Inverter welders are....

waste of money. They weld nice, lightweight, don't need a ton of power but when a PC board goes kaput its target practice time.
My Lincoln Squarewave tig is toast. Never used it much just welding tabs and such to my car a few hours on the machine. Buy a transformer machine.

A welder friend said that he would never buy an inverter.The older welders are bulletproof.

The old units don't have the tuning options the inverters have. If all you're tigging is steel then yeah, buy an old beast. But if you want to do some really cool stuff with a tig then inverter is the way to go. They also take a ton of guesswork out of setup.

Wow I have a Lincoln and took classes at night school and the teacher said the kids beat the piss out of that machine. I know I ran it through the ropes for 12 weeks.

Yeah 95% stuff is just steel, AC is nice to have. I really don't need a Tig but like my mill it is just nice to have.
I might buy another TIG (transformer) if I run across a deal. I bought the Lincoln 5 or 6 years ago for $1400 but now they are $2500. No thanks.There are better ways to spend $2500.
You can't even service these Lincolns everything is a sealed module.

I've used both, and certainly prefer using the inverter when possible. I have an ESAB, and use both a Dynasty (inverter) and Syncrowave (transformer) at work. Honestly, I've sent both out for repair about the same amount of times. At home I'd have a hard time justifying the size and power required for an inverter machine.

The new ones are probably nice but I’ll keep my 330 a/bp, got the welder, cart, water tank and bottle holder for $500. Got a ton of different tig rods with it too.

For those welding at home with limited electrical services, the inverters are a god send. I tripped my main breaker a few times running my old syncrowave full pedal welding 1/4-5/16 AL, I've never tripped a breaker welding heavy stuff with the my Dynasty maxed right out or my 350P welding 1/2" plate. And just when you think you don't need portability, then you do, I've taken the dynasty up on roofs with a rope to patch condensers, need a crane to get a syncrowave up there.
One thing I don't like about inverters, is each machine seems to have certain rods it doesn't like. The Dynasty doesn't like 6010 which I used to use a lot, some 6013's run like turd, and I found that for 7018, I have to run esab rods to get a smooth bead with no inclusion, other rods just don't seem to flow out and tie in at the edges on the inverter even with much fiddling.

i have an old [1972] airco 200 amp dipstick welder i got back in 1996.
it does mig, stick and scratch start tig, plus is able to do dc welding, including dc reverse.
however, i never tried to do any tig work, even though i have a brand new tig torch and full bottle of argon.
even being an archaic welder, it works great. hopefully someday i can try the tig side just to say i did.
i forgot to say though, that thing is HUGE ! it even has a dedicated lift hook on the top as part of the framework.