Smart Appliances, Are They Really Worth It?

11.14.22

As the years go on, technology more and more starts to dominate the market.

As a society we are pushing to a more “smart” universe, as we start to implement technology in our day to day lives. Working from home, ordering from robots at restaurants, and now even our washers and dryers are starting to get smarter.

LG is at the forefront of this movement, providing washers and dryers with ThinQ technology that allows the user to connect to the units with a mobile app that helps with diagnostics as well as some cool bells and whistles.

However, we find that the more technology gets added into these units, the more problems we face. Motherboard problems, control panel issues, short-circuiting, all things that were never a problem with more mechanical units. As well, these features tend to drive up the cost as more features get added to these units.

Yet, the inclusion of technology and the inevitable takeover of “smart” appliances brings about a lot of new integrations and ease of access for a lot of people. We’ve come to find recently that a lot of new appliances with remote operation such as notifications, diagnostic information, and even accessing specific features of an appliance without being in front of it can actually help a lot of immobile people are people who have disabilities.

Samsung’s SmartThings integration allows you to connect multiple appliances together, so someone with a Family Hub refrigerator can look up a recipe on the tablet connected to their device, send instruction to their stove to preheat the oven based on the requirements in the recipe, and save time without having to move around all over their kitchen, it can all be done right in front of the refrigerator.

Keeping all these things in mind, we would say that smart appliances are ultimately going to be the new norm in everyone’s household at some point. As these technologies become more refined as the years come, the better reliability these units will hold as well. Some of the features we covered above have really good benefits and have their place within anyone’s home, because who doesn’t like better ease of access and the ability to save time on one thing to devote extra time to another thing?