Importance Score: 45 / 100 🔵
In today’s notification-saturated world, it’s easy to overlook alerts from your devices, especially when engaged in household chores like vacuuming. Recognizing this, Samsung is introducing innovative solutions to keep you connected, even while cleaning. Their latest smart home appliances, including the Bespoke AI Jet Ultra vacuum and Bespoke AI Laundry Combo, are designed to seamlessly integrate into your connected lifestyle, ensuring you never miss important communications.
Samsung’s Bespoke AI Appliances Enhance Connectivity
Bespoke AI Jet Ultra Cordless Vacuum: Stay Connected While Cleaning
The new Bespoke AI Jet Ultra cordless stick vacuum, priced at $1,099, incorporates a cutting-edge LCD control panel. Beyond displaying standard information such as power level and battery status, this smart vacuum now provides call and text message notifications directly on the appliance. This model, compatible with an auto-empty charging station, also boasts a robust 400AW suction power and an extended 100-minute battery life, ensuring both connectivity and performance.
Bespoke AI Laundry Combo Washer/Dryer: Answering Calls from Your Laundry Room
Extending this connectivity to other home appliances, Samsung has integrated touchscreens into its new washers and dryers. The Bespoke AI Laundry Vented Combo washer/dryer ($3,099) features a 7-inch LCD screen that allows users to answer phone calls directly from the appliance. Furthermore, this combo unit offers practical automated features, including automatic detergent dispensing and an automatic door opening function at the cycle’s completion.
The new Bespoke combo washer and dryer includes a 7-inch touchscreen for making calls and accessing smart features.
Expanding AI Home Integration Across Bespoke Line
Samsung is incorporating phone call answering capabilities across its entire Bespoke AI appliance range. At the recent CES, the company showcased these AI Home control panels on several devices, including the new Bespoke AI smart refrigerators and wall ovens. These features are compatible with both Android and iOS operating systems and require a Samsung account along with the SmartThings application.
AI Home Screens: Central Hub for Smart Living
AI Home is Samsung’s designation for the 7-inch or 9-inch LCD screens integrated into its appliances, as well as the larger screens featured in its premium Family Hub smart refrigerators. The latest iteration of the Family Hub fridge provides an option for a streamlined screen that, like other AI Home screens, offers access to music, weather updates, cooking applications, and smart home controls.
Consumers can still opt for the Family Hub refrigerator models with expansive 21.5-inch or 32-inch screens, offering access to an even broader range of applications, including Samsung TV and TikTok. Regardless of size, these screens serve as control interfaces for the appliance and integrate with other Samsung devices and services, often leveraging AI functionalities.
The flagship Samsung Family Hub smart refrigerator now offers a smaller screen variant.
Enhanced Functionality with AI and Smart Integration
For example, users can utilize the fridge screen to search for recipes within the Samsung Food application, leveraging AI-powered cameras to identify available ingredients. Cooking instructions can then be seamlessly transmitted to connected ovens, and the screen can be used to monitor the recipe. This ecosystem aims to provide the convenience of a smartphone with hands-free operation throughout the kitchen.
The AI Home screens are designed to integrate with Samsung’s SmartThings smart home platform, enabling appliance-based alerts for various smart home events. For instance, users can view and interact with individuals at their Ring video doorbell directly from the laundry appliances while managing household chores.
Potential Drawbacks and Concerns
Samsung’s strategy of pervasive screens aligns with its “AI for the home” vision, aiming for technology that unobtrusively supports daily routines. However, while smart homes offer significant potential for efficiency and convenience, the proliferation of screens integrated into numerous appliances raises concerns about potential redundancy. A dedicated smart display might fulfill similar functions, potentially at a lower replacement cost compared to an appliance with an integrated screen.
Furthermore, the incorporation of sophisticated touchscreens into appliances introduces concerns about technological obsolescence and increased susceptibility to malfunctions compared to simpler mechanical controls. Another apprehension revolves around the potential for these in-home screens to become advertising platforms, a practice observed with devices like Amazon’s Echo Show. While Samsung has not yet implemented advertising on its appliances, this remains a plausible concern for consumers.