Before you concentrate on a brand, you need to verify if the contractor will do a good installation. Are you talking to an HVAC installer who will do the work, or a general contractor will arrange to "install any brand"? It sounds like you have two furnances and condensers for a two story home and you are only replacing the units for the upper floor. Has a Manual J (heating/cooling) load calculation been done. A 2 ton air conditioner for a 1900 sf top floor seems undersized. I have never been to Tennesse but I assume you hit summer highs in the upper 90s. In terms of brands the upper tier are Carrier/Bryant, Trane/American Standard, Lennox, and Rheem/Rudd. I don't have experience with Frigidare (which also may be Amana), but again brand to secondary to a proper sizing and installation.

By the way, my decision to replace the entire a/c system is due in part to these factors: 1. Outside condenser broke down and it's 24 years old and uses R22 freon which is now being phased out in favor of R410A refrigerant. I didn't want to get a replacement R22 unit and I prefer to switch to R410A. 2. Evap coils are 24-years old and full of R22. Can't be cleaned because they have too many curves in the copper tubes, so they have to be replaced. 3. Existing lineset is full of R22 freon and the oils that go into the liquid. Many installers prefer to flush the existing lineset, but I got a lot of advise on this board to replace the lineset with a new one. This way you don't have to worry about the flush being done right. At minimum, I wanted to replace the evap coils, lineset, and outside condenser. Unfortunately, my existing gas furnace was installed upright in the attic and the evap coils are about 5 feet from the gas furnace. Even though the gas furnace works fine, I decided to get a variable speed high efficiency motor gas furnace to get the best possible SEER-15 with the new matched evap coils and new outside a/c unit. So, I'm getting a complete new system with new ducts, new lineset, new gas furnace, new coils, and new a/c condenser. If parts of my existing ductwork weren't original from the early 1950s and I wasn't using R22, I would have only replaced the broken outside condenser. It would only have cost me about $2000 to do this. I would have been happy with SEER-13.

a good basic single stage system and it is an AHRI match. See below. Pricing on high side. 7548567 ActiveSystems TRANE XR14 TRANE 4TTR4037L1 4PX*BD36AC3 1050 *DD1B080A9H3 34400 13.00 15.25 1RCU-A-CB All 284 I would get the Perfect Fit Media Cabinet and forget the ext labor warranty at that price. The only question I have is whether you could get away with the 60K XT80 furnace model over the 80 K size. Ask for a load calculation. More is not better. Once a year PM is enough BTW. IMO

Hi Elmer I read through your comments strongly supporting NG over HP option due to its cost advantage. Do you know a 10 KW solar system can be installed in CA today for $15000 after tax incentive , which will generate approx. 15000 KwH of electricity per year ? I am exactly doing this for my 1995 built 3375 sq ft home in bay area as this appears to be the cheapest route to bring down my energy cost as compared to other options like improve insulation, change windows or upgrade 1995 installed 80% efficient NG furnace etc. Till my NG furnace is alive and kicking, I plan to use it minimally in the morning to take the chill out of the home and rely on supplemental electrical heating ( resistive ) to keep the house warm . Resistive heating is inefficient, but ok as stop gap option particularly if my electricity is coming from solar. When it's time to bid farewell to these antique NG fired machines, I plan to take HP route for my home heating and air conditioning. Even without any of these actions and just install of solar, my current electricity only bill will be reduced from $2800 / year ( 10000 KwH ) to zero. That will pay for solar install cost in just 5 years. Add to it cost saving from an electric car ( which I don't have at this time ), payback is even shorter. My yearly NG heating consumption is 700-750 therms. The baseline consumption of 20 therms / month or 250 therms / year will always remain due to NG cooking appliance and NG water heater. But the rest 500 therms / year NG consumption can be eliminated when I replace central ducted existing NG Furnace / AC system with ducted heat pump (no splits). There will be more upfront cost to install heat pump as compared to NG furnace / AC option , but I am hoping this differential to be in the range of $2-3K , particularly if I go with heat pump option like MrCool Universal ( will work well in temperate Bay Area weather ) instead of fancy Fujitsu or Mitsubishi heat pumps. And saving of $1000 from eliminating consumption of 500 therms / year should help offset this cost sooner rather than later. Due to these considerations, I decided to go for 10KW Solar System that gives me enough capacity of solar generated electricity to meet these loads. Time to give a fresh look to all ( almost ) electric home with recent price reduction ( actually since June, 2020 ) in solar install cost.