"All home appliances will increase in price, possibly up to 30%!" Someone is kicking themselves: "I didn't buy last year, now it's several thousand more expensive!" The store clerk straightforwardly says: "It's most cost-effective to buy before mid-April."

A recent message that “from April, home appliances across the board will increase in price” has sparked heated discussion across the internet.

Many netizens said, “I didn’t buy last year—now I regret it terribly!”

A user from Zhejiang, Xiaotai, told the media that she originally wanted to check out home appliances and found that the TV and air conditioner she had collected last year had all gone up in price!

“Our new home is being renovated, and we’re planning to buy home appliances by size. Who would’ve thought that a few I looked at last year are now more expensive? After calculating the total cost of getting all the appliances, it came out to be several thousand yuan more. Luckily, I’ve already bought a refrigerator, otherwise the renovation budget would have gone up again,” Xiaotai said. Among the appliances she was looking at, the TV had the highest price increase—more than 1,000 yuan compared with before.

“All appliances will go up!

Buying before mid-April is the most cost-effective.”

This is the sentence reporters heard most often at the Suning.com home appliance sales hall on Qingchun Road in Hangzhou. A wave of home appliance price hikes triggered by Middle East conflict, an AI chip shortage, and soaring copper prices has already begun to show up in the sales hall.

On April 3, when the reporter visited sales halls in Hangzhou, they found that although terminal retail prices have not yet been fully raised, sales staff at multiple home appliance brands stated clearly: the price increase will take effect in late April to mid/late April, and the increase for some categories may reach 10%-30%.

On a weekday afternoon, the home appliance stores did not have many visitors, and the reporter visited multiple brand outlets in the capacity of a consumer.

Among them, the kitchen and small home appliance (chef appliances) segment saw the sharpest increases, with 10% as the starting point.

At the range hood and cooker hood counter of Robam (Boss Electric), a salesperson said bluntly: “Prices will definitely go up in April—10% definitely will. Not just range hoods; all appliances, and all brands will go up. If you’re going to buy, it’s best to do it before mid-April.”

A salesperson at the Fotile range hood store gave an even clearer timing: “The company hasn’t notified us yet, but prices should go up around May Day. Raw materials are expensive now—even plastic film is expensive!” Pointing to the new models in the store, she admitted, “If it’s a brand-new model launched in April or May this year, the increase could be as high as 30%.”

The white goods segment is also full of “price hike” talk.

A salesperson at Midea air conditioners said that there will be a promotion in the mall on April 17: “Raw materials are all rising, manufacturers will all raise prices, but we don’t know the specific timing.” Taking an example of a 2-horsepower split AC set priced at around 4,000 yuan, if prices rise by 10%, it would immediately cost an additional 400 yuan.

By contrast, Gree Electric’s reply seems to leave consumers a little room to breathe. A Gree salesperson said: “Before April 17, it probably won’t rise yet. We need to finish the mall’s 24th anniversary celebration first. We estimate that any increase would be after the 17th.”

On April 1, at JD MALL in Optics Valley, Wuhan, the reporter, acting as a consumer, consulted more than a dozen mainstream appliance brand counters—Haier, Midea, TCL, Rongsheng, Hisense, Changhong, Toshiba, and others—to verify changes in terminal prices. On the day of the interviews, none of the brands’ terminal prices raised their prices. Many air conditioner categories had already received manufacturer price-adjustment notices, but the exact dates of the adjustments were unknown.

A salesperson for Midea air conditioners said: “They may all need to go up, because copper prices are high. Air conditioners use quite a lot of copper.” The salesperson told the reporter that the industry expects overall increases of 10%-15% for air conditioner categories, and new-batch arriving models will be the first to implement the new prices.

For the TV category, the factors linked to the price increases are memory modules and chip prices. Previously, the disclosed increases for this were the most obvious among home appliances. However, a dealer of Hisense TVs revealed that because the brand uses self-developed chips, costs for this part have decreased, so the offline price increase is not large.

After verification, the reporter found that most brands’ mentioned “price hikes” are not an increase in the product’s official filed price, but a reduction in the intensity of subsequent promotional activities. At the same time, the price adjustments show clear divergence: stronger expectations of price increases for new products and new-batch models; prices of inventory older models remain stable. Brand companies will maintain terminal sales and clear inventory through older products.

Xiaomi phones announced: prices are going up!

Previously, netizens noticed that the new products released by major smartphone manufacturers after March are higher than the same-tier models from last year by 300 to 1,000 yuan. Media reports said that due to tight chip supply, the largest phone price-hike wave in the past 5 years may be here; domestic phone prices may rise by as much as 2,000 yuan, and the high-price period could continue until 2027.

On April 3, Xiaomi released an announcement stating that due to the sustained sharp surge in the prices of key components such as global storage chips, after careful assessment, Xiaomi will adjust the suggested retail prices of some products sold, starting from 00:00 on April 11, 2026.

Since the beginning of this year, along with continuing increases in memory prices, multiple smartphone brands have announced price hikes one after another.

This adjustment by Xiaomi involves three models. Starting April 11, REDMI K90 Pro Max will be increased by 200 yuan; Turbo 5 and Turbo 5 Max will cancel the Spring Festival special offer, and the 512G large-memory variant will continue to receive a 200-yuan subsidy; starting from March 18 at 10:00, vivo will adjust the suggested retail prices of some products of vivo and iQOO; and OPPO starting from March 16, 2026 at 0:00 will adjust prices for some already released products, including the OPPO A series, K series, and OnePlus.

Countpoint senior analyst Shenghao Bai once said that against the backdrop of continuously rising storage prices, price increases for this year’s smartphones may be hard to avoid. It is expected that low-end phone prices will rise by 30 dollars, and some high-end flagship phone prices may rise by 150 to 200 dollars.

What is driving this “price-hike wave”?

Affected by multiple factors, including the Middle East conflict pushing up oil prices and the expansion of AI data centers driving up storage chip prices, the prices of raw materials required by the home appliance industry have all risen. Compared with last year’s average price based on end-of-March 2026 data:

Copper prices (used the most in air conditioners): rose to 95195 yuan/ton, up 18.6%;

ABS plastic (home appliance outer casings): jumped from 8,000 yuan/ton to 15,500 yuan/ton, up as much as 51.7%;

Chips/Memory: AI data centers are being built out crazily, squeezing dry the price of the storage chips used in home appliances—DDR memory prices have multiplied tenfold.

To ease customers’ concerns, some large retailers also introduced a “buy first, lock the price” strategy. A Suning.com sales staff member explained: “If you’re worried that events like 618 might have even lower prices, you can buy at the promotional price in the mall on April 17, but you won’t pick up the goods yet. If later you find the price is lower, the mall can make up the difference. But if you miss April, once prices rise, you might really end up paying several hundred to even over a thousand yuan more for a single home appliance.”

However, insiders also remind that this round of home appliance price adjustments is the result of cost pressure being transmitted from upstream—not an across-the-board “one-size-fits-all” price increase across the entire industry. Consumers do not need to panic and blindly rush to buy. You can make a decision after rationally comparing products and discount policies based on your own renovation and purchasing needs.

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