Should I turn air conditioning off when I go out?
For short absences, an hour or two, leave it holding temperature; recovery from scratch costs about as much as holding. For a working day out, set it warmer rather than off in a heatwave, so the fabric of the room never heat-soaks, or schedule it to restart before you return. For days away, switch it off.
The intuition that off always saves money misses what happens to the room while you are gone. In sustained heat, walls, floors and furniture heat-soak; come home to a 31°C room and the system must strip heat out of the fabric, not just the air, running flat out for an hour or more. Holding the room at, say, 26°C while you are out keeps the fabric cool and the evening pull-down trivial.
The arithmetic then depends on the absence. Short trips: holding wins or ties, because inverter idling is cheap and recovery is not. A full day: the setback strategy wins, a few degrees warmer while out, scheduled back to comfort before you return, which every app-connected unit and most remotes can automate. Multi-day absence: off wins, no argument.
Heatwaves bend the rules toward leaving it on more than feels natural, both because heat-soak is worst then and because the grid-friendly pattern, gentle continuous running rather than a 6pm surge of every system recovering at once, is also the pattern your compressor prefers.
One more case: pets at home change the answer entirely. A dog in a top-floor flat during a 34°C day needs the cooling running, full stop, and the running cost of a held 25°C is small beside the alternative.
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