Yeah, I just watch TV at the gas pump like everyone else.
2nd button down on the right, press twice to mute
Where are the ads?
When you kill an enemy.
Lots of people have a TV blaring all day in the kitchen. I don’t get that either, but that must be their target.
Becomes a white noise that’s comforting?
I get it. I usually have some manner of street food compilation or gaming video in the background if I'm not actively watching something.
Yep. It distracts from thoughts and loneliness. They start to think of it as a friend.
Where’d you dig up this pop psych bullshit?
How is noise comforting?
The reporter’s use case actually makes a lot of sense to me. I would never buy one of these, but I wouldn’t be opposed to using something like this if I ever ended up with one.
It’s not like I stand in front of it and watch a whole movie in my kitchen. But I like to have the T2 Tennis Channel on while I scramble eggs or pop on a news show while cooking dinner. Plus, it’s nice to have a kitchen screen that doesn’t take up counter space.
Or just put some adhesive flat magnets on your tablet.
I'm sure there's flat magnets you can put on your tablet.
The aspect ratio of the screen doesn't seem like it'd be all that ideal.
Since it now the norm for everyone to film everything with a smartphone and in the vertical position (I'm old enough that this still hurts my soul), Ive hypothesized that it won't be long before we start seeing a lot of tvs in this format.
Ow! Now my soul is taking splash damage.
I wouldn't want to watch TV, but having a recipe in large text would be really nice.
Just be glad it doesn't have an LLM based AI yet.
I honestly do not understand why anyone would want to watch TV on their fridge.
I was sat in the optician's waiting room the other day, and there was some cheap gameshow on the TV, where people would win like £20.
I couldn't believe that people would even film it, let alone broadcast it.
Watching broadcast TV is the equivalent of going to a restaurant, not wanting to choose and just asking the waiter to pour any old slop down your gob.
Smart fridges are such a stupid idea. Fridges last like 30 years, why would you integrate a computer that is going to reach end-of-life in less than 5 years?
Just get a fucking tablet and use it in the kitchen.
Bold of you to assume these fridges are built to last
Fridges last like 30 years
To be fair, these are Samsung.
Samsung who won’t even provide price estimates/quotes for reparation of utensils WITHIN WARRANTY without being paid $25 before hand. Their products suck that much.
Samsung isn't what they used to be. 5-10 years ago they were fine but they've really gone downhill with customer support and quality. I'll be looking at another manufacturer next time I need an SSD.
No, fridges last 10-ish years, 15 if you're lucky, especially if you buy Samsung or LG. My LG compressor went out twice in 10 years, and the second time the tech said it would cost way more to fix than it's worth, even if the part is under warranty (I fixed other stuff myself as well).
I just got a new fridge, and looking through reviews, even the "best" fridges (unless you go industrial) last 10-15 years on average. I got Whirlpool this time, because they were near the top of recommendations (Maytag was #1), so hopefully those 10-15 years will be relatively trouble-free.
So I don't need all the features of a smart fridge and shit because I habe a phone and a tablet hub for that sort of thing, but a feature I've only seen on LG smart fridges is something I'm frequently annoyed more don't have these days with how cheap the tech is: remote fridge monitoring
Slap a few cheap cameras in there so I can see 2 angles on every shelf and monitor the current fridge levels from my phone.
"Are we low on ketchup or am I stupid?” know for certain!
Saw a feature close to this but not quite as good on an LG smart fridge years ago and have been vehemently disappointed by every fridge ive looked at since not having that.
And I'm in the market for a new fridge goddamnit. I don't want to have to install my own cams but I'm close to doing it at this point
30y seems a bit optimistic. I have already replaced the control board on our fridge once and I think I need to again and it probably is less than 15yo.
Not so much "optimistic" as "the way it used to be"
I've got a fridge that's nearly 30 years old that we've never had to fix anything on (other than the ice maker). I thought it died about a week ago, turns out I just accidentally turned it off (issue with the coldness dial) and it's colder than ever right now.
I've also got a 6 or 8 year old fridge that I wouldn't be a bit surprised if it needs replacing before the old one.
Well, your question answered itself from the manufacturer's perspective. Fuck the consumer.
I’d be happy if my fridge had some sort of optional rack for an arbitrary tablet, with power supply or even a traditional paper calendar . Even happier if it had cheap simple Zigbee/z-wave/Thread sensors - let me choose to do or not do anything with them
If these things all used Raspberry Pi compute modules, they could be reflashed with custom roms. Just loading stock Kodi would do most of what you might want put of a kitchen computer.
There’s no reason they need so much processing, something that expensive. All you need is very cheap sensors - it really needs to be from the manufacturer for power and to get a signal through the metal skin.
