I’m not hungry for a smart fridge

Call me innovatively challenged, but when I saw this catchy slogan on a press release for a shiny, futuristic-looking fridge, my first thought was that LG had come up with some sort of precision thermostat to regulate the temperature more efficiently.

At most, I was hoping for a digital display that would tell me whether the fridge was working a-ok, so I’d know if I was likely to face the hassle and expense of a service or replacement in the near future. Basically, everything I’d need to know so that I didn’t have to give my fridge a second thought.

Are you as smart as LG’s fridge?

But apparently, I wasn’t thinking big enough. This fridge has ‘device-to-device connectivity’ and a ‘smart manager’. Still lost? Well, it will know what food you’ve got, when these items will go off and whether you’ve run out of a certain foodstuff.

You can use its in-built screen to create shopping lists and shop online, to ‘eliminate the hassle of having to write down grocery shopping lists the old-fashioned way’ (LG’s words, not mine). It gets better (or worse). Based on the personal details you share with your fridge, its ‘health manager’ will tell you what you should be eating and helpfully suggest a diet plan.

You can sync your fridge with your smartphone so you can do all of this on the go. And if you decide to take your fridge up on one of its offered recipes, you can even send the cooking instructions to your oven (providing you own the requisite LG smart oven, of course) and it’ll turn itself on to the correct setting.

Can I really be bothered?

Of course, this fridge is only as smart as you are organised. It will warn you when your eggs are about to go out of date, provided you can be bothered to input this information into the fridge’s computer when you’re unloading your shopping. It will suggest personalised, health-based recipes, as long as you don’t mind entering your age, weight and Body Mass Index.

Personally, I don’t have the time or inclination to interact with my fridge on this level. I’m not the only one. When we wrote about LG’s ‘smart’ fridge last year, Emily commented:

‘I have far better things to do with my time than log every item as I put it away when I get home from the supermarket – usually like making the dinner. I’d probably starve to death by the time I’d finished cataloguing my purchases.’

What can your fridge do for you?

If I sound a bit ‘bah humbug’, it’s because I’m frustrated. I’d much rather fridge makers spent money designing more robust machines that last longer and don’t breakdown, before they start getting carried away with technological advancements.

What do I want my fridge to do (aside from the obvious)? I want it to feature split shelves so that I can stand bottles upright, a freezer compartment that doesn’t ice up, and I want it to alert me when I’ve left the door open. Oh wait, solutions for these problems have already been invented.

But, I do admit, LG’s smart fridge got me thinking – perhaps I’ve just closed my mind to the potentials of a humble fridge? Do you want your fridge to be smarter?

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