In 2020 I reviewed a new and novel device for Gizmodo: the Midea U-Shaped Air Conditioner. It combined a few simple innovations: an inverter that made it less noisy than other window units and a groove in the middle that allowed the window to partially pass through it, radically reducing the noise. Though annoying to install and not without its quirks, it has since become the go-to pick for everyone trying to cool their house. In the last week or so, it has vanished from store shelves.
I cannot stress how popular the Midea has become. Not only is it the main pick for the best air conditioner for The Wirecutter, Wired, Tech Gear Lab, and various other publications, but The Wall Street Journal ran a glowing profile about the four years that went into its design. This is all for good reason, as it is simply far quieter than almost every window unit on the market that doesn’t have a similar design, with notable competition being Windmill, the GE Profile ClearView and a fairly new unit from Hisense. By using the window as a sound barrier, less noise is transferred into the house. This design not only allows the unit to operate at tolerable noises in the summer, it also ingeniously lets you open your window should you want to let some fresh in. It even features wifi, although I have been trying for years to find a drop-in controller to make it run local only (there is a half-finished github project devoted to just this.).
The rate at which the Midea overtook New York City was astounding. We are a city of old buildings with cheap landlords, and the unit offered a massive quality of life upgrade. Walking through the city and looking at the windows, it’s hard to miss its iconic profile on at least one window on every residential street. It regularly would be sold at rock bottom prices; less than a month ago I saw a mountain of them at the entrance of my local Costco.
But when I went to go check for sales on an additional unit recently, I was surprised to find Costco did not have them in stock. In fact, nobody had them in stock. Amazon, Home Depot, even Midea’s own site has them out of stock, right before their busiest season. The most popular window air conditioner has suddenly vanished.
The first signs started appearing this week on r/airconditioning. Multiple posts noticed the absence of the unit on store shelves. At first it appeared to be localized to the United States, although someone who follows me said they contacted Canadian tech support, which would suggest something of larger scale if true. Several people speculated about the rationale, and it remains unclear if this is simply a stop sale or a major recall, but signs seem to point to a perennial problem these units face: mold.
For my own part, I reached out to tech support twice and attempted to contact Midea corporate multiple times, although the publicly listed phone number for Midea’s corporate office appears to be disconnected. Both tech support people confirmed that the units had been taken off of store shelves. One tech support member on the phone used the word “recall,” while another confirmed that the issue was a concern involving mold. I have reached out to Midea for comment, and will update if I hear back. I also called the Consumer Product Safety Commission, but they told me they had not received any update regarding Midea in an official capacity.
Mold is an issue that is common in many air conditioners, people simply do not clean them enough, but the Midea U-shaped air conditioner has been singled out on YouTube and Reddit many times for this. Though I cannot confirm the current issue is the same, one basic issue is that condensation pools at the bottom (seemingly to assist evaporation) and that condensation can get frankly nasty – I have had to clean sludge out of mine multiple times during the summer months. Many people attempted to fix this by modifying their units, drilling holes in the bottom to allow pooled water to escape.
Additionally, people have commented that the interior fan is basically impossible to clean without removing the finger guard. I have done this mod as well, removing the guard with flush cutters, and can confirm that it has made the experience of cleaning the guts of the device far easier for me personally, although I am not recommending you modify an air conditioner.
It would seem that Midea was aware of some of these concerns. In the last few years, they updated the unit to have a removable drain plug, seemingly mirroring the mod that appeared on YouTube. This makes the choice of a possible recall more interesting. Was the drain plug mod an insufficient answer for a recurring issue of mold? Is the mold issue something that exists independently of water pooling at the bottom of the unit? Was mold the reason Midea pulled the unit from shelves?
In addition to all this, I wanted to know exactly what this looked like on the ground, so I went to Costco. A manager confirmed that the 12,000 BTU unit had been pulled from shelves, but was vague on details. When I talked to a crew member, he confirmed what I suspected: all the Midea U shaped units in stock had been sent back.
Midea Group is a juggernaut, a huge Chinese company that is the original manufacturer for more appliances than you even know. I do not know if this will be a blip in the company’s history or something potentially larger. But it seems significant to me that the most popular window AC unit has gone away, following a roiling tariff war and right before summer. And that’s a shame, because for its many, many flaws, it’s not a bad air conditioner.
