Product Design

Smart Fridges Are Still a Dumb Idea

Article by: @julia

Last week, Samsung hyped its new smart fridge at CES—and it’s got a lot of people scratching their heads a bit.

Samsung’s “Family Hub” fridge will come equipped with a 21.5-inch touch screen, cameras, and sensors—in case you ever found yourself wishing you could see your fridge’s contents without opening the door. The smart fridge does other stuff, too—it displays calendars, shows off family photos, has music apps, and even lets you order groceries.

The future is now, people.

Samsung Smart Fridge at CES
All photos via Samsung Newsroom.

Of course, Samsung has had some trouble nailing the execution of their smart fridges in the past. Just last month, we told you about how some owners of a different Samsung smart fridge have been unable to use their fridge’s pre-installed Google Calendar app for over a year. And owners have faced a slew of other software problems, too—from difficulties using Twitter to the photo reader.

That’s the downside of the Internet of Things—it can pretty easily quickly turn into the Internet of Buggy, Broken Things.

While some media outlets hailed Samsung’s Family Hub fridge as “the future”—others were more measured in their praise. TechHive called it “ridiculous and amazing.” The Verge called it an “exceptionally odd fridge / smartphone hybrid.” But the most biting criticism came courtesy of one of my favorite Twitter accounts ever, The Internet of Shit (this goes without saying, but you’re about to encounter some salty language).

Here’s what they said about Samsung’s new web-connected fridge:

And, finally the pièce de résistance:

 

Cnet reports that the fridge is expected to go on sale in the US this spring with a price tag of about $5,000. Hmmmm, maybe I’ll stick with my fix-able dumb fridge for now.

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