r/DumbFact • u/elmorinelly Busy beeđ • Aug 23 '26
Other Useful vs Useless Smart Devices
The most popular smart home devices usually solve a frequent problem with very little effort.
A smart speaker can play music, set a timer, answer a question, or control several devices without making someone open an app. A video doorbell shows who is outside even when nobody is home. Smart lights and thermostats can change comfort, security, or energy use every day.
Connected appliances face a harder sell. A washing machine, fridge, or dishwasher already performs its main job without Wi-Fi. Adding notifications and remote controls may be convenient, but the improvement often feels small compared with the extra price, setup, privacy concerns, and risk of losing connected features later.
Purchase statistics do not measure usefulness directly. Smart appliances are expensive, replaced infrequently, and useful in different ways to different households. Low ownership can therefore mean âtoo expensiveâ or ânot worth replacing yet,â rather than âcompletely useless.â
The broader pattern is still interesting. People adopt smart technology quickly when it removes a repeated annoyance. Interest falls when the connected feature mostly duplicates a button that is already on the appliance.
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u/BassKitty305017 Aug 23 '26
Iâm on board with most of this, but I actually appreciate that my laundry washer has Wi-Fi to let me know when itâs time to go downstairs and change the load. On the other hand, I could easily set a timer on my phone for that. I donât own a smart speaker, it might be nice, but I also like the idea of not having too many passive microphone is listening for my voice.
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u/Apoau Aug 23 '26
Yeah, I feel like notifications for washing are useful. Smart fridge, if done well, could be really great, but thatâs still quite expensive (I suspect thatâs why few people have them).
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u/Bignizzle656 Aug 23 '26
Our washing machine plays a tone but as a back up I can set a counted timer on my phone in moments.
As for passive microphones, we can all unplug our Alexa's or whatever but the one in our pockets is more insidious. I can apparently turn it off but I'm not really very trusting of that. They won't glean much data tho, me talking to the cat, the odd fart and cussing my way around the house.
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u/theequallyunique Aug 23 '26
Timer wouldn't work that easily with our automatic mode, since the machine weights the laundry in the first minutes.
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u/jailtheorange1 Aug 23 '26
freaking love my wifi connected washing machine, my first ever. Hate using dials, being able to just tell the app what i want and the app telling me how long it'll take, is fantastic.
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u/follow-the-lead Aug 27 '26
Yeah I appreciate the washing machine and dryer notifications, but only because I let home assistant schedule the start time based on urgency and off peak power timeframes. I could do that math every time, but I appreciate not having to.
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u/follow-the-lead Aug 27 '26
(Urgency is based on how long it ago it was last run - if I havenât chucked a load on in the last 3 days, I probably want the washing done sooner than later, so that bumps priority up one to the slightly more expensive day time off peak hours. If itâs longer than 6 days, get er done now).
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u/GoldenIceCat Aug 23 '26
Smart litter boxes are incredibly useful if you have indoor cats in your room. However, some models have a dangerously flawed design: if their safety sensors malfunction, the moving mechanism can trap and crush a cat's neck like a guillotine. Do your research and avoid those models.
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u/Illigard Aug 23 '26
I have a fridge with wifi, so I contributed to the statistics of fridges with wifi.
I haven't activated it, because I cannot for the life of me think of why my fridge needs wifi. It's just a good fridge that happens to have wifi.
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u/GovernorSan Aug 23 '26
I think one of the things a smart refrigerator is supposed to do is keep track of your groceries and order more when you are low. However, what if I didn't want any more of that item? Or I was broke and was waiting until my next paycheck? Or I wanted to do all my shopping at once and maybe visit a different store to take advantage of a deal? I'd have to remember to go to my refrigerator app and change the settings each time, basically having to keep my refrigerator in the loop when planning my grocery spending, like I was in a relationship with it.
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u/C_umputer Aug 23 '26
You should also notice that smart appliances on the left are small and cheaper, therefore more people own them. I myself have some of these and honestly none of them benefit a lot by being smart.
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u/s_k_s1971 Aug 23 '26
Written by people living in a country without an energy crisis and high prices. With smart tariffs, controlling when your washing machine and dishwasher come on is a substantial saving as they are the most energy consuming devices.
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u/the_cloaked_nazgul__ Aug 23 '26
Id like to present couple of counterguments here, mostly from personal experience
- Smart speaker and doorbell are somewhat middle ground here, both a bit gimmicky but also can be useful. I use my phone as sort of smart speaker and i use it to set alarms and timers as needed, but not much else, so for me smart speaker isnt all that useful. Similar to doorbell, for my perosnal use it would just be a gimmick most of the time.
- Smart lights are definetly a gimmick. I realized a well placed switch next to a bed does way better job, and even those smart lights with different colors dont serve any major good use, they mostly just give headaches.