Minimal software, no required online services or planned obsolescence, no privacy violations or data collection, no confusion for anyone who chooses not to use it, very minimal price increase. Since I can track power consumption externally if I want, I’m not sure what you’d even want beyond temperature monitoring and alerts
It's not worth all the compromises.
But having a camera inside the fridge so you can check if you need something when you're at the store has definite utility.
While that sounds like a good idea, I can’t see that working. You’d need many cameras and even then some stuff would be hidden behind others
It's not my idea. They have them.
Obviously there's a level of stuffing your fridge where you could be wrong, but that's also bad for the actual refrigeration performance.
I’m not sure what you’d even want beyond temperature monitoring and alerts
Yes. Knowing if the fridge door was left open would be good. It's terrible to come home and realize you've burnt out the motor and all the food is bad.
as an appliance salesperson at a well-known home-improvement retailer, i do just about whatever i can to stop people from buying Samsung appliances. They're garbage. They overstuff their appliances with way too much unnecessary tech that nobody wants, and in order to keep the costs from being astronomical, they cut on build quality. Countless customers come in to replace Samsung appliances that failed far before their expected lifespan, often breaking within the first few years.
you want reliable? go with LG or GE. Whirlpool is also pretty decent.
European here, I suggest Bosch or Electrolux, if that's available in your part of the world.
Oh my God Bosch does good on their motors. Annoyingly one of those you pay for what you get companies.
oh, i also suggest Electrolux. they're great. i especially like to offer their laundry machines as an alternative to the more complicated LGs. electrolux machines are very simple, and they have great warranties.
Bosch is overpriced. nice, but far too expensive here.
Yeah, why would you buy kitchen appliances from a Smartphone/TV vendor?
Isn't LG having issues with their linear compressors?
Have they? I’d like to hear some more information about that, especially if you have any links.
LG all the way. I have not had much in the way of positive results from GE since their acquisition by Haier. Their build quality took an immediate and noticeable nosedive. I have seen DOA, damaged, and defective units of all stripes from all brands over the years. But I have never seen any units arrive from the factory not fully assembled, but still packed up in a box and shipped in that state, except from GE. Multiple times.
I received a PFE28 refrigerator with no ice maker mechanism, just a hole in the door where it should have been installed. I also received a CGS700 range with the oven light door switch not installed, just rolling around in the bottom of the oven cavity where it was subsequently baked by the customer. I also received one CXE22 refrigerator with no face panel on the center drawer. There are other examples but those are just the recent ones I can remember off the top of my head.
Haier's management philosophy seems to be in lockstep with the Chinese Manufacturing Way, which is to steal whatever tech you can, do a slapdash job of making it, lie about everything, and when pressed about it just lie some more.
Honestly Whirlpool is not doing great these days, either, but they're better than Samsung or GE. Whirlpool has seemingly devolved into mostly competing with itself with all of its various sub-marquees: Amana, Maytag, KitchenAid, Gladiator, Jenn-Air, Roper, Affresh, etc. A better strategy might be to compete with their, you know, competitors. Whirlpool's warranty service network has also essentially evaporated over the last few years, so if you don't already know a repairman who is Whirlpool factory authorized to do warranty work you may as well just open a Youtube tab and figure that shit out yourself. Otherwise you'll just be told "there are no servicers or service dates in your area and the system only lets us look two weeks in advance" over and over again until your warranty runs out.
The less we say about Samsung the better. At one point we were experiencing a roughly 50/50 first-week failure rate of their laundry machines and dishwashers. A coin flip. That's worse odds than a first run XBox 360 not red ringing itself to put it into perspective. Don't buy a Samsung appliance no matter how shiny it is or how big of a touch screen it's got.
Although GE has delivered one or two problematic appliances, overall the customers I’ve had have had pretty great experiences with them, especially since higher bought majority share from them. Overall, I haven’t heard any complaints aside from teeny weenie ones. But I’ll keep My ears open.
While I'm sure they're cutting build quality to make them cheaper, the "unnecessary tech" isn't some cutting edge high tech stuff requiring high R&D costs that would make them "astronomically expensive"
If they wanted to they could literally replicate everything they're doing with a 60$ raspberry pi and just interface it with the existing controller boards and call it a day.
Even this article about the fridge is just an (admittedly fairly large screen) tablet.
The Samsung FamilyHub fridge does indeed basically have an overgrown tablet duct taped to the door. It runs Samsung's Tizen operating system, which you may recall was at one point going to be the Next Big Thing and a competitor to Android and iOS. Obviously that didn't happen, so now it's relegated to refrigerators.
Honestly, my theory is that Samsung is just pulling a sunk cost fallacy move and was desperate to put Tizen in something -- anything -- to justify its development.
It's terrible. All the hardware is also located inside the upper right door, and it dumps all of its waste heat out the back of the door into the refrigerator compartment. The design is breathtakingly stupid.
The design is breathtakingly stupid.
