15 Smart Appliances Every High-Tech Home Needs

There may be a few scenarios at play here. You’ve either seen someone’s home filled with smart appliances and realized just how convenient they are, started with one piece of tech yourself and became obsessed, or just know AI is the way of the future and just can’t wait to be a Jetson.

Okay, so maybe there are a million other scenarios that drove you to look at this page. Whatever brought you here, you’re in good hands. We’ve wrangled up some of the best smart appliances for home automation experts, newbies, and everything in between.

What is a smart home appliance?

If you’re new to this channel (now we sound like a smartthings vlogger), a smart home device is a gadget stolen straight from the future. Just kidding. A smart appliance is simply a Wi-Fi-enabled appliance that connects with a smart hub or voice command system, such as a Google Assistant or Amazon Alexa or smart home app.

Connectivity is key. Especially with voice assistants. This allows you to control the appliance/ product remotely or with your voice.

What is the point of smart home products and smart appliances?

What’s the point of anything (going deep into psychology here)? Smart appliances aren’t exactly “necessary,” and yet they are becoming completely necessary for many people.

Our lives are increasingly busy, and the mind tends to try to eliminate a lot of the smaller, less significant things to cope with that business.

We’d say getting up from bed to circulate the house to make sure all the lights are off, the blinds closed, and the doors locked are pretty insignificant in the grand scheme of things.

But, you know… security… so we keep doing it each night.

If your blinds, doors, and lights were all connected to your smartphone, you wouldn’t have to get up. You’d just schedule all of those events to happen automatically at a set time each day. Or, you’d simply do all of those actions with a few taps of your phone.

Are smart appliances worth it?

That’s entirely up to you and your situation. If you or a loved one struggles to stay on top of daily chores, smart appliances and tech in your home. These types of products can  provide independence, security, and generally make life easier.

But something as simple as having a sleeping baby in your arms can make getting up to turn the music volume down (or up), turn the lights off, close all the blinds before baby is even in bed- slightly more challenging, if not time-consuming.

We all want more time to relax, and no one likes getting up as soon as they’ve sat down just because they forgot to turn off the light in the kitchen while grabbing snacks (way too common).

That alone may make  smart appliances worth it.

The Top Smart Kitchen Appliances You Need In Your Home

(& So Does Everyone You Know)

The kitchen is where you’ll find most of the push towards smart appliances, and that’s a beautiful thing. Because most of us don’t grow up learning incredible recipes passed down by our great great great grandparents. (If you did, you’re a lucky one.)

But food still tends to be the great combiner. The glue that binds families, friends, lovers. Cooking for someone is an act of love, if not a complete necessity (once you’ve been together long enough for cooking to be an everyday affair).

With so many needing a little extra help getting those experimental recipes just right, these smart appliances are nearly as vital as the food itself.

1. Touch-Screen Refrigerator

Refrigerators haven’t really changed in the last few decades. Maybe a bit of their style (hellooo, stainless steel), but they generally do the same things.

Well, a smart refrigerator is finally shaking up the game. These bad boys can look up recipes and read the steps to you while cooking, create grocery lists that display on their french doors, and add the lists to your smartphone. They can even send you notifications if a food item is set to spoil.

Some of the smarter fridge and freezer combos have cameras inside to let you see what you have on-hand (or don’t have) in real-time while you’re at the store.

Yeah, quite a bit different than the dry erase list many of us keep on our fridge doors.

2. Microwave With Voice Control

Have you ever put something in the microwave, then rushed off to do something else, only to fling yourself across the room because whatever you put in there is boiling and spattering all over?

No? Well, you haven’t lived until you’ve dashed to stop boiling milk or splattering tomato sauce. Then again, you could just be lucky enough to have a smart microwave that listens to your every command, as if you were the ruler of the galaxy.

3. High-Speed Smart Toasters

It’s not just the speed at which you can burn your toast, it’s how intelligent you can. Yeah, it sounds a little far-fetched to say that a toaster can do anything else but… toast, but it can!

