Lazy Daze Owners' Group

An Easy-Start is a solid-state, soft-start device, it slowly brings the A/C’s compressor up to speed and doesn’t need the large surge of power at startup, typicalof most A/C units. .
It’s not very useful for use with your LD’s generator but they are useful for starting A/Cs with iffy campground power or with a smaller generator.

For helping hard starts, a heavy-duty starting capacitor can be useful and cost about 5% of an Easy-Start .
Amazon.com: SUPCO SPP6 Relay/Capacitor Hard Start Kit with 500% Increase...

Larry

Sorry but I am going to upset the apple cart here.

We use one and it has made a huge difference.  And it can make a big difference on the wear and tear of your AC and Generator even if your setup is different than ours (e.g. newer more powerful generator than ours).

The problem with Air Conditioner (found out when researching this) is that they start up both the fan and the condenser at the same time - which is huge surge of energy demand.
You will see in your Air Conditioner specs that it requires a certain size generator to run, not all LDs came with that size generator (depends how new your Air Conditioner is and the model and what size generator you have and likely how well is is performing - outputting power).

This means your Air Conditioning might seem to run fine, but it will put extra wear and tear on both your Air Conditioner and your generator  (e.g. shorter life for both - I can't say how much shorter).

The soft start (at least the one we bought) starts only one of these up at a time, so the spike is not as high (than the normal both starting at the same time).
From what I remember it also gives a ramp up of electricity supplied to the Air Conditioner so that it knows how much is needed without doing a big pull on your generator (e.g. makes it just right according to Goldilocks).

We replaced our Air Conditioner (old one finally gave out) with a new one that was more powerful (as well as newer).
It required more power (4000K generator was called for) and it would not run on our smaller generator (we have a 89TK with a 2.8K microlite generator, likely the original one, used mostly to exercise it monthly as it doesn't have a lot of hours on it).

With the softstart out Air Conditioner runs great and I am surprised at how low the spikes were to start it up.  Since the soft start's main purpose was to lower the spike of the condensor and fan both demanding power when the Air Conditioner was turned on, I am going to disagree that newer RV Air Conditioners do that for you.  We put in a Dometic Brisk Air II if I remember right.

We drove to CA around Sept 202, hit a heat wave (110-115 during the day, still very hot at night maybe 95).  We ran our new Air Conditioner on the generator the entire time we drove and our stop for the night half way there (at a truck stop) with ease.

So I would not only check if your Air Conditioner runs but what size generator it calls for. If your generator is not large enough, get a softstart.
We bought this one  Soft Start RV  SSRV3T.  We got it from Amazon because the company said it would get it to us in 2 days but then after we ordered said it would be 2 weeks. We canceled it, they asked if we still wanted it if they could send it in 2 days (by then it was 1-2 days later and we would miss the weekend we planned to install it), we said sorry too late.  We got the Amazon one on time (being prime members).

We found a good place for it inside our Air Conditioner case (different than their suggestion which would not work but a nice secure place to put it). We had to call as their documentation at the time didn't include a piece of important information that we needed to make it work.  [They were behind in documentation updates (many RV Air Conditioners needed specific info for them), hopefully all that has been updated now.]  They responded very quickly (within an hour) to calls for help even on a weekend.

I am not on the forum much these days (or seeing the emails it generates), life is just too busy, so it might take me time to respond back if anyone has any further questions. I tried to anticipate them and give you full information.

We ran into a situation with our generator and AC in Valley of the Gods in Utah this spring.  When it got near 98 to 100 degrees our AC would kill our generator several times.  We restarted many times but it would not handle it.  I serviced the AC a year ago and all seemed to be in good working order but we do not really don't get to check it out here in the Great North West where it might get in the 90s.  Later I ran the generator and the AC when it was in the lower 90s and it ran fine.

My 4000W Onan (2005 vintage) had the same symptoms about 5 years ago. Adding a capacitor did not change things. The cure was a new fuel pump for the generator; after that, it had no problem starting and running the air conditioner in 105 degree heat.