And here I thought their shitty TVs were breathtakingly stupid and over complicated (seriously there are like 6 different fucking menu screens in different places, and best of luck remembering which one you need for something stupid simple like sleep timer..)
Then again, I’ve been avoiding Samsung since the tv incident 10 years ago.. apparently for the best..
When their refrigerators have AI that scans everything you put into the refrigerator and then makes suggestions to you without asking first and table screen that hardly work and go obsolete in a year, yeah, I call that unnecessary tech. No other refrigerator does that.
That's not unnecessary, just to you it is, and the execution is flawed and terrible (No consent, hardly working screen) I for one would love a feature that kept track of my groceries for me because I'm absolutely terrible at manual lists and such.
Just because "no other refrigerator does that" doesn't automatically make it unnecessary either. That's what innovation is supposed to be.
you want reliable? go with LG or GE.
Going to have to disagree based on personal experience (which admittedly has limited value). Bought LG washer, dryer, and fridge when we moved. The washer blew the clutch seal after about 4 and a half years. The dryer sensor is unreliable (leading to taking jeans or blankets out, them still being damp, and having to put them back in on a timer). And the fridge compressor sounds like it's struggling.
The most absurd part is that we replaced the washer with a similar LG model (one with an agitator - I looked into just replacing the part but it was half the price of the washer, the underside of the impeller was moldy because lack of water flow, something no amount of tub clean cycles will fix, and the outer bucket was absolutely disgusting from the leak, with no easy way to hose it out) because everything else was either crap, ridiculously expensive, or both.
I hate this timeline.
I have an anecdote that says the opposite. I got the same fridge, washer, and dryer from LG when we moved in our house 10 years ago and have had no problems with any one of them. My wife hates that we got a model with the freezer as a drawer on the bottom and would have preferred a side by side but no problems with anything breaking.
Our Bosch dishwasher on the other hand had a gasket start leaking during the pandemic and it took the repair people 4 or 5 months to get a replacement in. I think they were redesigning a faulty part at the same time as all the supply chain issues so we had a really bad time with that. It was only a couple years old at the time and has worked ever since.
Well I'm glad to hear you had a better experience than I did. I have my fingers crossed that everything holds up on this end, and the washer was a freak occurrence.
I have an anecdote where my LG washer has been running fine for 10 years.
Yeah, we bought a new LG washer and dryer set when we moved to this house in late 2016. The washer has been trouble free. In fact, it actually saved us from washing delicate clothes in hot water (the handles on the spigots are reversed - the blue is hot; the red is cold) - it filled up, recognized there was a problem, and drained without doing anything more. I thought there was an issue with the washer at first, but then I realized how warm it was inside the washer, and I figured it out from there. I don't think it's technically a smart washer in the current sense (there's no app or anything), but it's definitely smarter than the ones I've had before.
The dryer's tension pulley failed, so I had to replace that, for ~$20 from Amazon. It was making noise for a long time, but like a dolt I waited until it actually failed to replace it. The replacement has been trouble free. I found a video on Youtube from someone that showed how to disassemble it to get to the part - it's easier than it looks.
Jeans in the dryer? They'll definitely shrink that way.
I'm constantly replacing the drain pump in my LG washer. When a replacement part has thousands of reviews on amazon, you know the brand has to know their parts are crap and either doesn't care or wanted it that way. They're on my never buy list now.
What do you define as “constantly”? Once a year, every two years, twice in 20 years?
Anecdotal, but I’ve had my lg washer, dryer, dishwasher, fridge, and gas stove for about 10 years and none of them have had any issues at all. I didn’t get them because I was super into LG, they were cheap - open box, dented, or floor model - and it just worked out that way, but still, zero issues with any of it.
Maybe it’s just that model tho, and that’s legit. Sometimes there’s just a shit offering, but the rest of the line is decent.
But a lot of times, parts fit multiple brand’s machines, or multiple models within the same brand. Especially something like a drain pump, which is super basic and could be used in dishwashers as well as literally all of their brand washers, for example. Solid chance the reason for the large number of reviews is compatibility with other models rather than lg sucking that hard for that model. But without knowing the exact part I can’t say.
4 times in the last 5 years.
There's a combination of flaws. The strainer basket doesn't do a very good job keeping debris out of the impeller. There's little separation between the steainer and the impeller. So long hairs that are partially caught in the strainer can still wrap around the impeller.
The pump itself has a terrible impeller design. The impeller is nylon and is press fit onto a 1/8 brass rod that just has a flat ground on it, no knurling or splines. The nylon cracks easily and ends up free spinning.
They use the same pump in loads of washer models. So yes, there's a very large user base, but that's a lot of people with part failures. The pump is garbage and lg should not be using it.
That’s a legitimate complaint, but if you bought it within the last 5 years or whatever, it’s possible they saw error and changed, assuming that’s the same part they used.
