as one data point, not independent corroboration across topics — a second source agreeing (or disagreeing) would change that.
Reliability and failures
What breaks, when, and how often — from people several years in.
Same platform, second owner: reports a second replacement unit, still under two years old, already showing the recurring ECC error code, and argues A.O. Smith should refund rather than keep swapping units. Filed against the shared Voltex AL platform, so treated as applying to both the 66- and 80-gallon capacity variants.
“Im on my second heater and its less than 2 years old and its already displaying the ECC error code.” — RIRED homeowner, 2024-02-01
AO SMITH Faulty Hybrid hot water heaters · HeatingHelp — The Wall · 2026-07-01 · read it in context
Sources are linked so you can verify any of this yourself. We don't mirror content — Amazon in particular permits no republication of review text, so where we use retailer data we show the aggregate rating and link out. How we collect and weight this →
Compare against
Rheem ProTerra Hybrid Heat Pump Water Heater, 50 gal
The default heat pump water heater for most US households: 50 gallons, UEF 3.75, widely stocked and widely serviced.
Rheem ProTerra Hybrid Heat Pump Water Heater, 80 gal
80-gallon version of the ProTerra, UEF 4.0 — the highest efficiency in the mainstream heat pump water heater market.
A. O. Smith ProLine XE Voltex AL (HPTS-66) Heat Pump Water Heater, 66 gal
66-gallon heat pump water heater with a UEF of 4.02, the highest figure in our water heater set. Sold under A. O. Smith's 'ProLine XE Voltex AL / Smart Hybrid' line — a different, retail-exclusive 'Signature Series' name is used for a different model-number family at Lowe's, so don't cross-shop the names.
Bradford White AeroTherm Series G2 Heat Pump Water Heater, 50 gal
Bradford White's second-generation heat pump water heater, launched July 2025, with the ICON control system and app connectivity. The highest UEF in our catalogue at 3.89.
Before you buy this
Ask for the first-hour rating, not just tank size, and check it against your household's simultaneous demand — showers and laundry at the same time — rather than headcount alone. If it's a heat pump water heater, confirm the room has enough air volume (or a duct kit) that it won't spend winter on resistance backup, and that there's a real route for condensate, not just a nearby floor drain. Confirm the panel has spare 240V capacity. And if you're removing a gas unit that shared a flue with a furnace, ask what happens to that flue once your water heater's draft is gone — an orphaned flue can backdraft.