Midea Inverter Portable AC

Update - 4 months in -------------- Decided to do a follow up since it's getting into the summer time now and I've had this now for the past 4 months. For context I live in the inland empire with dry desert California climate. As we speak right now It's 97 degrees in my room of around 350-400 ft. I bought this to circumvent issues I was having with my central AC that my landlord is being extremely stingy about getting properly fixed that froze on me last summer, and even froze on me this week when I turned it on again for this extremely hot weather. Ive primarily have used it before in hot weather so I knew it would work but I was worried that I was crossing the threshold of efficiency where it would be better to simply use my AC instead of doing my hacky solution. Except for trying to get the ac fixed and this past week I have not turned on my AC a single time during this summer or this week with over 90 degree weather. And this has been not only working, but still working more efficiently than my AC for my space. It's really good at being able to regulate itself at a decent level when your room is at the temperature that you set. For my case however I do run this at 78, which is fine for me. The degrees it shows will be about 2-3 degrees cooler in your room to whatever you set it too, but I know that a lot of people like it way colder than I do in my room. The colder you run this unit, the less efficient it'll be, especially when your trying to work with extreme temperatures. I do suggest getting the warranty when you get this unit as the actual pipe you get with the unit is extremely flimsy and super expensive (around 60-100 dollars last time I looked). I had some damage on mine from setting it up, but found a workaround with drilling in screws instead to keep it in place, but I still got a replacement sitting in my room after sending them pictures from that. There are automations that come with the app that would help to make it more efficient I haven't played around with, but I suggest you do so as the only issue I've had running this consistently is it running when it's cooler outside, but my room retaining a lot of heat naturally due to how it was built. If you do this, I suggest getting an indoor thermostat so you can control when you turn it on conditionally by both your indoor temperatures and the outdoor temperaturees, as I've found in my case especially after dark it'll be cool outside but super hot in the house because of the heat cooling off from the walls. -------------------------------------------------------------------- Im basing this on my first couple of days using this unit from a unusual heat wave for the past few days in cali, and not off any long term use from using the product I primarily was looking for a portable unit with the purpose of saving money in my small rental apartment. My AC over time has massively gone up over time and very likely needs to get an inspection but even with it working as intended, it's generally a very costly piece of equipment especially during the summer. I have an all electric unit - so the expense is already going to be higher than if I had gas, but the unit also being broken and older has also increased that cost over time. The unit itself is around 70ish pounds, so if you're looking to move this around upstairs, then I wouldn't get this unit. It is movable but you really want to utilize the wheels whenever possible. In my apartment, the 2 ideal locations that I would place this unit would either be my bedroom or my living room, which can both be accessed easily by wheeling it to where it needs to go. The installation of the unit is fairly straight forward. I actually have not done any permanent fixtures with the foam as I'm trying to avoid doing that as possible, but I haven't had any issues with the unit being semi fixed. The noise from outside seeps a bit more like this, but this also isn't a unit that I need to use all the time - as I really only need it when the weather gets hot. One primary concern that I have so far operating the unit is the hum of the refrigerant as it's going in the unit itself. The first couple of days it was making a very annoying audible sound that was mostly machine like, but it seems to have gone away after operating for the last few days. If you hear this noise, give it a few days to see if it goes away on its own. The other issue with this unit is the flimsiness of the installation itself. It's very easy to break the clips for your mounts, and the replacement cost for those pieces is around $79 dollars on midea's site. You have a limited warranty of 1 year on the unit itself, but I can see this breaking very easily after some time, especially if you move it around a lot. The unit has 4 modes, for mine it has a fan, cooling, and a dehumidifer mode. From using the auto mode it seems to do a fairly good job once the room is set to a certain temperature. Generally speaking though, with any AC, you should turn them on first thing in the morning when it's cool, so it doens't need to work as hard cooling your house. It's easier for it to maintain a cool temperature, then it is to bring down the temperature of your whole house. I've also seen people say "it doesn't carry air that well, but also try to use it in a 1000 ft garage, or some other weird area. This unit is specified to work for around 450-550 feet. My room is around 200-250, with my living room being around 500 ft with obstruction that makes it difficult to carry air if my doors are all open. If you need to carry air, grab a fan that can carry air in your room like a dreo or a vornado, or any kind of fan that can tilt or has the ability to swivel. My room says relatively cool, but my living room right now is at a different temperature without my engaging ingenuity around it, but I am able to circulate air into my living room by setting up my fans properly. It's just a hassle to do that constantly. Otherwise, for energy savings from my wattage hours it's operating at a much lower cost than it would to use my AC. Even if I needed to get more involved with adding more fans to circulate air in my house, that hack is significantly less than the amount of electricity im using right now. I haven't gotten a kill a wat to watch the unit, but from my bills alone, the total operation on a fairly hot day seems to be around 4 watts, vs my AC which would easily take 10 watts minimum even on an average day.

