Your mini-split isn't designed to function as a heat pump at low temperature.

In places like Sweden, they also use heatpumps that are designed for those conditions.

In other news, don't drive in a Swedish winter with summer tires.

My air heat pump has been ticking away happy for 15 years with no issues. It's worked fine warming up the house when it's -20°C in the winter and cooled nicely in the up to +30°C in the summer.

I do supplement it using electric heating and a fireplace though.

Yes, there are cold weather heat pumps that can thaw the coils to keep operating. There is a point where they just can't continue to operate.

When I design a heat pump system in cold climates, I always include a secondary hear source that kicks in if the heat pump gets overwhelmed. Might be a gas section in a furnace. Might be an electric heater in a fan coil. Might be electric baseboards or wall heaters.

You used two temp scales in the same sentence

Theres different technology but there are some that can function to -32° F and they often have a feature that allows them to detect when theyre frozen up and defrost and then automatically switch back to heating

Yes, most installations do require a backup heat source in the event outside temperature is too low for optimal heat pump usage. On my ecobee thermostat, you can set what this temperature threshold is (i.e. 20F) and then if the outside temperature falls below this value, the heat pump is stopped and the natural gas in my case kicks in. Granted, this doesn't happen often where I live, but for those few weeks in the winter, it is not something I even have to think about. And the rest of the time, I am saving money using the heat pump and not natural gas.

I doubt there can ever be high tech heat pumps which can operate at -25 C or less, because there's so little heat energy outside and the heat pump would probably spend a majority of the time running in reverse to dethaw the unit to prevent it freezing over.

Oh I have no idea, I just got to this thread and see you're at -6.

It's weird because I thought it was an informative post. Made me want to look more into it and if it was just a subsection of heat pumps that was affected.

Mind me asking what yours cost?

Just got a Toshiba unit installed in Norway and it was $3500.
Built in de froster.

Price might be what makes yours strugle in colder temps.

Man they pitchfork mob came out in full force for this one. I also live in the south and during the freeze of 2021 it was a struggle for it to deal with those low temps.

There absolutely have been new heat pumps hitting the market in the past year or two that are blowing away the previous generation.

Your mini split probably doesn't have a defrost function. This would all be specified in the users manual.