[Ryland]

We bought the smaller 90% efficient A.O Smith Vertex water heater and I figure it will have paid for it's self in 5 to 6 years, or less and that is assuming that our near wore out water heater would last that long.
I'm really impressed with it and thought about the heat pump water heaters as well, but what turned me away from them was that they required a warm humid utility room to draw heat out of and that if it was not heating the water as quickly as it thought it should it would revert back to a heating element.
The plus side is that it cools your warm humid basement and makes it cool and dry, perfect for food storage and in my area it would cost about the same to run as natural gas, a little more maybe but the 10 year outlook would be about the same over all cost.
Things I like about the A.0. smith vertex is that it heats water super fast, I own a duplex with a single water heater and it's good for over 3 gallons per minute forever, it also has a fan that plugs in that allows for a cheap lamp timer to be installed to turn it off at night, saving a few cents per months because this water heater costs $2.75 per month to heat water 24/7 compared to $20+ per month for the electric tank water heater.
I bought it from a place online that offered free shipping, I called around and asked if anyone could price match and the closest was $200 more... if it was $50 or less I would have gone for the local place but really? I can do a lot of good with $200.