Or maybe, and I find this much more likely, the one you got on Amazon was disguised trash like everything else from Amazon and it’s not actually the OEM parts causing the issue since it’s always the same shitty part that fails. You got unlucky with the oem part, then bought trash on Amazon (basically everything on Amazon is knockoff, nothing is quality) and have been replacing it since.
If you bought the replacement pump from an OEM part supplier or other official supplier for replacements, and continued to have the issue, sure, but at this point you are giving an extended Amazon review as a review of the machine itself. And that’s not remotely fair to the unit, because Amazon is trash and won’t even let you post negative reviews anymore (try it, good luck).
How old is this appliance? And what do you mean by constantly?
4 pump impeller failures in 5 years. 1 time a mask strap got past the strainer. I'll take the blame on that, but the other 3 were just long hair and bad design/materials choices.
I was with you until you suggested GE. GE is the Chrysler of appliances (ie squeeze suppliers on price so much that they get precisely what they ask for). It's the monkey's paw effect.
This was especially true until 2016 when Haier bought a majority share in the appliances division of GE. After then, the quality has seriously improved, and so has their customer service. The customer I’ve had so far have definitely liked them and not had any problems with them at all.
Unfortunately, they're kinda hard to find. We recently got a new fridge, and most of the French door fridges (fridge on top, freezer on bottom) were smart or didn't have a water dispenser.
We ended up with a Whirlpool without smart features, other than the "smart" water dispenser (touch screen to auto-fill cup to X liters), and it still has "dumb" buttons for that as well. I haven't taken it apart, but hopefully the dumb buttons act as a fallback when the smart buttons inevitably fail.
I was sleeping for fridge about a year ago, i didn't find a single "smart" at all. Max tech was door ice and managed 🌡️ with digital dials
Really? I'm in the US and went to Home Depot, Lowes, Costco, and Best Buy. Our requirements:
ice dispenser in the freezer section - ice dispenser's in the fridge have a high failure rate
external water dispenser
preference for french door fridge (freezer below fridge)
strong preference for no smart stuff
not LG or Samsung; strong preference for Maytag or Whirlpool
So, here's what we found:
about half of the french door refrigerators had "smart" stuff
about half of the remainder of french door fridges had a water dispenser in the door, the rest either had none or it was inside the fridge
only one french door refrigerator had an ice machine in the freezer, the rest either had none or it was in the fridge; water dispenser was inside the fridge
So we bought a side-by-side fridge from Whirlpool, which met all of our requirements except the french door design.
Still wandering what use has such a simple machine like a fridge for a 32" screen..
Porting Skyrim onto it?
Can it run Crysis?
There are two (fairly lackluster) uses for it.
The first is that it has a camera with a large fisheye that can show you the inside (though this is more useful when away from the fridge rather than using the screen). The issue is the camera is only at one point. The fisheye helps see more, but it can never see all the fridge.
The second is as a home assistant in the kitchen. This is actually useful. It can display recipes and whatever in it whole you cook. You can also use a phone, tablet, or other home assistant device for this though, but if you want to throw away money this does seem convenient.
They also can show arbitrary stuff, so it's great for todos, family reminders, etc. We bought a chalkboard-like thing (wet chalk?), but a thin whiteboard would work too.
My wife prefers using a tablet to cook since she can move it around (from the prep counter to next to the stove). I use my phone.
We bought a new fridge recently, and while the smart features looked cool, I don't trust them to get security updates, nor am I willing to pay a premium for cool features on a fridge that's likely to have problems (Samsung and LG have the coolest features and the worst repair track records).
So now Samsung fridges won't play TV shows or cool the food?
Now that's the funniest utopian phrase
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Yesterday morning, I woke up to a notice on my fridge alerting me that one of my favorite features was going away.
And while that turned out not to be the case — the confusion highlights how precarious smart appliance features can be.
“The notification was sent in error, and a correction will be released.” I also asked Langlois if he could explain why this happened and how many fridges sent out this message.
It offers hundreds of live TV channels with news, sports, and plenty of classic TV (there’s an entire channel dedicated to Baywatch reruns and another to Degrassi Junior High), alongside movies on demand.
I’m still waiting for that pop-up telling me all is good, but I’m definitely relieved I’m not losing the option to watch TV Plus on my fridge.
But I like to have the T2 Tennis Channel on while I scramble eggs or pop on a news show while cooking dinner.
The original article contains 470 words, the summary contains 156 words. Saved 67%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
Sometimes I wonder why people buying smart fridge in first place, it's just fridge with touchscreen panel on it, what makes it's so special compared to other fridges that has better cooling technology or bigger capacity or better electricity consumption
I honestly do not understand why anyone would want to watch TV on their fridge.
Right?! When they could be playing Doom on it.
