Midea U Inverter 12,000 BTU Smart Window AC review (week 1)
Let me preface this with I never had any intention of adding a smart air conditioner to my repertoire of things, however the Midea AC had the unique ability to open a window with the AC in place without it falling out or completely monopolizing the window until the end of the AC unit.
It also claims to save about 35% on energy bills with the way it’s designed.
My office/bedroom/test bed is in a converted attic in a 1940’s house with a central unit that’s more than capable of handling the upstairs, but a 1940’s venting system that’s incapable of delivering the air flow required. Basically it can be 100F outside, 70F on the first floor, 110F in the upstairs without some aid.
The upstairs is 35 feet long and 15 or so feet wide and has some closets and a bathroom with slat doors. I just blew about $250 on insulation and will be throwing some more at insulation next month. In normal times I’d let the room heat up during the day, crank an AC on when I got home from work, and it was nice at night. Stupid Covid-19 shutdowns mean I’m here all day.
OK, Onto the Midea U Inverter…
Install
Laid out well in the manual. You should have a power drill and a level but everything else is included. Only weird or hard to understand (for me) part was the anti-tip brackets which are located in the U section and not drawn particularly well. Everything else was easy and made sense. Was lighter than I expected for a 12,000 BTU unit, still pretty heavy.
Large foam blocks included to be cut to fit, black insulation in both stick on and press in. Foam blocks didn’t quite fit perfectly in my window sill but I was able to use some of the insulation to make a perfect seal.
Yay.
Smart stuff
The Midea U Inverter Window AC comes with an app, and Alexa and Google Assistant functionality. While the AC only works on the 2.4GHz band of WiFi the app did not make me jump through hoops to get my phone onto the 2.4GHz channel when I was on the 5. Just asked for the SSID and password and bam.
Registration required, and have to do it with a username and password if you want smart functionality with Google Home and Alexa. I did this while standing in a 99F room but in front of a nice cool AC… ahhhhhhh.
First thing I did was connect it to Google Home after seeing that I could control it from the app. This was pretty simple, went to Google Home app, added, scrolled down to Midea, entered username and password, bam… did not work.
It didn’t work for about 5-10 minutes giving me a “cannot connect” error message every couple of seconds, and then it worked. Mostly. Right after I’d sent a support request.
There’s not much instruction in what you can ask the AC to do, but you can turn it on, off, and see what it’s doing from Google Assistant. It’ll show nothing in the Home app other than a power button, but you can control it somewhat in Assistant although it’s going to be in Celsius, regardless if you want to blend in with the Fahrenheit crowd.
Troubles / annoyances
For the most part this was a pretty simple install, however the draining seems to be going forward so guessing either my level was off or I’ve misread the thing. Currently dripping into the sill, but going out correctly. As I have to remove several screws to get the unit back out it’s been a “let’s fix this on a day when it’s not death hot”.
Neither of my requests to Medea support have been answered for several days.
Home integration seems to not be complete.
Overall workable.
Every action you take on the app results in the unit beeping. This is quite annoying.
The “check” function either gives you an A-OK or gives you next to no useful information on what the issue is.
Overall
Quiet, cool, app and assistant integration leave some to be desired but it’ll get the job done.
They currently make them in 8,000, 10,000, and 12,000 BTU units. Amazon’s claiming they ship within two months, for me it showed in about 9 days.