I have now purchased two Midea Duo 14,000BTU units. They both had mechanical issues on first use which I had to investigate and resolve. After that they have both been phenomenal. I would not buy any other unit, because I have bought other brands and theirs cannot hold a candle to Midea. See below for Midea issues as well as praise. Note: these Midea units have a large rotary fan which is held by a massive rubber… grommet? rubber… bearing? at only one end of the rotary fan. The fans also have a unique structure cast inside of the rotary fan (presumably to help draw air from one chamber to another within the ac unit). This unique fan structure and unique mounting of the fan requires Midea to counterweight the fans with metal weights at the factory. This style of fan has also lead to vibration and potential self destruction in these units. But when it works it works well. Praise: The unit itself is phenomenally well made, incredibly well thought out. Every detail has been planned for and the instructions are clear. The build quality is very good, form factor is excellent too. The Midea app is great and integration with the new device was seamless. The install video is great too. The ac works wonderfully well. Heat mode works phenomenally well and is super quiet. Heat mode does not require reconfiguration or any particular preparation other than hooking up the drain line. I used the included drain adaptor to run a 1/4” black silicon line to a glass gallon jug for heat condensate drainage. The Midea Duo 14,000 BTU unit (with heat) has an internal pump that pumps out condensate from heat mode. This is very helpful. Issues; Within a minute of turning on my first unit, it made a HORRIBLE persistent rattling sound. The compressor/cooling lines were rattling against each other. I was able to get in where these lines were and slide the vibration-dampening sleeve that was already on one pipe, further down the pipe, so it would actually keep the pipes from rattling against one another. My second unit (after sitting for 16-24 hours as it should) made a high pitched metal-on-metal squeaking sound emanating from the compressor when I turned on the ac. I immediately turned the unit off, pondered for a bit, then ran the unit in heat mode, this immediately resolved the metal-on-metal squeaking issue. It now runs perfectly in heat or cooling mode. P.S. These units do make a high pitched whine sometimes, but most people will learn to tune it out. Do not attempt to repair these without some knowledge and caution of these sorts of things. P.P.S. This unit replaced a Whynter ARC-14S that was much bigger, louder, had no heat, and finally, it did not work well. So Whynter went back! Edit Jan 2023: This unit is 8 months old and now periodically emits a loud buzz and does not work. I believe the compressor is freezing up. The issue occurs a few times a day, sometimes once a week. Midea Customer Service asks silly questions and marked my ticket as "Solved" when I failed to reply within 5 days (including weekends). Not impressed. I am now seeking a replacement or refund if possible. Edit Jan (late) 2023: Midea customer service refunded me for the malfunctioning unit. I am a little concerned that it was not worth repairing a $700 unit, and now I must pay a $60 disposal fee for freon containing devices in CA, but overall I appreciate Midea’s customer service.

I will come back and add more of a review about the performance once I have used this unit for a while. Here is a review about the unboxing, setup & first thoughts Unboxing: -The unboxing was extremely easy. You just remove the ties and then lift the box off the unit -You only have to lift the unit for a second to slide the cardboard out from under it, which is good because it is extremely heavy -The accessories were not secured very well and were rattling around inside the box Setup: -The hose being so wide and thick makes it hard to maneuver. There is not much give when it comes to turning the unit -I think we technically installed it wrong lol we did not use the vertical window adapter. But its in the window just fine and now the unit can face the way we need it to. -Connecting the unit to the window was extremely easy. The pieces click together, as opposed to the usual hoses that screw together and never actually stay together -We found the settings on the unit EXTREMELY confusing. They do not easily identify what they are. Low is a Y? Medium is a plus? High is a star? -The instruction manual makes no sense because they use the same manual for all their units -We did not use the remote or the app. We just hit power on the unit when we want to use it and it remembers our settings First Thoughts: -The hose is amazing. When the AC is running the hose does not get warm to the touch. No warm air is seeping back into the room -The unit is QUIET! Super quiet. Especially when on the low setting you can barely hear it running. I would have no problem sleeping with it on at night -The glossy black gets full of fingerprints and pawprints -The cool air mostly shoots upwards and its at its coldest when the vent is all the way open. You don't feel much air if you are sitting directly in front of the unit. I think it cools the room faster, but just beware if you like to feel it down at ground level