I prefer Stardew Valley
How you choose to fight hell spawn is OK with me.
Yeah, I just watch TV at the gas pump like everyone else.
2nd button down on the right, press twice to mute
Where are the ads?
When you kill an enemy.
Lots of people have a TV blaring all day in the kitchen. I don’t get that either, but that must be their target.
Becomes a white noise that’s comforting?
I get it. I usually have some manner of street food compilation or gaming video in the background if I'm not actively watching something.
Yep. It distracts from thoughts and loneliness. They start to think of it as a friend.
Where’d you dig up this pop psych bullshit?
How is noise comforting?
The reporter’s use case actually makes a lot of sense to me. I would never buy one of these, but I wouldn’t be opposed to using something like this if I ever ended up with one.
Or just put some adhesive flat magnets on your tablet.
I'm sure there's flat magnets you can put on your tablet.
The aspect ratio of the screen doesn't seem like it'd be all that ideal.
Since it now the norm for everyone to film everything with a smartphone and in the vertical position (I'm old enough that this still hurts my soul), Ive hypothesized that it won't be long before we start seeing a lot of tvs in this format.
Ow! Now my soul is taking splash damage.
I wouldn't want to watch TV, but having a recipe in large text would be really nice.
Just be glad it doesn't have an LLM based AI yet.
I honestly do not understand why anyone would want to watch TV
on their fridge.I was sat in the optician's waiting room the other day, and there was some cheap gameshow on the TV, where people would win like £20.
I couldn't believe that people would even film it, let alone broadcast it.
Watching broadcast TV is the equivalent of going to a restaurant, not wanting to choose and just asking the waiter to pour any old slop down your gob.
Smart fridges are such a stupid idea. Fridges last like 30 years, why would you integrate a computer that is going to reach end-of-life in less than 5 years?
Just get a fucking tablet and use it in the kitchen.
Bold of you to assume these fridges are built to last
To be fair, these are Samsung.
Samsung who won’t even provide price estimates/quotes for reparation of utensils WITHIN WARRANTY without being paid $25 before hand. Their products suck that much.
Samsung isn't what they used to be. 5-10 years ago they were fine but they've really gone downhill with customer support and quality. I'll be looking at another manufacturer next time I need an SSD.
No, fridges last 10-ish years, 15 if you're lucky, especially if you buy Samsung or LG. My LG compressor went out twice in 10 years, and the second time the tech said it would cost way more to fix than it's worth, even if the part is under warranty (I fixed other stuff myself as well).
I just got a new fridge, and looking through reviews, even the "best" fridges (unless you go industrial) last 10-15 years on average. I got Whirlpool this time, because they were near the top of recommendations (Maytag was #1), so hopefully those 10-15 years will be relatively trouble-free.
So I don't need all the features of a smart fridge and shit because I habe a phone and a tablet hub for that sort of thing, but a feature I've only seen on LG smart fridges is something I'm frequently annoyed more don't have these days with how cheap the tech is: remote fridge monitoring
Slap a few cheap cameras in there so I can see 2 angles on every shelf and monitor the current fridge levels from my phone.
"Are we low on ketchup or am I stupid?” know for certain!
Saw a feature close to this but not quite as good on an LG smart fridge years ago and have been vehemently disappointed by every fridge ive looked at since not having that.
And I'm in the market for a new fridge goddamnit. I don't want to have to install my own cams but I'm close to doing it at this point
30y seems a bit optimistic. I have already replaced the control board on our fridge once and I think I need to again and it probably is less than 15yo.
Not so much "optimistic" as "the way it used to be"
I've got a fridge that's nearly 30 years old that we've never had to fix anything on (other than the ice maker). I thought it died about a week ago, turns out I just accidentally turned it off (issue with the coldness dial) and it's colder than ever right now.
I've also got a 6 or 8 year old fridge that I wouldn't be a bit surprised if it needs replacing before the old one.
Well, your question answered itself from the manufacturer's perspective. Fuck the consumer.
I’d be happy if my fridge had some sort of optional rack for an arbitrary tablet, with power supply or even a traditional paper calendar . Even happier if it had cheap simple Zigbee/z-wave/Thread sensors - let me choose to do or not do anything with them
If these things all used Raspberry Pi compute modules, they could be reflashed with custom roms. Just loading stock Kodi would do most of what you might want put of a kitchen computer.
There’s no reason they need so much processing, something that expensive. All you need is very cheap sensors - it really needs to be from the manufacturer for power and to get a signal through the metal skin.
Minimal software, no required online services or planned obsolescence, no privacy violations or data collection, no confusion for anyone who chooses not to use it, very minimal price increase. Since I can track power consumption externally if I want, I’m not sure what you’d even want beyond temperature monitoring and alerts
It's not worth all the compromises.
But having a camera inside the fridge so you can check if you need something when you're at the store has definite utility.
