Winner 🇰🇷

Winner is not a Spanish brand nor an orphan brand: it is the name under which LG Electronics sells its entry-level wall‑split range in Spain, and it is worth clarifying this because in second‑hand ads it sometimes appears as if it were an independent manufacturer. In stores and sector distributors the series is presented as “the economical range of LG”, also called Eco, “with reduced price but premium features”, and it is positioned below the Confort, Art Cool and Dual Cool series of the Korean catalogue.

The range has two recognizable generations. The first, the “LG Winner 9” and “Winner 12”, with R410A and energy class A/A, was sold in the second half of the 2000s and early 2010s through appliance chains and online stores; the Winner 12 advertised 2,924 frigorías and was the typical floor unit for rental or second homes. The second generation, the W09TE and W12TE, already with inverter, heat pump, R32, classification A++ in cooling and up to A+++ in heating, 22 dB in the indoor unit and self‑cleaning function, is basically LG’s Standard model without wifi: salespeople explain that “the W12TE is very similar to the S12ET, except that it does not have wifi”.

Winner's logic is the same as that of other channel sub-brands—the way major manufacturers segment prices without devaluing the main brand—and in Spain LG has maintained it for more than a decade, which explains why a “Winner” from 2008 and another from 2022 can have little in common beyond the name. We have not found a press release from LG Spain with the launch date of the series, so the start remains unspecified. For the enthusiast, its interest is sociological: it is the device that put LG in millions of Spanish homes through summer sale offers, and a piece of recent history that no one will collect until twenty years from now.

Pending verification

Launch year of the Winner range in Spain and whether it has been sold under that name in other countries.

History machine-translated from Spanish. Can you improve it? Write to us. hola@frostalgia.com