For those unaware, i live in a bananaless banana republic at the end of the american continent. Way behind technologically unless able to spend fortunes. Then you are on your own in a warranty, support, parts and qualified techies void.

But every now and then i have no other options but to replace a dead or non repairable machine.
I am at that point now. I also believe in buying quality and bleeding my wallet once and for all instead of cheap temporary solutions.

I have a Samsung no frost fridge that gave up the ghost and will have to be replaced in the following months. Maybe the washing machine will follow.

Do wifi/bt enabled appliances offer a big improvement in the way you handle those chores or are they a gizmo?
When we invest in them, we will be looking to get rid of the issue for at least 10 years, God willing.

Ball is in your court... Educated opinions welcomed. Thanks and HNY.

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If you want reliable long term devices, I would avoid anything with a network connection. The cessation of support (patches) for security would be my first fear. My second would be that this stuff glitches and is the root of a performance problem for the primary function.

I Don’t even get an ice maker, make it with trays. My vote is no to wifi.

In your situation, but a refrigerator as simple as possible. A good brand and good quality, but the least amount of circuit boards and electronics the better.

I moved in the new house 18 months ago, my Wi-Fi dishwasher and double ovens have never been set up on my Wi-Fi. I read the manual, I don't see the benefit of using the Wi-Fi connection. Simpler is better.

Extra stuff to go extra bad.

I'm no fan of the latest doodad that works with a smartphone. Hell, if I wasn't required to have a smartphone at work I wouldn't have the thing at all. Older appliances (the ones without grocery store GPS or LED backlit shelves) work just fine and don't need a 23.5a firmware update for the icemaker.

A friend of mine just replaced their kitchen appliances. He told me his stove and microwave talk to each other. I asked him what they talk about. He didn't know.

Apparently he can turn on his oven from his phone. Not sure if that a big deal for many people.

I don't see the need myself although I guess more and more will have this as time goes on.

I wouldn't look for it if I was buying appliances myself but if one I wanted to fit my needs and price and had it I wouldn't not buy it just because it had wifi.

This is a sincere question, not trying to be snide, but what possible advantage can there be to having a household appliance connected to Wi-Fi? “Ooh, ah: Here I am vacationing at Cozumel, but I can confirm the temperature of my refrigerator and bump it down half a degree myself if necessary so that the Dom Pérignon 2000 is just right after we land the Learjet at my private strip. That way I don’t have to bother my housekeeping staff to do it, and they wouldn’t get it right anyway.” I suppose I could understand that, but clothes washers‽

I had to buy a new refrigerator a couple of years ago and was annoyed by how many had icemakers and water dispensers as standard features. I don’t live at the back end of civilization, but I am in a small, rural community with no one who will show up to fix my appliances at oh-dark thirty, so I prefer everything to be as simple as possible.

quote:

Do wifi/bt enabled appliances offer a big improvement in the way you handle those chores or are they a gizmo?

Gizmo, at least for the most part.
When they evolve to the point where they monitor and identify complex internals they could be beneficial.
However, that is not so glorious to the end user.
Much like a car ECM computer that monitors specific sensors and give codes to identify and repair -that might be useful.
But mot are not that complex and don't need those tools.
It also something else that can break.
Cool to have a LCD monitor on your fridge but it is really a Gizmno.

Not a tech minded person here so these are just my thoughts.

If I was in you position I would stay with a non Wi-Fi enabled appliance. Hacking is a concern, look at the Ring camera that was hacked in a child's bedroom incident a couple of weeks ago and the case in Milwaukee (?) where a couple's Wi-Fi enabled thermostat was taken over by a hacker a couple of months back.

My real concern with them is there is just more to fail, any new technologies have issues that are sorted out and improved as time passes. Unfortunately the ones who embrace that technology early on are the testers and developers for the engineers, many times at the owner's expense.

Your results may vary but I would look at Whirlpool. The last one we bought was a side by side refrigerator with water and ice in the door, it replaced a top mount freezer that the icemaker quit on. It still works, my daughter now has it, it is almost sixteen years old.

As a counter opinion, I have a home network with 52 connected devices and a 4T server. I can control temperature, sensors, comm and lights on all three floors, as well as internal and external security cameras, by voice or hardware. It's very convenient. I also have a shitload of network security, well developed over time, which hasn't been "hacked" in over 15 years. Many, many redundant layers. And I am more than capable of counter "hacking" myself. If you network your home or your life, you should be aware of the risks, and mitigate them. And before the chorus of howls, yes, anything can be hacked. The Pentagon, your Aunt Martha's robot vacuum, your smart watch. Anything. My credit cards have been hacked 200% more times than my home security, from the simple action of using them at a commercial gas pump or retailer. If my system is, I will know it. And fix it. Or, any external connection in my house can be instantly and unbreakably terminated, as required. I don't live off the grid, I am the grid. Bring it. And my .45 ACPs are still manually operated, and independent of my network. In case of the Zombie Apocalypse. Your opinion and risk-acceptance may differ, and I respect that.

quote:

Originally posted by .38supersig:
Extra stuff to go extra bad.

I'm no fan of the latest doodad that works with a smartphone. Hell, if I wasn't required to have a smartphone at work I wouldn't have the thing at all. Older appliances (the ones without grocery store GPS or LED backlit shelves) work just fine and don't need a 23.5a firmware update for the icemaker.

This in spades. I don't need additional failure points, especially if the somehow affect the actual function of the appliance.

