Best Smart Kitchen Appliances for Your Hi-Tech Home
Now that you have your dream kitchen installed, how do you take it to the next level? One of the answers might be in smart home technology. You will have probably heard about smart heating technology – Hive, Nest and other smart thermostats. You can hardly surprise anybody with a smart TV, however, smart cooking and connected kitchen appliances is something new.
Some of the readers who’ve been following the technology advancement throughout the years will remember Holland Electro Wave TV – a TV integrated in a microwave oven that made its début and flopped back in 2007. Luckily, we’ve gone a long way in the last 10 years and some of today’s “novel” smart kitchen gadgets are rather usable.
The prevailing trend is for the tech developers to make devices that can integrate with one of the mainstream smart home hubs – Alexa or Google Home.
For example, major “old-school” manufacturers like Whirlpool, GE, LG and Samsung have already committed to building smart devices that integrate with Alexa’s Smart Home API. Why is this important? Because currently smart home devices tend to be defying the whole purpose of connectivity. You need a separate mobile app for controlling your thermostat, door lock, kettle and washing machine.
If all these devices were compatible with Alexa API, you would have one central console for commanding your smart home, rather than having to jump from app to app ending up spending more time than it would take to accomplish the same task using a “non-smart” device.
Illy Y5 Coffee Machine
It lets you customise your coffee content and set times for the machine to make coffee. The most amazing feature, however, is its ability to restock coffee pods when you’re about to run out. Unfortunately you’d still have to use muscle power to open the door and pick up the parcels.
Anova Smart Sous Vide Machine
The majority of us go through our culinary adventures without ever owning a sous vide machine. So many of you will probably think a smart sous vide machine is surplus to requirements. On the other hand, it makes wonderfully tender meat, so if you’ve fed up with tough steaks, this is the one for you.
Drop Scale Smart Kitchen Scale
That sinking feeling when you need to make a romantic meal for two and all the recipes you can find on the internet are calculated for four or more people. All you need is a Drop Scale smart kitchen gadget and it will recalculate the ingredients and support you along the way.
IGrill Master Kit
In my humble opinion, this one is a useful smart kitchen gadget because unlike the majority of smart devices, this actually solves a real problem. Taking guesswork out of roasting and smoking meat – is IGrill Master Kit. It’s a probe that you insert in your Sunday roast to monitor the temperature. No need to keep opening the oven door and guessing whether it’s still raw or already overcooked.
SmartyPans Smart Frying Pan
This is a smart pan that integrates with your FitBit and a proprietary recipe app helping you to become a better cook and lose weight in the process.
Simplehuman Voice-activated Dust Bin
Although reading the heading probably made you chuckle, this is better than originally thought. Needless to say that hand-operated and swing-lid bins are both hygienic disasters. Pedal bins are better, however, if you explore your pedal bin right now, I’m willing to bet that you will find all sorts of nastiness underneath the pedal and other bottom parts. A hygienic bin has to have smooth surfaces with no crevices to harbour germs. Simplehuman is exactly like that. It will open the lid on your voice command. Brilliant.
In most cases, the whole idea behind a smart kitchen appliance is bordering on ridiculous. Why would you want to control your microwave from a distance? All it takes is turning a dial and voila! 2 minutes later your food is ready. Do you really need your phone to send you a text to alert you that your pasta bake is ready?
