Welding technology typically doesn’t change very fast. The last major innovation was probably wire fed welders which became economical in portable welders in the 1980s and 1990s. Inverter Welders are the next great welding innovation on the horizon. These new types of welders offer a large number of benefits including running off of standard 110 volt power instead of 220, tolerating bad power from generators, and being much smaller per amp than conventional welders. They do have some downsides as well. For the same amount of power, they are currently a bit more expensive than conventional welders. They are also a bit less rugged so they may need more babying than you are used to providing for your welder.
A lot of professional welders are adding an inverter welder to their toolkit. It allow you to easily weld in places that were difficult before for several reasons. First, they are very portable and lightweight, but still put out a similar amount of power. In a confined space, you can simply carrying the welder in and set it down instead of having to find a way to roll your big welder inside. You can also just hook that up to a household power plug and begin welding instead of finding a 220 volt plug or hooking up an industrial generator. This means that your time to get in, get set up, and get the job done can be much quicker for some jobs than your traditional welder.
Unlike the relatively simple construction of older style welders, these new inverter welders do use relatively advanced electronics. This causes their price to be higher and means that you can’t be as rough with them, but this also allows them to be so small, to use household current, and to be incredibly efficient in their power usage. Some manufacturing facilities are changing over to this new type of welder simply because it cuts their monthly electricity bill by so much due to the greater efficiency.
If you have the budget, you will probably want to have both a new style welder as well as your older welder. They are each useful for different types of situations and the combination will give you a great degree of flexibility. It also means that if one needs service or repairs, you will always have a back up while the broken one is in the shop. It’s amazing to see how welding technology is improving over time!