Some smart toasters can burn images onto your toast. That’s how bored we were with the old spring and heating coil toasters.

Other fun tricks these babies can perform include cooking various types of bread at different temperatures, speeds, and personal settings. It’ll remember you, is what we’re saying, and if you get a smart toaster, you’ll probably never forget us for telling you about it.

4. Multifunctional Digital Air Fryer

Air fryers are the slow cookers  sensation of modern kitchen life, and they just keep getting better. You can air fryvirtually anything!

What’s better than a mini, enclosed fryer that cooks nearly any food item in less than half the time and with only a tablespoon of oil? One that does it at the command of your booming voice (okay, you can speak calmly. It’ll still listen).

5. Smart Oven

An oven is an oven is an oven, right? Wrong. Some ovens are much more than ovens. They’re watch dogs that’ll sync with your recipes to preheat properly or automatically shut off when your food is ready (before you burn it).

They’re jacks of all trades, adding steam for recipes that need more humidity (like the sourdough bread everyone learned to make during the pandemic) and more air for goods like cookies (aka convection).

(Whether your oven is an oven or a smart oven, we have some oven cleaning hacks for you, too.)

They’ll even turn the oven off while you’re out of the house, if you left it on (welcome geofencing to the conversation).

What’s more, most smart wall ovens and stove tops today have grime resistant coatings for a more consistently clean oven and for easier oven cleaning.

6. Smart Wi-Fi Pressure Cooker

We take back what we said about the air fryer… the instant pot is the new slow cooker

Why is it so great? Well, apart from the fact that it replaces around 7 appliances in your kitchen (that take up valuable countertop real estate), and can cook everything from flan and custards to delicate fish and sautés, it also cooks much faster.

Heck, you can even use your Instant Pot as a sous vide machine. Now that’s impressive.

The “smart” aspect to it lies in the voice commands and remote control capabilities if you have an Alexa or Google Assistant – turning it on and off, changing the temperature, and receiving alerts when it’s finished.

7. Fully Automatic Coffee Maker & Espresso Machine

Gosh, do you need coffee in the morning. It’s not a question (at least not for most of us).

If you’re still shuffling through your home, into the kitchen, and blindly turning on the coffee machine, breathing heavily with your shoulders drooped until it warms enough to start dripping… well, you’re missing out on something great.

We’re talking about a smart coffee bean cooker – or coffee maker, as most people would call it (but only after having coffee, when things become recognizable objects again).

Besides starting automatically at a set time, or on remote command, many smart coffee makers will also remember your profiles (if multiple people in the home use the machine), create your favorite brew, and can even make a multitude of beverages- from cappuccinos to pure black good juice (coffee).

8. Water-Saving Dishwasher

Oh yay, a dishwasher that’s concerned about the environment and our fresh water supply!

While smart dishwashers won’t put your dishes away for you (yet), they can save you money, time, and home energy by adjusting the amount of water and electricity it uses based on the load size.

Besides that smart aspect, they’re also remote controllable, allowing you to start the dishwasher from your phone or voice command.

(Check out our other blog post for more actionable ways to save time cleaning.)

High-Tech Appliances

We can go on and one about smart kitchen appliances – from the smart blender and juicer to the swanky warming drawers and grills. But it’s not all about the kitchen, you know.

There’s a lot more home automation to go around your home, and we’ve pulled together some top choices for other smart appliances.

9. Wi-Fi-Connected Air Purifier

If you have an older air purifier, you might realize that you forget to turn it on and off A LOT. You’ll run it all night so you have nice work.

Nothing wrong with that, exactly. You’ll come home to fresh air. But if you want to keep your machine lasting longer and reduce electricity usage, it might not be your favorite thing to forget.

Another fun one is forgetting to turn it on when you’re cooking, so you have to wait for it to filter the whole house again before it doesn’t reek of onions anymore.

Setting timers, controlling the purifier remotely from your bed, and even setting a schedule for the times you usually cook is all in the cards with a smart air purifier.

10. Robot Vacuum

Ready to hear about one of our favorite smart appliances?

