15 Smart Appliances Every High-Tech Home Needs | iRobot Blog (2024)

We’d say getting up from bed to circulate the house to make sure all the lights are off, the blinds closed, and the doors locked are pretty insignificant in the grand scheme of things.

But, you know… security… so we keep doing it each night.

If your blinds, doors, and lights were all connected to your smartphone, you wouldn’t have to get up. You’d just schedule all of those events to happen automatically at a set time each day. Or, you’d simply do all of those actions with a few taps of your phone.

Are smart appliances worth it?

That’s entirely up to you and your situation. If you or a loved one struggles to stay on top of daily chores, smart appliances and tech in your home. These types of products can provide independence, security, and generally make life easier.

But something as simple as having a sleeping baby in your arms can make getting up to turn the music volume down (or up), turn the lights off, close all the blinds before baby is even in bed- slightly more challenging, if not time-consuming.

We all want more time to relax, and no one likes getting up as soon as they’ve sat down just because they forgot to turn off the light in the kitchen while grabbing snacks (way too common).

That alone may make smart appliances worth it.

The Top Smart Kitchen Appliances You Need In Your Home

(& So Does Everyone You Know)

The kitchen is where you’ll find most of the push towards smart appliances, and that’s a beautiful thing. Because most of us don’t grow up learning incredible recipes passed down by our great great great grandparents. (If you did, you’re a lucky one.)

But food still tends to be the great combiner. The glue that binds families, friends, lovers. Cooking for someone is an act of love, if not a complete necessity (once you’ve been together long enough for cooking to be an everyday affair).

With so many needing a little extra help getting those experimental recipes just right, these smart appliances are nearly as vital as the food itself.

1. Touch-Screen Refrigerator

Refrigerators haven’t really changed in the last few decades. Maybe a bit of their style (hellooo, stainless steel), but they generally do the same things.

Well, a smart refrigerator is finally shaking up the game. These bad boys can look up recipes and read the steps to you while cooking, create grocery lists that display on their french doors, and add the lists to your smartphone. They can even send you notifications if a food item is set to spoil.

Some of the smarter fridge and freezer combos have cameras inside to let you see what you have on-hand (or don’t have) in real-time while you’re at the store.

Yeah, quite a bit different than the dry erase list many of us keep on our fridge doors.

2. Microwave With Voice Control

Have you ever put something in the microwave, then rushed off to do something else, only to fling yourself across the room because whatever you put in there is boiling and spattering all over?

No? Well, you haven’t lived until you’ve dashed to stop boiling milk or splattering tomato sauce. Then again, you could just be lucky enough to have a smart microwave that listens to your every command, as if you were the ruler of the galaxy.

3. High-Speed Smart Toasters

It’s not just the speed at which you can burn your toast, it’s how intelligent you can. Yeah, it sounds a little far-fetched to say that a toaster can do anything else but… toast, but it can!

Some smart toasters can burn images onto your toast. That’s how bored we were with the old spring and heating coil toasters.

Other fun tricks these babies can perform include cooking various types of bread at different temperatures, speeds, and personal settings. It’ll remember you, is what we’re saying, and if you get a smart toaster, you’ll probably never forget us for telling you about it.

4. Multifunctional Digital Air Fryer

Air fryers are the slow cookers sensation of modern kitchen life, and they just keep getting better. You can air fryvirtually anything!

What’s better than a mini, enclosed fryer that cooks nearly any food item in less than half the time and with only a tablespoon of oil? One that does it at the command of your booming voice (okay, you can speak calmly. It’ll still listen).

5. Smart Oven

An oven is an oven is an oven, right? Wrong. Some ovens are much more than ovens. They’re watch dogs that’ll sync with your recipes to preheat properly or automatically shut off when your food is ready (before you burn it).

They’re jacks of all trades, adding steam for recipes that need more humidity (like the sourdough bread everyone learned to make during the pandemic) and more air for goods like cookies (aka convection).

(Whether your oven is an oven or a smart oven, we have some oven cleaning hacks for you, too.)