Also IOT (Internet of Things) scares me. A lot of people are looking forward to 5g, yet have no idea what it actually means - loss of the sliver of privacy we have.

I have a nest thermostat.

Beyond that, I would not want any other internet connected or wifi enabled appliances. The Dvd player is, but not the TV itself.

We tried the ring doorbell, it was unreliable.

Generally, KISS.

So you open up some hacker to turn off your refrigerator or turn on your oven? I would say no to WiFi/BT on appliances.

quote:

Generally, KISS.

I live by this, sometimes out of necessity.

I have two wi-fi connected devices, my thermostat and my robot vacuum. The thermostat is actually quite handy, as it will send me reminders when it's time to change my air filters, or to let me change the settings when I'm traveling, if I forget.

The robovac is another thing. I usually schedule it to run when I'm not at home, so if it runs into trouble it will notify me (stuck, usually). But since I'm not home, there's nothing I can do about it until I return home. If I am home, I can see it it's stuck or not, so the only benefit to the wi-fi connection is that I can change the cleaning schedule when I'm out.

quote:

Originally posted by sigfreund:
This is a sincere question, not trying to be snide, but what possible advantage can there be to having a household appliance connected to Wi-Fi?

My wife's new GE range has a very soft notification chime. If she's not in the kitchen, or the family room, which is right next to it, she can't hear it. (It's otherwise a terrific range in every last respect.) So I will eventually connect it via WiFi and test the app. In this way she could be anywhere in the house or yard, even at a neighbour's, and be notified when something's done. It can be, and defaults to, "read-only" mode. You have to explicitly enable the ability to control the stove from the app.

quote:

Originally posted by sigfreund:
I suppose I could understand that, but clothes washers‽

Same reason. Same, even more so, for the clothes dryer.

Though, in our case, the clothes washer and dryer pair are Samsung, and their app apparently runs only on Samsung mobile devices. We have iPhones and I'd never enable a "smart" Samsung feature on my network, anyway. I do not trust Samsung.

As an aside: The clothes washer and dryer suck. One of my best buddies and his wife owned a Samsung refrigerator. It sucked. My advice: Avoid Samsung appliances.

quote:

Originally posted by shovelhead:
If I was in you position I would stay with a non Wi-Fi enabled appliance. Hacking is a concern, ...

This is true, but...

quote:

Originally posted by shovelhead:
... look at the Ring camera that was hacked in a child's bedroom incident a couple of weeks ago and the case in Milwaukee (?) where a couple's Wi-Fi enabled thermostat was taken over by a hacker a couple of months back.

This usually happens because people are clueless idiots. They either never change default access settings, use credentials they use elsewhere, or use default login i.d.'s with passwords like "password."

Admittedly: Even with non-default access settings: Because most home networks are almost entirely wide open to the Internet, or their border routers are also poorly-configured and thus ownable, hackers can take their time trying to brute force the IoT devices on their LANs.

quote:

Originally posted by Doc H.:
As a counter opinion, I have a home network with 52 connected devices and a 4T server. ... I also have a shitload of network security, well developed over time, which hasn't been "hacked" in over 15 years. Many, many redundant layers.

I have similar. And, similarly, nothing on my LAN has been compromised in the years I've operated it. (Knock on wood.) But... such network security is a bit beyond the capabilities of Average Joe/Jane Homeowner, who has difficulty just figuring out how to make their VCR stop blinking "12:00".

One the gripping hand: If people would just follow absolute minimum recommendations, such as changing access credentials to something non-obvious, with a unique and relatively secure password/passphrase, the bad guys would be slowed by several orders of magnitude. As it is: They have plenty of low-hanging fruit from which to choose.

If homeowners took the next step, putting reasonable ingress rules in their border routers: The difficulty would go up another couple orders of magnitude. Take the third step: Reasonable border router egress rules: Yet another couple orders of magnitude.

quote:

Originally posted by arcwelder:

We tried the ring doorbell, it was unreliable.

Ours was TERRIBLE at first.

Lately, it is way improved. I'm guessing that they finally got their act together at the Ring server end, or maybe did a behind-the-scene firmware update to my doorbell.

Whatever the cure was, it is working a lot better now.

quote:

Originally posted by ensigmatic:

quote:

Originally posted by Doc H.:
As a counter opinion, I have a home network with 52 connected devices and a 4T server. ... I also have a shitload of network security, well developed over time, which hasn't been "hacked" in over 15 years. Many, many redundant layers.

I have similar. And, similarly, nothing on my LAN has been compromised in the years I've operated it. (Knock on wood.) But... such network security is a bit beyond the capabilities of Average Joe/Jane Homeowner, who has difficulty just figuring out how to make their VCR stop blinking "12:00".

One the gripping hand: If people would just follow absolute minimum recommendations, such as changing access credentials to something non-obvious, with a unique and relatively secure password/passphrase, the bad guys would be slowed by several orders of magnitude. As it is: They have plenty of low-hanging fruit from which to choose.

If homeowners took the next step, putting reasonable ingress rules in their border routers: The difficulty would go up another couple orders of magnitude. Take the third step: Reasonable border router egress rules: Yet another couple orders of magnitude.

And Amen to all of that.

More counterpoint: we haven't securitized our routers, we have no door bell or thermostat. We have no access codes and we don't want to talk to our toaster or dryer or a/c. We heat with firewood so if we're not home we can guess the temperature. The last time I bought my Sweet Bride a dish washer she made me take it back. Our domestic appliances are not allowed to talk to each other let alone us.