Midea 8000 BTU U-Shaped Air Conditioner Review: Energy Efficient Without Sacrificing Performance

At the beginning of July I bought my first house, which I have dreamed of all my life. But of course I didn’t have an insanely high budget, so I knew I had to buy an older house that needed some work.

The house I eventually bought was built in 1882, making it 140 years old as of this year. Some work has been done on it recently, but for the most part it is still a revamp.

Being an older house it was not equipped with central air. With the heat routinely jumping into the 90s, I knew I wouldn’t last long without a window AC.

However, I didn’t want to settle for just any air conditioner. I wanted something that wouldn’t add up to my electric bill and that would work well for my space.

I did my research and landed on Midea’s line of U-shaped smart air conditioners. Not only are they ultra energy efficient, but they have also developed a cult following.

So I bit the bullet, charged my credit card and took one home.

Midea’s U-shaped air conditioners have a unique design that allows the window to sit “inside” the air conditioner. This has a number of advantages over the traditional style, where the window rests only on it.

First, it means your device is incredibly stable. With the air conditioner locked in place by the window, it feels more secure.

Second, it also makes it extremely quiet. By locking the compressor behind the glass, you won’t hear the compressor like you would with a traditional window unit.

Midea says it’s nine times quieter than a traditional window unit that runs on the same level. To my ears, it’s significantly quieter than the conventional window unit in my bedroom and even more subdued than the HVAC-based central air I had in my last apartment.

I have had no problems with calling or FaceTime calls in the same room as the air conditioner. I appreciated this as turning off the AC to make a phone call for an hour when it’s 90 degrees outside is hardly ideal.

Finally, it is better sealed. With traditional window units, you’ll have to fiddle with one of those plastic accordions and try to seal any cracks with finicky bits of weather sealing.

With Midea’s U-shaped Air Conditioner, you only have a small opening at the bottom on both sides, which you can easily close with a thick piece of foam that comes with Midea.

The whole design seems like the logical evolution of where window elements should have ended already.

While it’s a bit of a hard sell to claim that any electrical appliance can truly be “environmentally friendly”, the Midea U is currently the best option for electrical use.

When figuring out how energy efficient an air conditioner is, the US government uses a system called CEER, which stands for Combined Energy Efficiency Ratio.

The automatic mode can slow down the fan speeds, save energy and prevent your room from overcooling

CEER is defined as “The ratio between measured cooling power (in BTU per hour) and measured average electrical energy input (in watts) and measured power consumption in standby/off mode (in watts).”

That means the higher the CEER rating, the more energy efficient the device. For an 8,000 BTU air conditioner to be considered “good,” it must have a CEER rating of at least 11. Energy Star models have a CEER rating of 12.1 or higher.

The 8,000 BTU Midea U air conditioner has a CEER rating of 15. It won the Energy Star 2020’s Most Efficient award – the first window AC unit to ever do so. It also consumes 37.61% less energy than the US federal standard.

The Midea U’s estimated annual cost is less than $50 assuming you use it 8 hours a day for three months, with an average electricity cost of 13 cents per kWh. But of course your mileage may vary.

While the design is fantastic, you have to work on it to enjoy it. Installing this type of air conditioner is not as easy as Midea would have you believe.

I have installed window unit air conditioners myself in the past. Sure, it wasn’t fun, but it’s pretty easy.

Installing the Midea U wasn’t like that at all. Not only did I have to read the manual from front to back, but I also had to enlist extra help from my father.

The Midea U has to sit on a bracket, unlike many other window units on the market

Unlike all the other air conditioners we’ve installed before, the Midea U has a non-optional bracket that you must use. This was a new experience as we had to mount the bracket, attach it to the window and place the unit on it.

We also had to do some fiddly work where the window fits. It is a process of more than 10 steps and even if you watch the installation video provided, it may not be completely clear how to perform certain steps.

Just keep returning to the manual as it will guide you through the installation.

Overall, it took us an hour and a half from unpacking to turning it on for the first time – about an hour longer than it took to install the traditional upstairs window unit.

I recommend that if you are installing one yourself, make sure you have at least two people if possible. Not only did this make it easier to quickly check the manual, but the unit itself is quite heavy – just over 55 pounds – and cumbersome to move.

I’ve been using the Midea’s U for almost two weeks now and I’m incredibly impressed with how well it keeps pace during a hot piece.

I chose to go with the 8,000 BTU unit, despite warnings that it would be way too small to cool my downstairs.

However, I find that it manages to comfortably keep the entire lower floor of my two-story 2,000-square-foot home at 73 degrees and not have to run 24/7 to do so.

As a bonus, the Midea app is pretty decent. It’s not perfect, and it has a strange issue where it logs me out every 12 hours, but unlike many other smart device apps, it’s actually intuitive.

You can change the settings on your air conditioner right from the app, including fan speed, temperature settings, what mode you’re in, vent direction, and more.

You can also set schedules, which can be very useful.

I didn’t want to cool the areas of my house that I wasn’t actively using, because that would be a waste of electricity. At night, the AC turns off two hours before I go to bed and back on in the morning when I wake up.

Something I didn’t count on was how far the air conditioner’s safety bar sticks out – a full 18.5 inches from the window. While this may not be a problem for some people, it is a huge problem for others.

I live in a neighborhood where the houses are quite close together, and I share an alley with my neighbors where we store our garbage and access our outside connections.

The bracket sits a full 18.5 inches out of the window

If our homes were moved closer, the air conditioner will likely darken the path too much and need to be moved to another window.

These air conditioners may not be recommended for people who live in apartment buildings with fire escapes. After all, it is not worth hindering your safety and that of others, no matter how well the air conditioning works.

The Midea U is one of the best window unit air conditioners I’ve had the pleasure of using. It’s quiet, has great app integration, and hasn’t resulted in hundreds of dollars of electricity bills.

If central air isn’t an option for you – or if you don’t really like central air in the first place – it would be hard to do better than a Midea U.

It can be difficult to determine one rating that would work for every user in every use case. Honestly, it falls somewhere between a 3 and a 4 and depends on several factors.

• you have standard or almost standard, double-turn windows
• you are somewhat handy or willing to spend time learning on the fly
• you have at least two people to help install it

• you have windows that are much narrower or much wider than average
• you have a unique window situation, such as overhanging a fire escape or in a shared alley
• you plan to install this yourself

• Virtually silent operation, even at higher levels.
• Very energy efficient
• Great app integration
• Keeps large surfaces cool

• Difficult, slow installation
• May extend too far for certain users

Midea’s U-shaped air conditioner is available from Amazon in capacities of 8,000, 10,000 and 12,000 BTU from $399, though the higher capacities tend to sell out faster.