While that sounds like a good idea, I can’t see that working. You’d need many cameras and even then some stuff would be hidden behind others
It's not my idea. They have them.
Obviously there's a level of stuffing your fridge where you could be wrong, but that's also bad for the actual refrigeration performance.
Yes. Knowing if the fridge door was left open would be good. It's terrible to come home and realize you've burnt out the motor and all the food is bad.
as an appliance salesperson at a well-known home-improvement retailer, i do just about whatever i can to stop people from buying Samsung appliances. They're garbage. They overstuff their appliances with way too much unnecessary tech that nobody wants, and in order to keep the costs from being astronomical, they cut on build quality. Countless customers come in to replace Samsung appliances that failed far before their expected lifespan, often breaking within the first few years.
you want reliable? go with LG or GE. Whirlpool is also pretty decent.
European here, I suggest Bosch or Electrolux, if that's available in your part of the world.
Oh my God Bosch does good on their motors. Annoyingly one of those you pay for what you get companies.
oh, i also suggest Electrolux. they're great. i especially like to offer their laundry machines as an alternative to the more complicated LGs. electrolux machines are very simple, and they have great warranties.
Bosch is overpriced. nice, but far too expensive here.
Yeah, why would you buy kitchen appliances from a Smartphone/TV vendor?
Isn't LG having issues with their linear compressors?
Have they? I’d like to hear some more information about that, especially if you have any links.
Ohoho man
https://www.nbcwashington.com/news/consumer/fridge-failures-federal-lawsuit-cites-lg-refrigerator-issue/3552575/
https://www.wrtv.com/news/wrtv-investigates/indiana-consumers-join-class-action-lawsuit-against-lg-over-faulty-fridges
https://www.consumerreports.org/lawsuits-settlements/lg-settles-class-action-lawsuit-over-refrigerator-compressors/
LG is also being shitty about it, claiming everyone agreed to arbitration by reading it on the box.
https://www.nbcbayarea.com/investigations/consumer/lg-refrigerators-failures-update/3465620/
LG all the way. I have not had much in the way of positive results from GE since their acquisition by Haier. Their build quality took an immediate and noticeable nosedive. I have seen DOA, damaged, and defective units of all stripes from all brands over the years. But I have never seen any units arrive from the factory not fully assembled, but still packed up in a box and shipped in that state, except from GE. Multiple times.
I received a PFE28 refrigerator with no ice maker mechanism, just a hole in the door where it should have been installed. I also received a CGS700 range with the oven light door switch not installed, just rolling around in the bottom of the oven cavity where it was subsequently baked by the customer. I also received one CXE22 refrigerator with no face panel on the center drawer. There are other examples but those are just the recent ones I can remember off the top of my head.
Haier's management philosophy seems to be in lockstep with the Chinese Manufacturing Way, which is to steal whatever tech you can, do a slapdash job of making it, lie about everything, and when pressed about it just lie some more.
Honestly Whirlpool is not doing great these days, either, but they're better than Samsung or GE. Whirlpool has seemingly devolved into mostly competing with itself with all of its various sub-marquees: Amana, Maytag, KitchenAid, Gladiator, Jenn-Air, Roper, Affresh, etc. A better strategy might be to compete with their, you know, competitors. Whirlpool's warranty service network has also essentially evaporated over the last few years, so if you don't already know a repairman who is Whirlpool factory authorized to do warranty work you may as well just open a Youtube tab and figure that shit out yourself. Otherwise you'll just be told "there are no servicers or service dates in your area and the system only lets us look two weeks in advance" over and over again until your warranty runs out.
The less we say about Samsung the better. At one point we were experiencing a roughly 50/50 first-week failure rate of their laundry machines and dishwashers. A coin flip. That's worse odds than a first run XBox 360 not red ringing itself to put it into perspective. Don't buy a Samsung appliance no matter how shiny it is or how big of a touch screen it's got.
Although GE has delivered one or two problematic appliances, overall the customers I’ve had have had pretty great experiences with them, especially since higher bought majority share from them. Overall, I haven’t heard any complaints aside from teeny weenie ones. But I’ll keep My ears open.
While I'm sure they're cutting build quality to make them cheaper, the "unnecessary tech" isn't some cutting edge high tech stuff requiring high R&D costs that would make them "astronomically expensive"
If they wanted to they could literally replicate everything they're doing with a 60$ raspberry pi and just interface it with the existing controller boards and call it a day.
Even this article about the fridge is just an (admittedly fairly large screen) tablet.
The Samsung FamilyHub fridge does indeed basically have an overgrown tablet duct taped to the door. It runs Samsung's Tizen operating system, which you may recall was at one point going to be the Next Big Thing and a competitor to Android and iOS. Obviously that didn't happen, so now it's relegated to refrigerators.
