But the pump is on the outside of the house so that doesn't really matter.

The other drawbacks to heat pump style is that they require a lot more ventilation and they cool the air around them (which is great in the summer, but could be a nightmare in the winter). I think maybe they also dry the air too, which again could be nice in the summer and rough in the winter.

Besides a fairly new tangential generation of 120v Heat Pump Water Heaters, all the other 240v can act like a traditional electric hot water heater using just its built in resistive elements. So in the very cold winter time when there is no heat to efficiently capture of of the air, you just switch it "Electric Only" mode and it operations no different that a regular electric water heater. It doesn't engage the heat pump at all in this mode. Another neat trick is that you can set it to a different mode called "High Demand". This is where you might have extra families staying with you during holidays and you're going through much more hot water than normal. In this mode the unit uses both the heat pump and the electric elements to produce as much hot water as fast as possible. In this mode the heater creates more hot water than even a gas or traditional electric can.

Only the 120v versions can't do either of theseas they typically don't have electric elements.

Yeah but literally nobody does the cleaning the tank thing and it's usually fine.