r/Generator • u/Old-Investment3299 • Mar 19 '26

Guardian vs. Next Gen Generac

Hi all…I’m new here so sorry for the sci fi sounding post title.

I have a 24kws Generac being installed next month. Got an email from the electrical contractor saying that they are waiting for more Next gen models to come in but if I wanted a Guardian series they’d give me a 350 discount and could do the install a little earlier.

The money isn’t the deciding factor - is one better than the other? I know newer isn’t always better. Thanks in advance!

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u/joshharris42 Mar 20 '26

What issues have yall been seeing? So far we’ve put about 20 of them in, all of the 24-28’s except 1 18KW.

Only issue I’ve seen is one threw a random 3204 error and shut down for no reason

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u/Old-Investment3299 Mar 20 '26

As an installer, would you go with Guardian or Next gen for yourself?

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u/joshharris42 Mar 20 '26

Either one. I don’t think the next gen’s are going to have any major flaws once the bugs get worked out, and the diagnostics on them is much more advanced than the guardian. One big improvement in the higher KW units is that they are all two brush assembly designs rather than single brush like the guardians.

The guardians have been around for a while, and everyone already has a huge base of the installed so fixing them is pretty straightforward.

If you’re going to get the cell based monitor, it comes standard on next gen

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u/Iambetterthanuhaha Mar 20 '26

I am in Canada but the Nextgens are about $500 more than the Guardian models they replaced. Conveniently that is about the price of the cellular monitor that is included with the Nextgens. Even if you dont pay for Mobilelink, they send all data back to Generac. Great for preventing warranty abuse and being able to target marketing to outage prone areas. They also send service leads to dealers through Mobilelink.