Why Do Smart Appliances Continue to Be So Dumb?

Jimmy Hawkins calls himself a home-automation hobbyist. But “hobbyist” is underselling it: He’s a home-automation maniac.

Hawkins has over 200 “smart” devices throughout his Alpharetta, Ga., home. They include run-of-the-mill smart products: locks, lightbulbs, a garage door opener, and vacuums. But also some weird ones: a bidet, mousetrap, toothbrush and curtain rods programmed to close his curtains at a predetermined time.

What does he not have in his house? Lots of smart home appliances.

He and his wife, Jordan, purchased their 4,000-square-foot home in 2022 and bought a smart microwave with a sliding drawer during a kitchen renovation. But after a power outage, they never reconnected it to Wi-Fi.

“Do I really need to get my phone, open an app, hit the ‘open’ button when I’m literally standing in front of the thing and could just push the ‘open’ button?” said Hawkins, 40.

He really does not. It’s like the people who designed his microwave’s smart features have never actually used a microwave.

Smart devices like locks, thermostats and vacuums add real value by addressing a legitimate need, solving a problem or taking over an entire task. But most connected appliances have whizzed right past smart and circled back to dumb. Some offer useful tricks, like preheating your oven remotely, and downloading software updates that add cooking features. But many of the features on these appliances are useless; why would you want to start your clothes washer via app when you have likely just loaded it?

That may be one reason why consumers aren’t using their smart appliances as intended. According to a Wall Street Journal report from Jan. 2023 , only around half of the buyers of smart home appliances from two major manufacturers keep them connected to the internet. LG reported that it was less than half in 2022. Whirlpool said more than half but declined to be more specific. Whirlpool declined to update that data for 2023. Both companies said that consumer concerns over privacy, difficulty connecting and reconnecting devices when the power goes out, and the lack of robust Wi-Fi near their appliances were behind low connection rates.

Owners of these devices have different explanations. There is, they say, a general disinterest in many Wi-Fi-enabled features, like being able to turn on the oven light with their phone app, or starting the dryer while they’re grocery shopping. Take a moment and try to conceive why you’d want or need to do either of those things, besides trying to startle someone who is looking into the oven, or wanting newly dried clothes with a soupçon of mildew.

Consumers, says Hawkins, also don’t want a separate app for each appliance made by different companies. An effective smart-home hub, which lets you completely control all your smart devices from a single place, is still a ways off. Some are getting close, like Home Assistant by Nabu Casa, according to Ed de Tollenaer, who runs the Youtube channel SmartHomeJunkie. But HA is still mostly used by DIY home-automation hobbyists who are adept at programming, de Tollenaer says. A universal smart-device operating standard, called Matter, aims to let smart devices communicate with each other, but until more appliance makers get on board, it’s every app for itself.

If you want to buy a package of high-end home appliances from a single manufacturer that isn’t smart, you’re kind of out of luck. When interior designer and custom cabinet maker Vince Winteregg had a client who wanted high-end appliances without Wi-Fi in his remodeled home, it took Winteregg months to locate brands without it. He found a few individual appliances—a Speed Queen washer and dryer set, a Blue Star professional range and a Wolf steam oven. But he’s still on the hunt for a dumb dishwasher.

“I haven’t found a single client who was excited or looking for Wi-Fi connectivity for appliances,” says Winteregg, based in Clearwater, Fla.

After a surge in 2021, sales of smart home devices into the retail channel plunged then flattened, and the category of devices that includes smart appliances is not expected to see a meaningful rebound in sales until 2025, according to a study by market intelligence firm IDC. This, says Jitesh Ubrani, a research manager for IDC, is partly due to market saturation for smart home devices of all types, a dramatic slowdown in new home sales and construction (the biggest “consumer” of appliances and other smart devices), and the economic downturn since the pandemic.

Ubrani likes his smart vacuum, but otherwise he counts himself among the disenchanted. “A real smart dishwasher would be more like a smart vacuum, where you can sort of set it and forget it. It would load the dishwasher, unload the dishwasher and put away the dishes…I guess what I really want is Rosey the Robot from the Jetsons.”  The closest thing to Rosey was “Assign a Task by Whirlpool” which notified you when the washing machine was done and enabled you to send a customised text message to someone…to tell them to put the clothes in the dryer.

Despite a lack of robust consumer interest in smart features, appliance manufacturers continue to embrace them. Data generated by these smart appliances and the apps that live on your phone is fed back to the maker, and can be used to determine how customers are using the product, to identify cross-selling opportunities for paid subscription services (such as recipe app Yummly, which sends recipe instructions to your Whirlpool smart oven—but why?) and to enable software updates and remote diagnostics.

Still, hope springs eternal that one day, the manufacturers will realise that lots of consumers just want an appliance that works and lasts longer than five years before going obsolete.

Hobbyists like Hawkins aren’t convinced that manufacturers will ever give up the holy grail of knowing everything about you and converting it to cash.

“They will probably figure out a way to force you to connect,” says Hawkins. “They really want this data.”

If you’re in the market for household appliances, but want a completely dumb version, you’ll likely have to go for a lower-tier model in any maker’s portfolio of products to find one. If you’re committed to owning a high-end dumb appliance, and you’re willing to spend big, try shopping European, industrial- or commercial-grade manufacturers.

If the model you want only comes smart, keep in mind that most appliances still do their basic job without being connected to the internet, but some do not. One smart-oven maker forces owners to connect to the internet in order to enable the convection roast feature, even though there is a button for it on the oven. Before you buy, make sure that every feature you want works without a connection, or without a one-time connection for a download, which would still force you to download the app, register with your personal info, etc.

Remember that if you do connect your appliance to the internet, the line up of available non-connected features could change in a future software update. Such is the case for both Yummly, which is being sunset in December, and “Assign a Task,” which is no longer available because, one assumes, a Whirlpool washing machine engineer came to his senses.

Lastly, if you want a smart appliance, and you want your smart devices to communicate with each other, look for devices that incorporate the Matter standard. More makers are joining the standard and as smart-appliance functionality inevitably (we hope) improves and becomes more useful, being able to consolidate control on a single hub instead of a half-dozen apps will make life easier. That, after all, is the point of home appliances.