Honestly, my theory is that Samsung is just pulling a sunk cost fallacy move and was desperate to put Tizen in something -- anything -- to justify its development.
It's terrible. All the hardware is also located inside the upper right door, and it dumps all of its waste heat out the back of the door into the refrigerator compartment. The design is breathtakingly stupid.
And here I thought their shitty TVs were breathtakingly stupid and over complicated (seriously there are like 6 different fucking menu screens in different places, and best of luck remembering which one you need for something stupid simple like sleep timer..)
Then again, I’ve been avoiding Samsung since the tv incident 10 years ago.. apparently for the best..
When their refrigerators have AI that scans everything you put into the refrigerator and then makes suggestions to you without asking first and table screen that hardly work and go obsolete in a year, yeah, I call that unnecessary tech. No other refrigerator does that.
That's not unnecessary, just to you it is, and the execution is flawed and terrible (No consent, hardly working screen) I for one would love a feature that kept track of my groceries for me because I'm absolutely terrible at manual lists and such.
Just because "no other refrigerator does that" doesn't automatically make it unnecessary either. That's what innovation is supposed to be.
Going to have to disagree based on personal experience (which admittedly has limited value). Bought LG washer, dryer, and fridge when we moved. The washer blew the clutch seal after about 4 and a half years. The dryer sensor is unreliable (leading to taking jeans or blankets out, them still being damp, and having to put them back in on a timer). And the fridge compressor sounds like it's struggling.
The most absurd part is that we replaced the washer with a similar LG model (one with an agitator - I looked into just replacing the part but it was half the price of the washer, the underside of the impeller was moldy because lack of water flow, something no amount of tub clean cycles will fix, and the outer bucket was absolutely disgusting from the leak, with no easy way to hose it out) because everything else was either crap, ridiculously expensive, or both.
I hate this timeline.
I have an anecdote that says the opposite. I got the same fridge, washer, and dryer from LG when we moved in our house 10 years ago and have had no problems with any one of them. My wife hates that we got a model with the freezer as a drawer on the bottom and would have preferred a side by side but no problems with anything breaking.
Our Bosch dishwasher on the other hand had a gasket start leaking during the pandemic and it took the repair people 4 or 5 months to get a replacement in. I think they were redesigning a faulty part at the same time as all the supply chain issues so we had a really bad time with that. It was only a couple years old at the time and has worked ever since.
Well I'm glad to hear you had a better experience than I did. I have my fingers crossed that everything holds up on this end, and the washer was a freak occurrence.
I have an anecdote where my LG washer has been running fine for 10 years.
Yeah, we bought a new LG washer and dryer set when we moved to this house in late 2016. The washer has been trouble free. In fact, it actually saved us from washing delicate clothes in hot water (the handles on the spigots are reversed - the blue is hot; the red is cold) - it filled up, recognized there was a problem, and drained without doing anything more. I thought there was an issue with the washer at first, but then I realized how warm it was inside the washer, and I figured it out from there. I don't think it's technically a smart washer in the current sense (there's no app or anything), but it's definitely smarter than the ones I've had before.
The dryer's tension pulley failed, so I had to replace that, for ~$20 from Amazon. It was making noise for a long time, but like a dolt I waited until it actually failed to replace it. The replacement has been trouble free. I found a video on Youtube from someone that showed how to disassemble it to get to the part - it's easier than it looks.
Jeans in the dryer? They'll definitely shrink that way.
I'm constantly replacing the drain pump in my LG washer. When a replacement part has thousands of reviews on amazon, you know the brand has to know their parts are crap and either doesn't care or wanted it that way. They're on my never buy list now.
What do you define as “constantly”? Once a year, every two years, twice in 20 years?
Anecdotal, but I’ve had my lg washer, dryer, dishwasher, fridge, and gas stove for about 10 years and none of them have had any issues at all. I didn’t get them because I was super into LG, they were cheap - open box, dented, or floor model - and it just worked out that way, but still, zero issues with any of it.
Maybe it’s just that model tho, and that’s legit. Sometimes there’s just a shit offering, but the rest of the line is decent.
But a lot of times, parts fit multiple brand’s machines, or multiple models within the same brand. Especially something like a drain pump, which is super basic and could be used in dishwashers as well as literally all of their brand washers, for example. Solid chance the reason for the large number of reviews is compatibility with other models rather than lg sucking that hard for that model. But without knowing the exact part I can’t say.
4 times in the last 5 years.
There's a combination of flaws. The strainer basket doesn't do a very good job keeping debris out of the impeller. There's little separation between the steainer and the impeller. So long hairs that are partially caught in the strainer can still wrap around the impeller.
The pump itself has a terrible impeller design. The impeller is nylon and is press fit onto a 1/8 brass rod that just has a flat ground on it, no knurling or splines. The nylon cracks easily and ends up free spinning.
