A heat pump system with a flash-tank coupled with a scroll compressor is compared with a system with a sub-cooler. The heat pump performance was measured experimentally. The heating capacity of the prototype decreased as the evaporation temperature decreased, but the decrease was much slower than that of a conventional air-source heat pump. The power input varied slightly with the evaporation temperature. The heat pump system with a flash-tank is more efficient than the system with a sub-cooler at low ambient temperatures, so it will be very useful as a small capacity air-source heat pump. (C) 2007 Published by Elsevier B.V.