Appliances of the Future Revealed at this Year’s CES!
January 11, 2017 | General Appliance Care & Advice | No comments
So you thought appliances with artificial intelligence only existed in sci-fi films? Think again! New tech revealed at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES) gives us a glimpse into the cutting edge appliances coming on the market and yes, they’re amazing.
These new reveals take “smart appliances” to the next level. We now have appliances that use “deep learning” to remember how you like to use them and automatically adjust their settings.
Prepared for the CES cream of the crop? Get ready for some hardcore appliance envy.
LG’s CES Reveals
We don’t know about you, but we want LG’s new fridge and TV in our homes right now.
It’s impossible to give the Smart InstaView fridge the cold shoulder when it lets you:
- Control it with your voice using Alexa, Amazon’s virtual assistant. Among over 6000 other functions, Alexa can remind you of your daily appointments and lets you dictate shopping lists so you never forget to buy milk again.
- Listen to music whilst you peel your veggies.
- Leave memos, notes, and doodles – no need for fridge magnets.
- Read recipes on the 29-inch screen.
- Turn the screen on the front translucent so you can see inside your fridge without having to open it and let the cold air out.
- Request an Uber if you decide to go out for dinner instead!
- See inside the fridge with cameras connected to an app.
- Keep food fresh with two sets of doors.
Oh, and of course you can use it to order groceries.
If the Smart InstaView fridge isn’t entertaining enough for you then LG still has your back with their wallpaper thin Signature OLED TV. When they say wallpaper thin they mean it, the TV sits flush to the wall, stuck on with magnets. At just 2.57 mm thick it’s very stylish indeed. Shut up and take our money.
Whirlpool’s Latest Innovations
- A dedicated cooling system for the door-within-door compartment.
- A specific cold space in the door for milk and juices, whereas in most fridges the door is the warmest part.
- An infinity shelf that easily slides back as needed to make way for taller items you want to keep chilled.
So your food is super fresh, great. But that means nothing if it’s not perfectly cooked too. Whirlpool’s oven has that covered:
- Scan-to-Cook technology scans the barcodes on food and preheats the oven automatically to the correct temperature.
- Recipes can be sent to the oven which will heat up as needed and even read out the instructions.
- Even more impressively, the oven learns how you cook so you always get your preferred level of browning on your lasagne or your preferred gooeyness of cookies.
- You can control the oven remotely and will be notified if you’ve accidentally left it on when you’ve left your house.
Samsung’s Top of the Range Laundry Tech
For laundry, Samsung’s FlexWash washing machine and Flex Dry tumble dryer were the CES frontrunners. Both appliances have two compartments, so you can separate whites and darks or delicates and wash them at the same time, getting the best results for all your laundry. You can even use the smaller washing compartments for those odd items you forgot to add to the main wash. Top marks for convenience.
New Tech – The Pros and Cons
“Deep learning” (the ability for appliances to adapt to your usage habits) and smart technology are being incorporated into more and more household essentials. There’s even a smart hairbrush coming onto the market soon, we kid you not. Whilst there’s no denying this new tech can be useful, smart appliances can have their disadvantages. These are some of the pros and cons.
- Being able to access your appliances when you’re not at home is convenient if you’ve got a hectic schedule. Knowing your appliances are switched off when they should be also gives you peace of mind.
- Your appliances can take on a new level of personalisation and adapt specifically to your lifestyle and personal needs. Think of a fridge that only makes ice only at the times when you use it or an oven that stops cooking when your food is perfectly done. The possibilities are endless.
- Voice-controlled tech is becoming more commonplace in everything from baby monitors to bins, which saves you effort in your everyday chores.
- Information about you that’s collected by your appliances could be stored and possibly even sold on to marketers who want to know what you eat or how often you do chores. This information could then be used to help sell you products tailored specifically to you. Whilst this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, if information falls into the wrong hands it could be a security risk. So it’s always worth knowing the data sharing and storing policy of any company that you know collects information.
- Having an appliance that knows your personal preferences could be a pain if you want to sell it on to a new owner. However, appliance companies say that removing personal data from an appliance is as straightforward as doing so on an old laptop or phone would be.
- Price, of course, comes into the equation. High spec appliances full of technological inventions, needless to say, do not come cheap. For most of us, the options are either saving up, waiting a long time for the price to drop or buying second hand. But we can dream!
What do you think? Which CES appliance reveal are you most excited about? Are appliances getting too smart for their own good? Join the conversation in the comments!
Tags: Appliance News, CES 2017
