AI has become a standard feature in mid- to high-end air conditioners. Midea, Haier, and TCL have entered the market. Is it really a great thing or just a tax on people's IQ?
AI can truly be described as "omnipresent" this year. Not to mention the connection between AI and gadgets like mobile phones, various household appliances such as refrigerators, TVs, and air conditioners have also started to embrace AI. If you plan to buy some mid - to high - end household appliances this year, you'll most likely come across a bunch of "AI household appliances". Don't even think about avoiding them, because AI has already occupied a large part of the mid - to high - end household appliance market.
Some time ago, Xiaolei planned to buy a new air conditioner for the living room. Since the budget was relatively sufficient, he looked at many mid - to high - end products and found that "AI" was everywhere. Initially, Xiaolei's biggest question was where exactly is the AI in an AI - enabled air conditioner? Then he started browsing the product introduction pages. After looking at these products, Xiaolei, with a throbbing head, decided to have a good chat with everyone about what an AI air conditioner really is.
Different Approaches of Midea, Haier, and TCL in the AI Air Conditioner Arena
When it comes to AI, most people's first impression probably comes from DeepSeek. As the most well - known AI in China, DeepSeek has indeed popularized the concept of the new generation of "AI" for many people. However, this has also made many people mistakenly think that an AI household appliance is simply an appliance that can "talk" to "me". Although from the perspective of functional design and user experience, this view is somewhat on the right track, from an implementation perspective, the utilization of AI in household appliances is much more complex.
For example, Midea previously launched an "air machine" equipped with a large AI model. Although it looks like an ordinary air conditioner, it integrates multiple functions such as humidification and air purification. You can think of it as a "three - in - one" multi - functional air conditioner. Since its usage scenarios are not limited to temperature adjustment, it's quite appropriate for Midea to rename it as an "air machine".
Image source: Midea
On this product, Midea deployed a localized DeepSeek and its self - developed Meiyan AI model, enabling the air machine to learn users' usage habits and automatically adjust the indoor temperature, humidity, and cleanliness. For instance, if you like to stay in an environment with a room temperature of 25 degrees Celsius, after detecting someone returning home, the air conditioner will adjust its temperature according to the outside temperature of the day to keep the indoor temperature constant at around 25 degrees Celsius.
In addition, Midea also used the large AI model to further optimize the human - machine interaction, allowing the air conditioner to "talk" to people. You just need to simply say, "I feel a bit stuffy", and the air conditioner will automatically interpret the command, increase the air exchange efficiency of the air purifier, and increase the wind speed. Users no longer need to rummage through the remote control and fine - tune the functions themselves.
For young people, this function may not seem particularly special, but it's very helpful for the elderly. Xiaolei's hometown house just replaced several air conditioners. Besides functions like cooling, there are also functions such as anti - direct blowing and intelligent temperature adjustment during sleep. However, Xiaolei found that the elderly hardly used these functions. It's not that they didn't want to, but they simply didn't know these functions existed.
Even if you teach them how to use the remote control step by step, they'll soon forget or find it troublesome. However, relatively speaking, Xiaolei found that they got the hang of using the Xiaodu smart speaker much faster. Xiaolei's 80 - year - old grandmother can already use Xiaodu to make video calls, check the weather, and watch TV shows. Obviously, the form of natural conversation is more in line with their habits and allows the elderly to learn to use it more quickly.
Image source: Midea
So, if you ask what the significance of "AI + household appliances" is, Xiaolei's first answer is: to lower the usage threshold of smart household appliances. Smart household appliances should not exclude the elderly. Haier also uses AI in its interaction system. The flagship model of their "Air - Washing" series of air conditioners is equipped with an L5 - certified AI voice system that can recognize multiple dialects and have conversations.
At the same time, the Air - Washing series also supports functions such as AI - enabled intelligent environmental regulation. To some extent, it belongs to the same category of products as Midea's air machine. On the other hand, almost all AI air conditioners have achieved the ultimate in energy - saving. Haier's "Net Energy - Saving" series claims that with the help of AI algorithms, it can improve energy - saving efficiency by about 45% compared to ordinary first - level energy - efficient air conditioners, with an average daily power consumption of only 2 kWh for the air conditioner.
Although this "2 kWh per day" is achieved under certain restricted conditions, it's enough to prove that the benefits brought by AI algorithms in terms of energy consumption are significant. Besides Midea and Haier, TCL's AI air conditioner is also very interesting. It applies AI to sleep monitoring. By installing a millimeter - wave radar on the air conditioner, TCL's Xiaolan Yi C7 fresh - air air conditioner can monitor human sleep movements in real - time. After calculations based on AI algorithms, it automatically adjusts the room temperature.
