Guide: Smart fridge for smart living

Having appeared early in the early 2000s, smart fridges have made a comeback and are an integral part of the smart home universe. While this market has developed, the supply remains relatively limited, although more varied. Smart fridges can save you time, entertain you in the kitchen, and ensure the optimal preservation of your food. Find out how to choose a smart fridge, and our selection of the best models on the market.

What is a smart fridge?

The concept of a smart fridge refers, for simplicity, to a fridge smart to the Internet via WiFi or another communication protocol such as Bluetooth. This connectivity allows you to interact with the fridge using your smartphone, for example to control the temperature.

However, it would be more accurate to talk about smart fridges to refer to the devices we are talking about here. Most of these household appliances carry a processor, RAM, and a touch screen, just like a computer.

Through this screen, it is possible to access multimedia content, browse the Internet, but also to access functionalities directly related to cooking and food preservation. The smart fridges allow you to monitor the condition of your food, food stocks, or to consult recipes directly and write shopping lists. Many features to be discovered in more detail in the following paragraph.

What is the purpose of a smart fridge?

The smart fridges offer many features. While they retain common characteristics, the offer is more varied than before and each one has its own qualities. As a general rule, smart fridges allow you to establish a shopping list based on the contents of the fridge.

This content can be automatically analyzed in different ways. Some models have a camera on board that scans the different products in the fridge. Others require manual listing of products to enter them into the device's internal memory. Subsequently, the user can sometimes send his list automatically to a partner store in order to place his order directly from his kitchen. It is also possible to consult the shopping list from the fridge on your smartphone once in the store.

Another typical feature is the ability to view recipes from the smart screen of the fridge. These recipes can be filtered automatically according to your desires, of course, but also according to the content of the fridge. Once again, once the recipe has been chosen, it is often possible to order the ingredients directly or add them to the shopping list on the smartphone.

In addition, smart refrigerators are also excellent tools for monitoring the condition of food. The cameras embedded inside these devices allow you to monitor the contents of the fridge at any time from your smartphone or computer. So, if you are no longer sure you have enough specific ingredients in stock, you can check directly on your phone from the store.

These smart devices also offer, for the most part, multimedia features dedicated to entertainment. While in the kitchen, the user can watch television, listen to music, or even surf the Internet.

Another, less obvious strength of smart fridges is the potential to save energy. Since the 1970s, the energy consumption of refrigerators has been limited. Today, an average refrigerator consumes about 498 kilowatt-hours per year, compared to 1278 in the 1980s. However, these household appliances still account for 30% of the energy costs of a typical household. However, the temperature of the smart fridges can be controlled in real time. In this way, energy consumption can be significantly reduced.

How to choose a smart fridge?

There are several criteria to consider when choosing a smart fridge. First of all, it is of course necessary to review the features specific to these smart devices. Multimedia content distribution, food monitoring, recipe consultation, online ordering... it is important to evaluate the possibilities offered by each model, and choose those that meet your expectations.

The second criterion to be taken into account concerns the traditional characteristics of fridges. The energy consumption, dimensions, capacity or design of the chosen appliance must correspond to your needs and integrate harmoniously into your home.