Now, we aren’t trying to toot our own horn here (maybe we are just a little), but if you’re trying to automate functions in your home and reduce the number of manual chores, then you need a Roomba® vacuum to get into all those nooks and crannies for you.

If you have multiple pets (or even just one) and children (again, one will do), you’re probably already vacuuming and mopping several times a week (if not several times a day).

Smartphone app control? Yup! We’ve made it possible to personalize and control your cleaning experience through the iRobot Home app, while our products also learns your habits and home.

Take a load off and let a robot do the job for you. Not only will a Roomba® robot vacuum clean on a schedule you set for it, some can also map out your home and learn your routine to understand where to focus most of its time.

11. Energy-Efficient Thermostat & Air Conditioner

If you’re like a lot of families, you argue about the temperature in your home. Each of you is comfortable at a different temperature, and anything other than that temperature feels just the opposite.

Luckily, smart thermostats make it easy to compromise with the entire family. Most smart thermostats have independent sensors you can place in various rooms throughout your home.

You can set each to a different temperature, and shabam, you magically have a house with precise temperatures that suit everyone.

What’s more, these thermostats understand your living patterns, and learn which rooms you use the most or least and adjust the temperature accordingly to save you money and energy.

You can also program for going away on vacation or work, for night time, and for peak times of the day.

12. Robot Mop

If there was one thing most people wouldn’t want to do ever again, it’s mop. It takes a lot of time. If you have a huge floor space you really don’t want to even think about it.

We get it. Of course we get it, we made the Braava® robot mops  to solve that exact problem.

If you have both a Roomba® robot vacuum and the Braava jet® m6, you can sync them to patrol your home together, which is really helpful if you have stone tile floors. Because to clean tile floors properly, you have to sweep before mopping. We call these smart appliances the dream team of clean!

13. AI Washer & Dryer Combo

Here’s another great smart appliance combo for ya.

How many times have you left your wet clothes in the washing machine, only to have to wash them again because they smell all moldy and wet clothes-y? A scent that even the best scent boosters can’t get rid of. (We recommend vinegar.)

A smart front load washer and dryer can take care of that, and more, with the power of AI.

Here’s what you’d win: Remote or scheduled start for your washer or dryer, notifications sent to your phone when the load’s finished, automated detergent dosing, customizable washes via app control or voice command. Bada-bing bada-boom.

14. Smart Lighting

Once or twice we may have mentioned the magical ability to turn off all the lights in your home with the click of a button.

But smart lighting can do quite a bit more than add a layer of convenience to your life (yes, convenience, not laziness).

Some smart lights change color on command, or even coordinate with your movies and music for a dazzling and more intense show. If color isn’t your groove, then you can simply keep them on a shade of white or yellow, or even a deeper ember color for nighttime.

If you’re winding down for the night, or setting the mood, you may just want to dim your lights.

Or, if you’re prone to falling asleep while watching television and stumbling around the house isn’t exactly something you want to do, you can program the lights to shut off at a certain time or turn brighter to wake you.

15. Smart Toilet Cleaner

Despite robot vacuum cleaners taking the market by storm (you’re welcome for that), there really aren’t too many other robot cleaning solutions – especially for the bathroom.

But there are a few emerging, such as smart toilet cleaners.

It’s not just smart because it pumps electrolyzed water into your toilet to keep it clean at all times, but also because it connects to your pipes to track water usage and alert you when your toilet is using more water than it should.

Automating Your Home With Smart Appliances?

The odd thing about home automation is, you don’t realize how much you need it until you have it.

Up until that point, it’s almost entirely driven by desire or a basic understanding that it should make some things in your life easier. (Remember a time before your phone was a smart device?)

Until you can sit in your bed and press one button to close all of the blinds in your home, lock all of the doors, turn off all of the lights, turn on the air purifiers, and reduce the temperature across your home or your bedroom all at once… you just don’t know the luxury and convenience of it all.

Most people have busy lives today, and it doesn’t seem to be slowing. Do yourself a favor, and eliminate a few things. Let some smart appliances check things off your to-do list for you!