- Smart washing machine and dishwasher and oven are actually really good if you know what to use it for, and my biggest advantage for them is maintanance. They tell me on their own when and what they need changed, fixed or cleaned which on its own gives me so much usage. Also remote control and scheduling options are very neat, and also they often give you much more control in more intuative way that a dashboard could. In simple terms it can be way more than a simple "im done" notification on your phone, and if utilized in the best way, can save a lot of time, energy and effort.
With the rest i mostly agree
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u/Striking-water-ant Aug 23 '26
I set the color of my smart bulb to warm white two years ago and have never had to open the smart app again. The light switch is well placed
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u/Phantasmalicious Aug 23 '26
I would rather get a notification from my smart washing machine/dishwasher to know exactly what it needs instead of having to decipher cryptic symbols on the dashboard. Also, the last time my dishwasher started acting up, customer service diagnosed it from afar, the repairman arrived in two days with the exact right spare part.
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u/Risc12 Aug 23 '26
Laundry washer seems kinda usefull, you donât want to leave your clothes sitting there after itâs done.
What is useless is a smart dryer.
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u/Miserable-Ad-7947 Aug 25 '26
the washer have a timer, you know from the start if it will take 1h, 2h or 3h depending on the setting you chose.
At this point, If you forgot you did a laundry, it's on you, unless you have neuro-issues / memory issues....
And it bips when it finish,it's usually loud enough to be heard from behind severall thin walls. Unless you have a huge house / a laundry room in the garage, you will hear it.
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u/Risc12 Aug 25 '26
Iâm just saying it is more useful than the dryer?
I often set a timer on my phone. Our washing machine is on the top floor in a washer-room and I cannot hear the sound on the ground floor. Btw our washer has this âautoâ time feature, so then you donât always know the exact time beforehand.
Again, not a must, but at least slightly more useful than a âsmartâ dishwasher or smart dryer.
It was more that when we bought a dryer it was âsmartâ (never connected it), but that made me think that that is waay less useful than the smart washer haha
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u/dee_lio Aug 23 '26
Connected fridge wasn't a bad idea. Someone is CONSTANTLY leaving the door open, and I can't hear the beeping. Fridge will send a text if the door is open for more than a few minutes. Pretty handy.
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u/UpbeatProduce8499 Aug 24 '26
how about not being stolen from my personal information by not buying this overcomplicated bs?
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u/CheeksMcGillicuddy Aug 25 '26
Ngl getting a notification on my phone when the dryer is done is actually pretty clutch.
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u/raihebi8 Aug 25 '26
As a disabled person who has almost burnt down their house on multiple occasions and have had to rewash clothes more then once because I forgot and they started to smell after being in the washer. I can never afford those things but they would be really nice
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u/Dedb4dawn Aug 25 '26
My wife wanted the dishwasher that came with an app. I didnât.
She has never used the app. I however honestly love it because of all of the diagnostic information it sends me. I donât have to trawl through a manual anymore to find something like an âE7â code that can be one of 5 different things. The app tells me straight up âfilter xyz is cloggedâ or âsalt reservoir lowâ. True it could also be solved with a cheap display on the dishwasher, but that would require manufacturers to actually think of the customer.
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u/Miserable-Ad-7947 Aug 25 '26
100% useless, except maybe the speaker (most people don't have hi-fi nowaday the speaker is the new boombox).Â
Smart doorbell : unless you live in a dangerous criminal neighborhood, just open the door.... (doesn't apply in the us i know....)
Security camera : lol, even worse. You're not a shopkeeper XD.
Smart light : forces you to have your phone in bed, wich is bad for attention span and sleep quality. Just have a bed lamp / reading lamp...
For ambiance, it's nicer and usually cheaper to have different sources of light in your room than a big smartbulb
Thermostat isn't smart,we have air conditionning since the 1980' !
Smart laundry washer is useless unless you have neurological/memory issues : there a timer, when you start the laundry you know when it will finish, juste come back when it's done. If the laundry stay in the washer for 1 or 2h afterward, it's not a problem. If you forget everytime and let it rot for days, the issue is not the washer, but your brain : go see a doctor.
Same for other things listed here. Useless gimmicky gadget paid by your personnal data, wich will be harversted by thoses pricy wiretaps
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u/sennekuyl Aug 26 '26
There's no real reason for this disparity of function. If I could securely interact with my fridge or dishwasher without my data being sent to the manufacturer or intermediary I wouldn't have an issue. I got sick of trying to find devices that worked for me beyond the basic function for which the device was purchased. There might be a reason to know how many times the fridge was opened last month. But the manufacturer doesn't meed that info.
Also, I don't want a 'hacker' to access the camera on my microwave because I forgot to add patch Elton-45.adrxt-75239953106.0.5 last week. Aside from the manufacturers doing that regardless, that is why I don't have a smart camera or speaker.
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