Image source: TCL
In addition, TCL also deployed AI on its fault - diagnosis cloud platform. By collecting data such as the indoor and outdoor temperatures of the air conditioner, power supply voltage, and compressor operating frequency, AI can automatically determine whether there are problems such as cooling attenuation in the user's air conditioner, and then notify the user in advance before the problem becomes serious, guiding the user to perform maintenance operations or dispatching professional technicians for on - site service after communication.
To be honest, after looking at a bunch of AI air conditioners, Xiaolei has to admit that these functions are very attractive. Moreover, more importantly, the prices of air conditioners with AI functions are no longer "out of reach". Considering aspects such as comprehensive functions and energy consumption, the price difference between them and traditional smart air conditioners of the same grade is actually not very large, which makes AI air conditioners even more appealing.
However, Xiaolei still has a question in mind: Are AI air conditioners really as wonderful as the brands claim?
Are AI Air Conditioners Really Useful or Just a Rip - off?
On Xiaohongshu, there are actually quite a few notes about the usage experience of AI air conditioners. Apart from the content that clearly looks like "marketing accounts", there are also many reviews from real users. For example, a netizen who bought an AI air conditioner of a certain brand complained that there was an AI switch on the remote control, but after turning it on, the temperature display on the air conditioner changed from 26 degrees to 1 degree, which really puzzled him. What's more interesting is that even the customer service didn't know what the 1 - degree display on the remote control meant.
Judging from the description, this AI air conditioner probably just added an AI mode but didn't embed a voice module or other functions, and the interaction design wasn't well - done. As a result, users know there's an AI mode but don't know what it does after it's turned on (reading the instruction manual is a good habit). In fact, based on Xiaolei's experience, the AI mode of this air conditioner is most likely just an automatic temperature - adjustment mode. After finding the relevant product on the JD platform later, the product description confirmed Xiaolei's judgment.
Image source: Xiaohongshu
In fact, many current AI air conditioners are "pseudo - AI". They just repackage the old smart mode as an AI mode. In essence, they just use algorithms for temperature control and energy - saving, which has also led to many misunderstandings among netizens about AI air conditioners. For example, some netizens said that the power consumption seems to be similar in both AI and non - AI modes, which also proves indirectly that not all AI air conditioners are "real AI".
In the view of Lei Technology, the foundation of an AI air conditioner is to have a large AI model deployed on the edge side, which can execute user commands without being connected to the Internet and can customize temperature modes based on the local large AI model, rather than relying on a set of AI - optimized algorithms to repackage the smart mode as an AI mode.
However, it's probably no surprise to everyone that whenever there's a new trend in the market, apart from a few leading enterprises and unicorns that can seize the opportunity and come up with usable technologies to capture the market in the early stage, most other enterprises can only try to cash in on the concept.
So, when buying an air conditioner, you need to be careful. Not all AI air conditioners are real AI. Judging from the products Xiaolei browsed, the current real AI air conditioners all cost more than 3,000 yuan, and the price of models with more complete functions will be even higher.
It can be said that the mid - to high - end market has been occupied by AI air conditioners. Traditional air conditioners are already rare, mainly consisting of old overseas brands and some old models. The new models launched this year all promote AI as the main feature. Moreover, when Xiaolei searched by model number, he also saw many high - praise reviews from users for real AI air conditioners. For example, a Douyin blogger showed the process of an AI air conditioner's fully automatic temperature control. When the temperature reached the comfort zone, it automatically adjusted the air volume to avoid the room temperature from being too low, which made the blogger sigh that "the air conditioner understands what temperature is the most comfortable better than I do".
From various communities and product reviews, users' perception of AI air conditioners is gradually shifting from novelty to practicality. In the early days, people were mainly curious about what changes AI could bring. After actual use, more and more users are starting to focus on what AI can actually bring to themselves.
Most users who gave positive reviews to AI air conditioners mentioned that they are "more comfortable and worry - free", while users with negative reviews generally think that the manufacturers over - promoted, which led them to have excessive expectations. This also serves as a reminder to manufacturers. Although AI functions can enhance the user experience, they also need to control the intensity of promotion. It's best not to promote the extreme energy - saving achieved under extreme conditions as the normal state.
Lei Technology believes that in the future, although the basic functions of AI air conditioners will tend to be the same, they will gradually develop their own characteristics. For example, the energy - saving algorithms and temperature - control modes of established large manufacturers will perform better. Newcomers like Xiaomi will pay more attention to AI - enabled scenario recognition linkage and multi - device collaboration. Based on Xiaomi's AIoT devices in its ecosystem, they can achieve the same effect of adjusting environmental parameters without integrating too many functions into the air conditioner.
How to make good use of AI and perfect AI functions may be the main competition point for household appliance manufacturers in the future.
This article is from the WeChat official account "Smart Pro", author: TSknight. Republished by 36Kr with permission.