They use the same pump in loads of washer models. So yes, there's a very large user base, but that's a lot of people with part failures. The pump is garbage and lg should not be using it.
That’s a legitimate complaint, but if you bought it within the last 5 years or whatever, it’s possible they saw error and changed, assuming that’s the same part they used.
Or maybe, and I find this much more likely, the one you got on Amazon was disguised trash like everything else from Amazon and it’s not actually the OEM parts causing the issue since it’s always the same shitty part that fails. You got unlucky with the oem part, then bought trash on Amazon (basically everything on Amazon is knockoff, nothing is quality) and have been replacing it since.
If you bought the replacement pump from an OEM part supplier or other official supplier for replacements, and continued to have the issue, sure, but at this point you are giving an extended Amazon review as a review of the machine itself. And that’s not remotely fair to the unit, because Amazon is trash and won’t even let you post negative reviews anymore (try it, good luck).
How old is this appliance? And what do you mean by constantly?
4 pump impeller failures in 5 years. 1 time a mask strap got past the strainer. I'll take the blame on that, but the other 3 were just long hair and bad design/materials choices.
I was with you until you suggested GE. GE is the Chrysler of appliances (ie squeeze suppliers on price so much that they get precisely what they ask for). It's the monkey's paw effect.
This was especially true until 2016 when Haier bought a majority share in the appliances division of GE. After then, the quality has seriously improved, and so has their customer service. The customer I’ve had so far have definitely liked them and not had any problems with them at all.
Smeg for fridges
Dumb fridges forever. Just keep the food cold.
Also, Welcome to the world of tomorrow.
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Unfortunately, they're kinda hard to find. We recently got a new fridge, and most of the French door fridges (fridge on top, freezer on bottom) were smart or didn't have a water dispenser.
We ended up with a Whirlpool without smart features, other than the "smart" water dispenser (touch screen to auto-fill cup to X liters), and it still has "dumb" buttons for that as well. I haven't taken it apart, but hopefully the dumb buttons act as a fallback when the smart buttons inevitably fail.
I was sleeping for fridge about a year ago, i didn't find a single "smart" at all. Max tech was door ice and managed 🌡️ with digital dials
Really? I'm in the US and went to Home Depot, Lowes, Costco, and Best Buy. Our requirements:
So, here's what we found:
So we bought a side-by-side fridge from Whirlpool, which met all of our requirements except the french door design.
Still wandering what use has such a simple machine like a fridge for a 32" screen..
Porting Skyrim onto it?
Can it run Crysis?
There are two (fairly lackluster) uses for it.
The first is that it has a camera with a large fisheye that can show you the inside (though this is more useful when away from the fridge rather than using the screen). The issue is the camera is only at one point. The fisheye helps see more, but it can never see all the fridge.
The second is as a home assistant in the kitchen. This is actually useful. It can display recipes and whatever in it whole you cook. You can also use a phone, tablet, or other home assistant device for this though, but if you want to throw away money this does seem convenient.
They also can show arbitrary stuff, so it's great for todos, family reminders, etc. We bought a chalkboard-like thing (wet chalk?), but a thin whiteboard would work too.
My wife prefers using a tablet to cook since she can move it around (from the prep counter to next to the stove). I use my phone.
We bought a new fridge recently, and while the smart features looked cool, I don't trust them to get security updates, nor am I willing to pay a premium for cool features on a fridge that's likely to have problems (Samsung and LG have the coolest features and the worst repair track records).
Whiteboard?
my wife and I use these, they rule so long as you don't make mistakes
Blackboard, but I guess it's just a dry-erase with black background instead of white.
I mistook it for this other thing or this thing my wife got before with these liquid chalk markers. The dry-erase blackboard is on our fridge, and this one is on our wall near our fridge.
So now Samsung fridges won't play TV shows or cool the food?
Now that's the funniest utopian phrase
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Yesterday morning, I woke up to a notice on my fridge alerting me that one of my favorite features was going away.
And while that turned out not to be the case — the confusion highlights how precarious smart appliance features can be.
“The notification was sent in error, and a correction will be released.” I also asked Langlois if he could explain why this happened and how many fridges sent out this message.
It offers hundreds of live TV channels with news, sports, and plenty of classic TV (there’s an entire channel dedicated to Baywatch reruns and another to Degrassi Junior High), alongside movies on demand.
I’m still waiting for that pop-up telling me all is good, but I’m definitely relieved I’m not losing the option to watch TV Plus on my fridge.
But I like to have the T2 Tennis Channel on while I scramble eggs or pop on a news show while cooking dinner.
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Sometimes I wonder why people buying smart fridge in first place, it's just fridge with touchscreen panel on it, what makes it's so special compared to other fridges that has better cooling technology or bigger capacity or better electricity consumption
Oh no! Anyway...