This is an excellent little portable heat pump. It's good for the summer when you need it to cool, and in winter you get about 3500W worth of heating from 1000W of electrical output power which is really nice compared to running a space heater. In heat mode it does produce quite a bit of condensate (water), but there's an internal condensate pump that helps you drain it away. I have an 20ft long x 8mm condensate hose that I run from the unit along the base boards in my apartment to my bathroom where I let it drain out into the shower. The HVAC in my apartment building doesn't work properly, and this unit has been able to keep my 850 sqft condo in Vancouver nice and warm all winter (I have no other source of heat in my condo). This unit also integrates nicely with Home Assistant (open source home automation software) which I run on a Raspberry Pi so I can control when the unit switches on/off based on a few wireless temperature sensors that I have scattered around my apartment. The Home Assistant software control seems to work a bit better than just letting it run on its own. I find that I only need to run it about a quarter or a third of the time using Home Assistant, but if I let it try to use its own internal thermostat it runs basically 100% of the time. The unit isn't that loud. But it's not quiet either. I have it in my spare bedroom / office which allows the rest of my apartment to be quiet even when it's running. The unit will only "pump heat" from outside if the outside air temperature is above 5C. I haven't run into this as a problem yet because I'm in Vancouver and we don't get real winters compared to the rest of Canada. But if you live in a place where the temperature gets properly below freezing, then this unit might not work. My understanding is that this is a limitation due to ice build up on the evaporator coil when the outside air is too cold. If you mount this to a tilt out window, it's really helpful to make a better air splitter to keep the intake and exhaust air streams separated. I found that using the included little plastic splitter wasn't effective and meant that I was basically sucking back in the air that the machine had just exhausted. This is especially important in cooling mode. You can sort of see the air splitter I made from cardboard covered in black duct tape in one of my photos. I found this really improves the unit's performance in summer when you really don't want to be pulling the hot exhaust air back into the unit to cool the condenser coil. I also got an acrylic panel cut and mounted to my window with velcro -- I found the included window kit didn't work with my tilt out windows and the acrylic panel was only around $100 from a local vendor (I'm sure there's a guy with a CNC in whatever city you live in who does this as a side hustle, just search and you'll find him). Finally this unit runs nicely on a standard 15A circuit. I only have a few other small loads on that circuit (some LED desk lamps), but when I tried to have my laser printer on the same circuit I would pop the breaker ever time I tried to print something (apparently laser printers can pull 500W-1000W when they warm up out of sleep mode).

The very first thing I noticed about the Midea Duo 14,000 BTU portable air conditioner is how quiet it is. It's the quietest air conditioner I've every owned. The only time you'll hear the Midea Duo's compressor/inverter is when it's starting up. When the inverter/compressor starts up, it emits a high-pitched whine, which lasts for about a second. Subsequent to the starting up, the only sound you'll hear is the movement of the air that's being blown out by the fan. The Midea Duo 14,000 BTU in my living room is only 2 meters away from my TV and it doesn't interfere with my TV viewing. The Midea Duo 14,000 BTU is so quiet, I bought a 2nd one that I've placed in my bedroom. The Midea Duo 14,000 BTU is the first dual hose portable air conditioner I've owned. The dual hose design is noticeable superior to single hose portable air conditioner when it comes to keeping an area cool. The dual hose design draws in air from the outside, just like a window air conditioner. By bringing in air from the outside, the air conditioner is able to create a pocket of high pressure cold air. If you walk into a closed area that's cooled by a dual hose air conditioner, rather than a single hose air conditioner, you'll notice a dramatic drop in temperature. Most air conditioners use compressors that cycle on and off. Rather than cycling on and off, which creates variations in your room temperature, the inverter used by the Midea Duo speeds up, or slow down, to keep your room at the temperature that you've selected. The screen on the remote is backlit, which you'll greatly if you need to use it in low-light conditions. Once you set the room temperature that you want, you can sit back and let the Midea Duo do its job. I also have to commend Midea Customer Service. Two of the window slides, included with the first Midea Duo I purchased, had been damaged in transit. Replacements were shipped to me within a week.

First of all it is most definitely being used in AC mode. Unit would get a P1 error code every 4-5 hours requiring the 77lb unit to be detached from the window, wheeled to the bathroom, lifted into the shower and the drain plug undone from the bottom of the unit to empty the small condensation overflow tray. I tried to get support from Midea Customer support noted in the manual and they INSISTED that this is NORMAL OPERATION. HAHAHA! When I pointed out that the model's included manual specifically says that repeated "P1" error displayed requires a call for service, they said this was only if the P1 error code remained after I drained it ignoring that the condensation is supposed to evaporate out the exhaust hose instead of overflowing, and not have the error AT ALL. I am aghast that they don't know how their own portable AC works! I have no words how poor as a customer, I was treated by uneducated, unhelpful and uncaring support staff at Midea. I had to actually hook up the drain hose (only for dehumidifying - I was cooling!) and drain the constant overflow into a watering can until I could get back my other AC unit. I was formally happy with the smart window Midea wifi AC I had bought a few years ago to use downstairs, and specifically sought out another Midea when my portable from a no-name Chinese manufacturer was too loud to be in the bedroom (after 10+years of service!). Now I will buy anything else. They don't seem to get how the condensation is evaporated through the hose to the window. She actually suggested that there should not be too much humidity for the AC when it's being used! LOL. It's normal btw - I'm in Toronto inside not in the Amazon. When I reiterated that this is not normal operation she just said "Is there anything else I can help you with today?". I just can't explain the idiocy at Midea support. In order to return I must pay the entire shipping costs of $225 for this heavy unit and reinvent how to ship it back as you have to cut the straps from the box that hold the two box pieces together only the first time until you take out the unit upon receiving shipment. Even the box is not designed to make return with bit of ease. I would not only avoid these products that fail to function properly, the company's lack of customer support is reason alone not to buy anything from them. Update: I bought a manual strap banding kit for $100 to secure this 2 part box. It is now shipped!

I like the way it cools efficiently and quickly. It is portable so that I can easily move it from room to room. Great solution