[irq11]

No, the heat moved is greater than the watts in. The machine itself has considerable parasitic losses, and a simple electric baseboard heater is more “efficient”, using the strict definition of the term.

The difference is that most people don’t care about “efficiency”; they care about heat moved per watt. But it matters a great deal more when you try to use a heat pump in a really cold environment, as the heat-transfer ratio of the machine plummets (which is why, in the real world, heat pumps fall back to gas or electric in cold weather).

It also matters in a scenario where you’re comparing two different machines that are powered by something small and intermittent, like a windmill.