Emura FTXJ

The Emura FTXJ is Daikin's designer flagship, a wall-mounted split with a curved aluminium fascia that is meant to be seen rather than hidden away, sold in white, silver and matt black. It is the unit to choose when the indoor unit has to look right in the room. Underneath the styling it is a proper performer: A+++ in both cooling and heating on the smaller sizes, quiet running from 19 dB(A) indoors, built-in Wi-Fi through the Onecta app and Daikin's usual solid engineering. For a living room or bedroom where a plain white box would jar, it is one of the best-looking units you can put on a wall.

The catch is what you pay for. The premium over Daikin's plainer models buys the aluminium design, not extra performance. Daikin's own Stylish is slimmer and a shade more efficient for similar money, and the Perfera gives you all but a sliver of the same comfort for noticeably less. As a fixed split it is supplied and fitted by an F-Gas engineer, so you work from a quote rather than a shelf price. Choose the Emura if the look genuinely matters to you; if it does not, one of its siblings is the smarter buy.

The Emura is a wall-mounted R32 split system: an FTXJ-A indoor unit paired with an RXJ-A outdoor condenser, or an indoor unit running on a Daikin multi-split outdoor unit that serves several rooms. R32 is the lower-impact refrigerant now standard on quality splits, and any work on the sealed circuit has to be done by an F-Gas certified engineer, so this is a fitted product rather than a DIY one. What sets it apart from the rest of the range is the front: a sculpted, curved aluminium fascia offered in white, silver and matt black, built to be a deliberate feature on the wall rather than something to hide behind the sofa.

It is the design flagship, not the efficiency leader. On the smaller sizes it still holds an A+++ energy label in both cooling and heating, runs down to a bedroom-quiet 19 dB(A), and comes with built-in Wi-Fi through the Onecta app, presence-sensing airflow and an air-purifying deodorising filter. But Daikin's Stylish is a touch slimmer and marginally more efficient, and the plainer Perfera matches the Emura on comfort for less. The Emura earns its place on looks, with efficiency and quietness that keep pace with the top of the range rather than lead it.

It comes in five cooling sizes, 2.0, 2.5, 3.5, 4.2 and 5.0 kW, covering a small bedroom through to a decent-sized living room or open-plan space. It suits the design-conscious homeowner who has settled on Daikin and wants the indoor unit to look considered, and who is happy to pay a premium for the aluminium styling. If the appearance of the unit is not a priority, the Perfera or Stylish will serve you better for the money. Note that the third-generation Emura is sometimes listed as the Emura 3, which refers to the styling generation, not a 3 kW size.

The Emura is priced supplied and fitted, so there is no single shelf price. As a guide, a common size on a standard single-room install runs from roughly £2,100 to £2,700. Real installer prices put the 2.5 kW from about £2,205, the 3.5 kW from around £2,396 and the 4.2 kW from about £2,597 on a standard 3 to 5 metre pipe run, with more for longer runs, high-level work or a multi-split setup. Costco UK sells an installed 3.5 kW package in white at £2,699.99 including the F-Gas installation and survey, and some retailers list installed 2.5 kW packages from nearer £1,950, so it pays to shop around. Expect to pay a little more than an equivalent Perfera and broadly the same as a Stylish for the same output, because the extra goes on the design, not the performance. Always work from two or three live quotes for your own home rather than a headline figure.

Running costs are low for the comfort on offer. At the July 2026 Ofgem price cap unit rate of 26.11p per kWh, a 3.5 kW unit cooling flat out draws roughly 0.8 to 1 kW, so about 21p to 26p an hour, dropping to a few pence once the room is at temperature and the inverter modulates down. In heating the high SCOP means it returns around five units of heat for every unit of electricity on the smaller sizes, far cheaper than a plug-in heater delivering the same warmth. As a reverse-cycle air-to-air heat pump it may qualify for the £2,500 Boiler Upgrade Scheme grant in England and Wales, but only if it replaces a fossil-fuel heating system and is fitted by an MCS-certified installer; comfort cooling added alongside a gas boiler does not qualify, and it is separate from the larger £7,500 air-to-water grant. Prices and rates correct as of July 2026; the energy price cap changes quarterly, so check current rates before budgeting.