India, April 14 -- For the longest time, I assumed a 1.5-ton AC was "enough" for a typical living room. After all, it's one of the most commonly purchased capacities in Indian homes, and it worked fine in my bedroom. So naturally, when I installed one in my living room, I expected the same performance.

But things didn't go as planned.

Over the past few summers, the cooling in my living room felt inconsistent. The room never quite reached the temperature I set on the remote. On extremely hot afternoons, the AC ran non-stop, yet the air never felt as cool as it should. That's when I started digging deeper to understand whether the problem was the AC, the room size, or my expectations.

What I discovered eventually pushed me to switch to a...